Did you know that 90% of technology leaders have stopped buying physical equipment for their business communications? The “always on” habit and the hybrid working trend have changed the way we work.

As a result, we are seeing more and more virtual PBX providers, and well-known companies in the IT world are diversifying into the telecommunications sector.

Every organisation has its own requirements, but there are some features that make life so much easier that we can’t ignore them. Here are three of them:

1. MAKE CALLS FROM YOUR COMPUTER

A virtual PBX allows us to turn any device with an internet connection into a phone. Whether it’s a Windows, Mac or Linux system, we can manage all our calls through a local installed program or a website page.

If users have other devices in addition to their computer (an IP phone, a mobile phone or a tablet), they can always choose which device to use to answer an incoming call.

2. INTERNAL CHAT & VIDEO CALLS

PBX systems are no longer just about voice; they now include other channels such as video & chat.

Rather than incur the cost of a collaboration programme licence and a PBX subscription, the most advanced solutions allow us to unify all services under one software.

As well as reducing costs, we can also benefit from synchronising offline and online timelines. For example, if an employee is on a call from a fixed line, they will appear as ‘busy’.

3. INTEGRATING THIRD-PARTY APPLICATIONS

Departments that have the most contact with suppliers and customers (sales, accounting, technical support, etc.) can benefit from receiving a pop-up with information about the caller, viewing the previous interaction history and making notes about the call without leaving the CRM or ERP.

For the rest of the areas, there are also integrations that allow us to edit documents online without changing applications and extract data for reporting on switchboard performance.

WHAT FEATURES DOES YOUR BUSINESS NEED?

The PBX should adapt to the business, not the other way around. We have to stick to our list of features and find a supplier that can deliver them all. In the meantime, our direct line to our experts is always open.

La entrada 3 features of virtual PBX that leading businesses are taking full advantage of se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

A cloud contact centre is a customer service solution that allows us to receive and send calls and messages via digital channels (such as chat, WhatsApp and email) over the internet. Because it’s hosted in the cloud, we don’t need physical servers or a switchboard, nor do we need to worry about maintaining and updating them.

The transition from on-premises to the cloud in Spain was gradual until the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, when more than three billion Spaniards worked from home. The need to manage services and teams remotelyforced many call centres to migrate to the cloud.

BENEFITS OF THE CLOUD CONTACT CENTRE

1. GREATER ACCESSIBILITY

One of the main advantages is that we can work from anywhere in the world, as long as we have an Internet connection, a computer and headphones.

2. MORE SCALABILITY

With less hardware, we can increase headcount during peak service periods or expand our business to other countries without having to buy more phone terminals.

3. LESS MAINTENANCE

Our provider takes care of software maintenance and updates, so we don’t need to employ a technical team for these processes.

4. LOWER RUNNING COSTS

In addition to not having to invest in hardware or pay for licences, the most common model for cloud-based services is pay-as-you-go, so we can only subscribe to the features we need.

5. MORE INTEGRATIONS

Speaking of the operational level, cloud contact centres offer APIs and integration tools that make it easy to connect to other existing systems, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

6. MORE SECURITY

Contrary to popular belief, data is much more vulnerable on a company’s local server than in a cloud-hosted data centre. These providers are subject to very strict GDPR or HIPAA regulations and have the highest security infrastructures.

7. FIND OUT MORE

The vast majority of customer service software providers have real-time service status information, allowing us to make immediate adjustments to meet SLAs and make informed decisions at a brand level.

WANT TO MIGRATE YOUR ON-PREMISES CONTACT CENTRE TO THE CLOUD?

We have helped many contact centres go digital over our 20 years in the industry, so if you are unsure about how to migrate your services to the cloud, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts.

La entrada What is a cloud contact centre and what are its benefits? se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

Contact centre software is much more than just inbound and outbound call management software. Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) platforms now have a direct impact on agent productivity and improving the customer experience.

Of course, every business has different needs and objectives, but to make sure we’re choosing the right tool, we can’t ignore these ten features:

1. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS

AI within a contact centre software is a very versatile tool that can deal with:

• Qualify intent (like an IVR, but with greater understanding and communication capabilities).
• Provide self-service so customers can get immediate answers to simple questions.
• Assist agents by clarifying doubts about a product/service or proactively providing advice.
• Automate post-call tasks such as summaries and typing.
• Facilitate agent supervision by impartially evaluating agent performance after each conversation.

