A contact center is a single centralized location in which a business can manage customer interactions across different types of channels.
The main goal of a contact center is to provide customers with knowledgeable technical support, product and service awareness, and, most importantly, a seamless customer journey.
Depending on the type of channel a customer uses to communicate with a business, it can manage these customer interactions based on email, phone call, webchat, or even popular social media.
It is incredibly important to have a dynamic and well-operated contact center to create a positive customer experience and workflow.
A contact center is similar to a call center, however, the glaring difference is it provides customers the ability to communicate with a business based on their preferred channel.
Exploring a few key features:
Automatic Call Distributor (ACD): gives agents the ability to increase the amount of calls taken while optimizing CX.
Real-Time Reports: provides agents and supervisors the opportunity to monitor and review agent performance, customer satisfaction, and sentiment reports in real-time across channels.
Scripts: provides agents with a structured framework to provide callers with proper support.
Contact centers and call centers are both facilities used to fulfill customer support.
However, often, both terms are used interchangeably. When in fact, a call center is primarily used for inbound calls and outbound calls and a contact center is used for omnichannel customer support.
A call center is mainly focused on properly handling inbound and outbound calls. In fact, it supports customer expectations and the customer journey as a whole.
There are plenty of other industries that can be put to use: telemarketing, customer data collection, product awareness, or even debt collection.
Contact centers can provide a wealth of benefits compared to their call center counterparts.
Saving Time & Money: Provides customers the opportunity to solve issues with text messaging or instant messaging with a chatbot. Using this self-service helps decrease the amount of time contact center agents spend on the phone which drastically reduces wait times, operational costs, and resources.
Better Customer Information: Often, when customers interact with a contact center, they will share customer information about their personal likes, dislikes, and preferences. With this personal information, agents can improve CX.
Transform CX: Call centers are limited to collecting customer data through calls, while a contact center can gather this information through various digital channels. Since the majority of customers use multiple types of channels, agents can gather MORE information. These channels include: email, phone, SMS, webchat, or chatbot.
Put Interactive Voice Response Systems To Good Use: All call centers use Interactive Voice Response, or IVR systems, as a digital assistant to help guide customers through their journey. However, this causes issues with the inability to connect to a live agent. Contact center IVR is designed to focus on CX and direct customers to a knowledgeable and qualified agent.
There are specific types of contact centers, mainly including:
Below are some examples of use cases depending on its type:
Hardware: A business or organization can install a host hardware facility on physical, on-premise servers. However, a hosted hardware facility requires plenty of physical space to maintain servers. Expect HIGH operational costs.
Cloud-Based: Cloud providers host cloud-based contact centers. The major benefit of a cloud-based operation is the ability for an agent to access them anywhere around the world. Cloud contact centers are the future of the industry as cloud deployment has significantly MORE benefits than in-person facilities.
Hosted: A business or organization outsources the infrastructure to a separate company that deals with the systems externally. It helps with overall cost optimization and cost management.
Virtual: Enable agents to work remotely, anywhere on Earth. Thus, dramatically lowering costs and providing greater flexibility and a stress-free environment.
Often, an organization will develop a full-fledged contact center infrastructure to support communications on the same premise as the contact center itself.
With an on-premise type of facility, the organization owns and operates its own hardware and software.
When a call center makes outbound calls, deals with telecommunications, receives important product orders, or engages in key customer calls, these are all examples of ccaas.
Contact center technology is used to optimize the performance of a facility. These contact center features include:
| ACD System | Instantly analyzes incoming calls and distributes them based on various factors. |
| Email Response & Management | Collects and reviews customer issues based on information provided by email. |
| IVR System | Use keypad or voice commands to provide information without human aid. |
Knowledge Base Management Workforce Management | A central location where agents can search, cutting down significantly on waiting time. Assists agents manage their personal performance |
Contact center solutions generally implement call center software.
In fact, virtual contact centers may use virtual call center software to create a channel for remote agents to manage phone calls as if they were in a single, central facility.
Depending on the goals and demands of your organization, there are plenty of options with regards to the type of contact center you wish to deploy.
However, before making a final decision, it’s important to determine which software system status is best suited for your needs.
