Many businesses rely heavily on inbound contact centers for their customer service delivery, with call center agents in these roles needing to take upwards of 50 calls a day. Inbound call centers focus on customers that initiate contact with a business for assistance. Inbound call centers, for many businesses, is where the business’s customer service can really shine through seamless interactions and great customer experience.
To ensure that every customer experience through your inbound call center is a smooth, easy, and exceptional experience, you need the best inbound call center software for your business’s needs. Here are some of the features your inbound call center software should have to ensure great customer experience on every interaction.
Omnichannel Capabilities
The first feature your inbound call center software needs should be omnichannel capabilities. Omnichannel communications is crucial, especially in today’s digital age. Customers are on more channels of communication than ever, communicating with each other and with businesses on a mix of traditional channels, like voice and email, and emerging digital channels, like messenger apps, web chat, and SMS.
With a large mix of channels that businesses need to handle for customer service, it can be overwhelming for legacy systems to keep up. Adding new digital channels can be a pain on legacy systems, and the customer journey can feel very disjointed when moving from one channel to the next.
On a newer, omnichannel-ready platform, like Bright Pattern’s inbound call center software, omnichannel is a built-in feature of the platform. This means the conversation can move seamlessly from one channel to the next. A conversation that starts on a webchat can be moved to a phone call, which can then be moved onto a messenger app. With omnichannel capabilities, the customer journey is smooth during the entire journey and can improve customer experience during inbound interactions.
AI-Powered Intelligent Self-Service Options
The best inbound call center software for businesses focused on providing the best possible customer experience needs to have AI-powered self-service options. AI-powered self-service options can help streamline both the customer experience and the agent experience by directing the customer to the right resource without having to speak with a live agent.
Customers want fast service, and they want options for finding solutions. In a report by Microsoft, titled the “Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report”, Microsoft stated that “more than 90% of customers expect brands or organizations to have an online customer self-service offering, and 60% percent say they have a more favorable view of a brand if that self-service offering is mobile responsive.”
With the right platform that has conversational IVR, you can integrate AI and natural language processing into the self-service menu to allow the customer to use their natural language to interact with the IVR. Utilizing AI and speech analytics, the conversational IVR can accurately decipher the customer’s speech and direct them to the right resource. AI can also be used for authentication, allowing the agents to immediately get the needed information to help the customer as soon as the customer connects with a live representative.
Self-service can benefit both the customer experience and the agent experience by directing customers to the right resource quickly, and lowering the volume of repetitive routine tasks that the agent needs to perform.
Workforce Management and Automated Call Distribution
Being the backbone of the customer service for many businesses, inbound call center agents are often at the forefront of a business’s customer service and are handling the majority of the customer interactions that a business makes. This means during peak times, inbound call center agents can often be extremely busy with incoming customer calls and texts.
To streamline the workforce and make it more efficient for inbound call center agents, your inbound call center software needs to be able to integrate with the best workforce management tools. By integrating with effective WFM and WFO tools, your call center can schedule accurately, perform forecast scheduling, and empower agents to maximize agent productivity. Bright Pattern, for example, integrates with WFO solutions from partners like NICE, Aspect, Monet Software, and Pipkins.
For the best possible agent performance, your inbound call center software should also have an advanced automated call distribution, or ACD, system. A great ACD system can identify callers, sort the callers into a waiting list based on factors like status, waiting time, and query type, and route them to the best possible available agent. Bright Pattern’s ACD system, for example, allows you to differentiate inbound callers by type of customer, type of inquiry, and waiting times, and direct these customers to the proper agent.
Advanced Inbound Call Center Software Capabilities to Improve Customer Experience
The Bright Pattern inbound call center software is designed for contact centers to provide the best possible customer experience with effective inbound call center tools. Bright Pattern has many advanced tools and features, like AI-powered self-service, omnichannel capabilities, and integration with WFM and WFO solutions, that will help empower agents, streamline contact center operations, and improve the customer experience. Aside from inbound solutions, Bright Pattern’s call center software can power any business use case to improve customer experience and improve contact center operations.
To see the full list of features that you can get access to with Bright Pattern’s call center software