2. ADVANCED CALL DISTRIBUTION

If we want to prioritise certain types of enquiries over others, we need to implement an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD).

The ACD is a system that routes calls based on rules. From a configuration panel, we can give one queue more weight than another so that, for example, medical emergencies are always given priority.

We can go a step further and define the skills of the agents (languages, knowledge, soft skills…) so that they receive the requests they are best suited to handle.

3. MULTI-CHANNEL MANAGEMENT

If we have multiple touch points with our customers: a contact phone, a web chat, an email address, a WhatsApp number… we need to be able to manage all channels from a single tool.

Not only so that agents can see all conversations in the same tab, but also so that supervisors can measure the customer experience in each channel.

4. INTEGRATION WITH OTHER PROGRAMMES

Voice integrations are the most common and allow us to make or receive calls when we are in other programmes.

For example, if we talk about integration with a CRM, we will not only be able to use all the telephone functions of our contact centre, but we will also be able to automate the display of customer files and the creation/update/deletion of contacts.

5. AUTOMATED DIALLING

Our sales team can also use customer service software to contact leads.

By including an auto-dialler for outbound calls, you can eliminate manual dialling and increase your conversion rate.

Plus, when integrated with CRM, the call history and all associated information is automatically recorded in the customer file.

6. CALL RECORDING

In order to comply with GDPR, it is essential to be able to record all calls and keep a record in case your customers request the recording. Therefore, it is an essential feature to operate your contact centre in accordance with the current regulations.

We need to ensure that we have full control over call recording during a conversation, so that we can stop it if customers disclose their confidential data.

7. MONITORING QUEUES AND AGENTS

In order to make quick and informed decisions, the customer service programme needs to have a dedicated supervisor panel. The more visual it is, the quicker they will be able to see how many agents are busy, how many are free and which queues are overflowing.

It is also very important to have dynamic, real-time information that they can interact with and apply filters to, for example, see how a particular agent is performing or make adjustments on the fly, such as changing the maximum number of calls in a queue.

8. CALL WHISPERING

This feature allows supervisors to listen or speak to an agent during a call without the customer hearing.

Call Whispering can be used to guide agents during training or to intervene in a call that is taking too long.

9. CALL STATISTICS

Just as supervisors need to see real-time information about agents and queues, we also need to monitor call traffic: how many calls are being handled, what is the average length of calls, what is our service level, etc.

This wallboard should also be highly visual, providing a bird’s eye view of all the metrics that impact contact centre performance.

10. COMPATIBILITY WITH ANY DEVICE

The usual scenario is a desktop computer with integrated WebPhone for agents to answer calls from a handset, but the pandemic has taught us that we need scalable and flexible tools.

Whether from a personal laptop or even a mobile phone, the software must adapt to the usability of each device without losing any functions: call transfer, recording, synchronisation of information, etc.

NEED CONTACT CENTRE SOFTWARE?

Discover these and many other features of our contact centre software by requesting a free demo. Our experts are always available on +34 900 670 750 or in the chat below.

La entrada 10 essential features to look for in a contact centre software se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

With the approval of the Spanish Customer Service Bill, customer service organisations must be prepared to serve their customers in less than three minutes.

Hiring more agents and using advanced contact centre software will be essential to meet the upcoming regulations.

1. DISPLAY KEY WAITING TIME KPIS

You can’t manage what you can’t measure, including customer wait times. That’s why supervisors need to be able to check the percentage of calls answered in less than three minutes.

With a real-time control panel, they can see if there’s an overloaded queue, for example, or if an agent is taking too long to deal with a customer.

They can then make decisions and act immediately, whether it is adding more agents to a queue or entering the call to give instructions to the agent without the customer hearing them.

2. SPEED UP THE INTENT QUALIFICATION PROCESS

To reduce customer hold times, it’s necessary to streamline the process of identifying the reason for the call.

In the past, the only way to do this was through IVR menus, where we programmed a series of prompts to route the call depending on the number the customer pressed (DTMF) or the word spoken (ASR).

For several years now, call centres have been using open-ended questions. Instead of giving several options to choose from, they ask directly: “Please state the reason for your call”.

Call qualification can be done using an advanced IVR or a bot. Both systems can recognise keywords in a sentence and route the call to the most appropriate queue.

But remember! If you want a ‘human’ conversation before the call is routed to the queue, an advanced IVR won’t do.