Will you benefit more from an omnichannel contact center which specializes in multichannel contact center features and functionality?
Or, will you disregard the cloud-based functionality and employ real agents at an on-premise facility?
Let’s explore your options!
Generally, both operate through powerful software, physical hardware, and real call center agent man-power.
(This includes the phone system lines used to manage both outbound calls and incoming calls.)
Contact centers can be hosted via the cloud by a provider (Bright Pattern).
Bright Pattern will handle all implementation and everything will be operated without the need of a physical office space.
If you decide to migrate to the cloud, you will experience a true transformation of CX.
The cost and pricing of the software you choose will vary depending on a number of factors.
For starters:
Bright Pattern provides its own special pricing plans and you can choose after reviewing our website and schedule a follow up or demo (via webinar or discovery call).
How Do You Optimize The Customer Experience With Contact Centers? <H2>
To transform CX for the better, it is crucial to implement the Bright Pattern platform into your organization.
Bright Pattern will streamline processes and provide exclusive features such as:
And so much more!
Omnichannel contact center software allows you to provide world-class and seamless CX on ANY communication channel, and the capability to SWITCH between these channels all while retaining the context of the conversation with a customer.
The omnichannel approach is key to customer retention and success.
Implementation of Bright Pattern omnichannel allows your agents to provide plenty of options of standard/traditional and digital channels for your customers.
These channels include: voice, email, text, SMS, video chat, web chat, and chatbots.
Any interaction across these channels can be transferred and supported onto another channel ANYTIME throughout the entire journey, leading to better customer engagement.
With this software, it creates a personalized experience for customers and transforms CX.
It incorporates different types of dialers to automatically call as many customers as possible. In fact, outbound call centers are dramatically transformed when implementing omnichannel.
Whether a business has low or high call volume, implementing this software is a game-changer.
CRM integrations is often referred to as Customer Relationship Management.
With Bright Pattern CRM, you have the ability to track the entire customer experience from start to finish, no matter which channel.
Now, agents have access to full customer interactions at their fingertips so they can deliver a positive and personalized experience to their customers.
Who has access to this information?
In fact, once an agent answers a customer’s call and receives their product information via CRM, that is an api, or Application Program Interface.
With this capability, your business can streamline workflow, exceed metrics for customer outreach and awareness, and dramatically transform customer engagement for the better.
Self-Service is any type of automated support system that gives customers the opportunity to find answers or resolve their own problems WITHOUT the help of an agent.
Actually, this can refer to natural language processing when using an automated voice response system over the phone.
The majority of contact centers incorporate some form of artificial intelligence, or AI, in their services.
These can range from basic NLP to guide a customer to a destination or answer their issue over the phone, without having to connect to a real human agent.
In fact, there are even full AI contact center agents that can assist customers with issues such as chatbots.
Automation is when a type of software is used to automate time-wasting, repetitive, or trivial tasks so agents can focus on more important matters.
Essentially, it completely eliminates and drastically reduces the need for human intervention.
A workforce management system is a combination of strategies applied to a call center to properly ensure the right people with the correct skills are placed in their proper positions in a facility.
Workforce engagement management is an important aspect as data management is essential and having qualified people leads to more success.
There are several popular social media platforms that support integration with the Bright Pattern platform: Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, LINE, etc.
A virtual agent is an online bot, also referred to as a chatbot, that uses AI programming to have developed and natural conversations with a customer.
A chatbot can lead a customer to live chats, read blogs, google workspace, and partner programs.
A virtual agent can have a digital transformation on any organization if implemented correctly.
Most agents use Microsoft Teams to communicate with each other and other members of the team.
They use Teams chat, video conferencing, and video meetings to touch base and ensure every agent on the team is on the same page.
Because of Microsoft Teams, there are no international calling rates as the calls are handled via the Internet.
At the end of the day, it is a type of data center that receives tons of information from customers, but agents need to know how their team members are doing, too.
It is corporate responsibility to provide a seamless platform for agents to communicate.
Now, customers can contact sales team members and agents will all be on the same page and can communicate in live-time with team messaging.
Instead of using a generic business phone system, this type of unified communications platform is essential for the success of every agent.