3. ADDING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO SELF-SERVICE

Self-service is an effective tool for reducing customer waiting times by providing quick and automated responses to recurring and simple queries.

Without the need for supervision, callbots are able to speak, understand and respond like humans thanks to conversational and/or generative artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT).

Although they require prior training to learn how to identify and resolve these types of queries, they can relieve agents of the need to: identify a customer, answer FAQs, read an instruction manual, manage a medical appointment, recommend a pension plan, etc.

4. CONFIGURING QUEUES USING ADVANCED METHODS

Of all the queue configurations available, there are three that are specifically designed to effectively manage customer waiting times: skill-based routing, queue prioritisation and maximum queue capacity.

4.1 ADVANCED ROUTING

Specifying the skills of the agents working in the contact centre is essential for routing calls more efficiently and thus reducing waiting times.

The programme you use to handle calls should allow you to specify the skills of each agent, from general knowledge to the most specific skills and even soft skills.

For example, we can have an agent with technical support skills, based in Barcelona, who specialises in fixing routers and also has empathy skills.

This agent will be assigned to the technical support queue with a maximum score (100 points), but will also be able to handle some calls from the customer service queue (20 points). They will be able to handle calls in Catalan (100 points), Spanish (100 points) and English (60 points), they will be able to resolve queries about the Internet (100 points), and they will also have knowledge of computers with the Windows operating system (80 points), in addition to being empathetic (100 points).

This system allows us to list all the operators’ skills and assign them a value from 0 to 100. They will therefore deal first with requests that require their strongest skills, and then those with lower scores (if the agents with the highest scores are busy).

4.2 QUEUE PRIORITISATION

Queue prioritisation is used to further refine routing and consists of assigning a value from 0 to 100 to the queues themselves.

For example, if we have three queues: one for customer service (50 points), one for technical support (100 points) and one for sales (20 points), we can tell the system which queue has the highest priority.

In this way, agents trained to receive technical support and customer service calls will deal with technical queries first.

This configuration is very useful if we find that the volume of calls is higher for one type of query. By prioritising them, we will deal with them before the rest.

4.3 QUEUE SIZE

Limiting the size of a queue can help us to prevent overflows, as we not only specify the number of calls that queue can handle, but also specify an alternative queue for when it fills up.

Following the previous example, if we create several technical support queues by language, we can make the Spanish queue only take up to 5 calls and use the Catalan queue as a backup, since it’s made up of agents who also speak that language.

5. CONFIGURE A BOT TO QUEUE YOUR CUSTOMERS

The definitive way to end phone queues is to have an artificial intelligence queue for your customers when they call the contact centre.

As soon as the customer enters the queue, the AI informs them that they can end the call and receive a callback when an agent is available.

Despite hanging up, the bot will continue to advance positions in the queue, and when it reaches the first position, it will automatically call the customer and the agent to connect them.

The main difference between this AI and a traditional callback is that when the customer calls back, the bot informs them of their current position without losing their turn.

6. ADDING ALTERNATIVE CHANNELS

Another way to meet the new customer service SLA is to reduce the volume of incoming calls by enabling digital channels, whether it’s WhatsApp or a chat on the website.

These channels do not have minimum attention times and can also be managed by chatbots. Just as AI can detect intent and intentionality in calls, it can also do so through written channels.

So, the process would be the same: present the user with a menu of query options, or an open-ended question.And once the bot understands the customer’s need, it can offer self-service or transfer the call to an agent.

The best thing about omnichannel contact centre software is that both the chatbot and the agents can seamlessly switch from a WhatsApp conversation to a phone call.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The technology available on the market today can help you serve all of your customers in less than three minutes.

Depending on the volume of calls your contact centre receives, you’ll need to assess whether you only need an advanced customer service programme, or if you need to add alternative channels and/or artificial intelligence.

Will your company’s customer service be affected by the new by the future law? Get in touch with our team of experts on +34 900 670 750 or chat to us. We’re here to help!

La entrada How contact centre software can help you manage customer waiting times se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

As its nickname suggests, the future law will bring about significant changes for all companies offering customer service.

In order to provide faster, more accessible and more personalised assistance, they will need to make changes to their call centres and customer service departments, which will involve using advanced customer service software and/or hiring more staff.

THE ORIGINS OF THE SPANISH CUSTOMER SERVICE LAW

This law is not entirely unknown. If we recall, at the beginning of last year, Alberto Garzón, the Minister of Consumer Affairs, presented a draft law that was about to be published in the Official State Gazette due to the electoral campaign.

It stipulated that the customer service provided by public and private companies in the utilities, transport, postal services, electronic communications and financial services sectors, as well as companies with more than 250 employees or an annual turnover of more than 50 million euros, must meet certain quality standards.

As the draft law comes into force on 27 February 2024, the customer service departments of these companies must start preparing to comply with the new regulations.

AIMS OF THE SPANISH CUSTOMER SERVICE LAW

“There are few experiences as universally shared as the frustration caused by having to endure what seems like an endless wait when trying to deal with an urgent complaint,” said Pablo Bustinduy, Minister of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2023, at the press conference following the draft law’s approval.

“There are few experiences as universally shared as the frustration caused by having to endure what seems like an endless wait.” – Pablo Bustinduy

We are all customers, and we have all waited endlessly on the phone to resolve an important issue.

That is why the new Spanish law on customer service aims to create a customer service that is.

• Efficient: by reducing waiting times on the phone, shortening incident communication times and speeding up incident resolution.
• Accessible: ensuring that the most vulnerable consumers, such as the disabled and the elderly, are properly served.
• Personalised: ensuring that customers are not served exclusively by automated systems that cannot identify, let alone resolve, their problem.

MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS OF THE CUSTOMER SERVICE LAW

In order to achieve these three objectives, the law lays down minimum quality standards that all customer service providers must meet:

1. COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

Companies must have at least one postal channel, one telephone channel and one electronic communication channel. These channels must be accessible to all consumers.

Customers can submit complaints, claims or incidents in Spanish or one of the co-official languages.

2. PERSONALISED ATTENTION

Customer service cannot rely solely on automated responders or conversational bots.

Consumers interacting with virtual assistants must be able to speak to a specialised agent upon request.

In addition, the operator must respond within three minutes, which is guaranteed in 95% of cases.

If the customer is not satisfied with the service they receive, they have the right to speak to a supervisor or quality manager.

The article also states that companies cannot abandon a call because of long waiting times.

It also adds that vulnerable people must receive all necessary assistance in addition to individual and personalised support.

3. TECHNICAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES

Companies providing customer service must ensure that they have the material and technical resources necessary to fulfil their tasks and that they have properly trained staff.

In addition to sector-specific training, staff must have special training in assisting vulnerable consumers, particularly disabled or elderly people.

4. TELEPHONE SERVICE

Customer service telephone lines must be free to the customer (900 numbers, landlines or mobile phones) and can be provided by instant messaging.

All companies using special rate lines must provide an alternative number free of charge to the consumer.

Under no circumstances can calls be diverted from a freephone number to a chargeable number, whether by telephone, SMS or other means.

For people with hearing impairments, the telephone channel must be accessible and, if requested, the company must provide an alternative instant messaging system, sign language video interpreting system or similar.

This section reiterates that 95% of calls must be answered in less than three minutes and clarifies that a call is not considered answered until the customer has been able to state the reason for their communication and request personal attention from an agent.

5. CUSTOMER IDENTIFICATION

All companies must provide their customers with an identification key linked to their complaint or directly, an identification number of the own customer.

This will allow customers to follow the status of their complaint quickly and easily.

6. JUSTIFICATION OF THE COMPLAINT

In addition to providing an identification key, the customer service team must always provide a justification stating the reason for the complaint, date and time.

If the enquiry, complaint, claim or incident is communicated by telephone, video call or instant messaging, the company must record the conversation (with the customer’s consent) and indicate how it can be accessed.

In this case, a copy of the recording or transcription must be kept until the case is resolved.

This justification will be provided via the same contact method and the Company will need to request the Customer’s details in order to provide it if they have not been provided previously.

7. RESOLUTION OF INCIDENTS

The resolution of an enquiry, complaint, claim or incident must answer all the customer’s questions without using generic answers, and cases will not be closed, even if the deadline for resolution has expired.

If the customer does not provide the complaint correctly, they will be given 10 working days to provide the necessary information.

The resolution communication must be made through the same contact channel where the complaint was submitted.

Similarly to the previous article, if it is initiated by telephone, videoconference or instant messaging, the business must record the conversation and make it available to the customer.

8. 24 HOUR AVAILABILITY

The customer service must follow the business hours of the company. However, it must be active 24 hours a day, every day of the year, to receive service-related incidents.

9. SERVICE ACCESSIBILITY

Customer service must be provided using media and tools that are accessible to all, with equal treatment and without discrimination.

Where this is not possible, additional means must be provided to ensure access for people with disabilities or the elderly.

This means that if vulnerable consumers cannot be served through regular channels, new communication channels must be made available.

10. DIFFERENTIATION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

Customer service must be clearly differentiated from other company activities so that customers know who to contact to resolve enquiries, complaints, claims and incidents.

These channels must not be used to offer products, services or other commercial offers unless they are related to resolving customer enquiries.

11. TIME LIMIT FOR RESOLVING COMPLAINTS

Inquiries, complaints, claims or incidents submitted through any means must be resolved within less than fifteen business days of their submission (unless a different deadline is required by industry regulations).

However, in the event of a business continuity incident, enquiries arising from this scenario must be responded to within less than two hours.

The company’s communication must include information about the cause of the incident and the estimated time to restore service.

12. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEYS

Companies need to implement and document a system for assessing customer satisfaction.

The information obtained can be used to continually improve customer service.

However, surveys cannot be conducted until the enquiry, complaint, claim or incident has been resolved.

13. COOPERATION

The administration will promote cooperation between the Consumer and User Council and the consumer associations that are members of it, and the companies covered by this law, in order to ensure the quality and effectiveness of customer service.

These cooperation frameworks will follow the legal provisions established in the Spanish General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users.

14. DATA PROTECTION LAW

All personal data processed in the context of customer service must comply with the law on the protection of personal data and guarantee the digital rights of consumers.

HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE FUTURE CUSTOMER SERVICE LAW?

The passing of this law represents a radical (and much-needed) change, which for the contact centre sector means an urgent digital transformation.

Meeting shorter response times, enabling alternative messaging channels and routing calls to the best agent: it’s not as easy as it seems. Or is it?

What we do know for sure is that contact centres equipped with the right tools to manage customer incidents will have no trouble meeting the quality standards mentioned above.

As Jorge García, our Product Director, explained in an interview with COPE, omnichannel and artificial intelligence will be two key elements in achieving this.

Omnichannel customer service software and the activation of alternative contact channels are essential:

• Reduce inbound call volumes.
• Ensure personalised and efficient assistance across all channels.
• Have the technical resources to manage all channels.
• Offer more communication channels at no cost to the customer.
• Speed up the resolution of incidents reported through multiple channels.
• Automate the sending of satisfaction surveys after case resolution.
• Monitor in real time the percentage of calls answered within 3 minutes.

On the other hand, we believe that artificial intelligence, even if it can’t be used solely as a tool for assistance, will become a key element in order to:

• Eliminate telephone queues through a callback system.
• Ensure 24-hour service availability by any means.
• Identify user intent and purpose.
• Redirect the call to the agent best suited to handle the enquiry, even contacting the agent who previously handled the customer’s enquiry.
• Provide self-service for simple enquiries that do not require agent intervention.
• Facilitate customer identification and inquiry tracking across all communication channels.
• Automatically generate and deliver complaint justifications across multiple channels.
• Transcribe all conversations, regardless of channel.
• Suggest answers and provide relevant information for agents to assist customers in a personalised manner.

Is your company’s customer service affected by the future law? Contact our team of experts on +34 900 670 750 or fill out this form. We’re here to help!

La entrada New Spanish Customer Service Law 2024 se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

When a company is faced with a high volume of customer enquiries, the need for software to manage them becomes obvious. 

There are two main solutions on the market: call centre software and contact centre software. By answering these four questions, you’ll have a clear understanding of which is better for you.

1. WHAT CHANNELS DO YOUR CUSTOMERS USE?

If your only customer contact channel is a helpline, call centre software will enable you to handle calls quickly and efficiently.

However, if you have alternative contact channels or are planning to add them in the future, we recommend that you choose a contact centre programme that allows you to manage calls, emails, online website chats or WhatsApp messages simultaneously.

2. DO YOU WANT TO AUTOMATE ENQUIRIES?

Call centre software is designed for agents to comfortably manage calls, but it usually lacks self-service functionality.

Meaning, that it doesn’t allow to add virtual agents in charge of answering customers queries without human agent supervision.

This functionality is typically used to automate simple questions such as telephone line balance, meter readings, the location of a parcel, etc.

Neither is ready to integrate with third-party tools such as CRMs to synchronise customer data or automate certain After Call Work tasks.

This is where contact centres have an advantage – it makes perfect sense – because when they were first introduced, call centre programmes were not updated with this type of functionality.

3. WHAT METRICS DO YOU NEED TO MEASURE?

While most call centre call management tools allow you to measure basic KPIs such as call volumes and hold times, they usually don’t go much further. 

Contact centre programmes not only allow you to view quantitative KPIs across all integrated channels, they also provide – on a daily basis – qualitative metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT) results and, if integrated with Artificial Intelligence, general query insights.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Choosing customer service software is like buying a new car. You’ll need to consider your budget and weigh up the pros and cons before making a decision. 

It’s important to ask yourself what you need now, but also what you’ll need in the future. Like cars, customer service programmes are a long-term investment.

If you need guidance or want to see the features of a contact centre programme first-hand, our team of experts is always available to provide personalised demos. Schedule yours by calling +34 900 670 750 or using the chat below.

La entrada Differences between call centre software and contact centre software se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

How To Take Advantage of The Wave of Innovation In Artificial Intelligence?

1) Migrate to the Cloud

Non-cloud companies are using out-dated systems that are not as scalable, secure, or efficient as cloud-based systems, leaving them at a competitive disadvantage. Not moving to the cloud makes it extremely difficult to keep up with the latest trends and technologies and can ultimately lead to a loss of customers and revenue.

As companies that have embarked on this journey can tell you, the real achievement is experiencing a substantial boost in innovation. Accelerating the pace of innovation can only be achieved by replacing legacy technology infrastructure with an optimised and cohesive cloud-native platform, marking an essential first step in driving innovation to its full potential.

2) Restart your Digital Strategy

Digital customer experience (CX) initiatives over the past decade have fallen short of expectations. These have been isolated, disjointed and focused on individual touchpoints rather than the overall customer journey. As a result, customers have experienced a fragmented and frustrating experience.

To achieve a seamless journey, digital CX must be an inherent part of the overall CX strategy and a native part of a single platform. This means that every customer touchpoint (from the website to the mobile app to the call center) has to be integrated and seamless.

AI has made it possible to focus on the optimal conversations of top-performing agents to create smarter self-service that personalises communications, anticipates customer needs, and resolves issues quickly and efficiently.

3) Provide Good Customer Service with AI

It is necessary to create a simple and robust platform that natively brings together all applications, data and AI to create more complete customer journeys.

Only then can you deliver the seamless, optimised experiences your customers demand. Customer service is a highly specialised domain and your AI efforts must be CX-specific and delivered at scale from day one.

This approach benefits the entire company by expanding and applying the knowledge gained throughout the organisation.

4) Take a Disciplined Approach and Timing to Prepare for the Wave

A unified platform allows organisations to add channels as needed, support multiple different channels, and leverage them when adding a new channel in the future.

5) Grow CX at Scale

A good foundation allows organisations to achieve balance. Finding that center of gravity to ride the AI wave requires an overall CX strategy that enables growth at scale, and only a unified platform can serve as a foundational foundation that provides stability, robustness, and a good starting point for Artificial Intelligence CX efforts.

Focusing on your main objectives by asking what is most important to consumers is essential. This way, you can guide your decision-making and ensure you are always moving in the right direction.

That’s what consumers’ want and demand. Of those surveyed, 61% of consumers wanted problems resolved the first time and 31% want to choose which service channels they use, according to ContactBabel’s Exceeding US Customer Expectations Report. This report also found that offering multiple channels means that customers will move between them as they see fit, depending not only on the quality of the channel’s service, but also on what they want to do, their personality and experience, as well as other factors.

To Know if Innovation in Artificial Intelligence Is Being Taken Advantage Of, the Following Questions Must Be Asked:

• Can agents interact with customers on the channel of their choice?
• Are you protecting your customer base and gaining new customers by meeting them wherever they are?
• Do agents have the tools to deliver cross-channel interactions to help satisfy customers and keep them loyal?
• Are you using a solution for each channel?
• Can you effectively manage the rapid increase in customer contacts, both synchronous and asynchronous, due to the influx of digital channels and scale up and down as needed by combining self-service/AI, inbound and outbound voice, and digital channels?
• Do agents use an intuitive interface to manage all interaction channels?
• Do managers have a single interface to manage all channels supported in the contact center?
• Are platform administrators working to unify routing, reporting, and workforce management across channels?

Conclusion

By thinking big picture, an organisation can see the entire AI landscape, including all the interconnected parts. Global thinking is about understanding how different tools are connected and how they interrelate with each other in the long term.

La entrada How To Take Advantage of The Wave of Innovation In Artificial Intelligence? se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

In other words, excellent customer service is the key to customer loyalty and retention, as well as business growth and profits. Let’s look at some figures:

• 82% of customers indicate that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to buy again (according to Salesforce).
• 77% of consumers believe that the customer experience (CX) is as important as the quality of their products and services (according to Forbes).
• 61% of users are willing to pay at least 5% more if they know they will get a good customer experience (according to Emplifi).
• Companies that view customer service as a value center versus a cost center achieve 3.5 times higher revenue growth (according to Accenture).

What Is Good Customer Service?

Good customer service is an essential component of any successful business, but what exactly constitutes good customer service?

First of all, good customer service should be friendly and welcoming. When users interact with the agent team, they should feel comfortable talking about their questions and concerns. They should also feel that they are heard and that their concerns are taken seriously. Making sure customer service representatives are approachable and friendly goes a long way to creating a positive consumer experience.

The customer service team must also be well informed and trained. Users should feel like they are talking to experts who can answer all their questions and address their concerns quickly and accurately. Taking the time to educate the team on the products/services and the business sector will help ensure that customers always get the answers they are looking for.

Availability and responsiveness are two crucial aspects of excellent customer service. Users should be able to easily and quickly communicate with representatives and preferably always be able to receive a quick response. This could be accomplished through various omnichannel communication channels, such as a dedicated phone line, email, SMS, WhatsApp, or WebChat. Finally, it is key to offer personalised solutions.

9 Must-Have Qualities of a Good Customer Service Representative

1) Problem Solving Skills

The number one skill you need to excel at for good customer service is the ability to resolve complex queries. Likewise, the job of a customer service representative is to keep customers happy. That often includes navigating through a complex set of situations to find a suitable solution.

2) Clear Communication

Your team will have a hard time resolving customers query if you can’t clearly communicate the solution. However, clear communication is not as easy as it seems.

Effective feedback means being able to put you in the customer’s shoes and use concise explanations to reach a solution as quickly as possible. Often, that involves the use of understandable language.

In addition to connecting with customers, agents must be able to communicate well with the rest of the team. This means following processes and protocols for entering user information into the CRM.

3) Friendly Attitude

People don’t like to be treated like a number. Most people prefer to interact with a human being when faced with complex queries. However, in today’s fast-paced society, customers are often seen as numbers on a spread sheet.

The ability to stay genuine and show users that they really matter to a company can make a huge difference in CX.

4) Empathy

A customer service representative is able to put himself in the consumer’s shoes and understand where his frustrations come from.

Empathy is necessary to offer the right solution. Often when people file a complaint, they really just want their problem acknowledged and to see that the agent cares. Being empathetic can ease frustrations and uphold a brand’s reputation.

5) Business Acumen

Customer service is also a business role. While your goal is to resolve a customer query, at the same time, you represent the business interests of a company. Therefore, solving a user’s problem means finding a compromise between the two.

6) Knowledge of the Product/Service

The best agents have a deep understanding of how a product (or service) works. Nothing is more frustrating for a customer than having a problem and ending up on the phone with someone who doesn’t understand you.

This does not mean that the customer support team needs to understand the inner workings of the product in the same way as the technical team. However, your knowledge about it should be able to solve a user’s query.

7) Solid Time Management

Agents are likely to handle multiple customer tickets at the same time. Making everyone happy will require great organisational skills and excellent time management skills.

8) Patience

Customers may not always understand how a product or service works, and may feel frustrated or upset when they seek help. Customer service representatives must remain calm and patient in these situations.

Many instances of bad customer interactions can be fuelled by your frustration, making them harder to get close to and annoyed faster. A good customer service representative should be able to handle these situations carefully and defuse potential tension.

9) Willingness To Go Further

Going the extra mile is what sets good customer service apart from the rest. It’s about doing more than what’s expected and giving users the best possible experience.

Businesses and customer service representatives must be willing to ensure user satisfaction even after the resolution of the query. Simple gestures like offering a discount or even a knowledgeable follow-up help show your customers that you care about them and their loyalty.

La entrada 9 Must-Have Qualities of a Good Customer Service Representative se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

Companies are challenged to meet these growing demands and are increasingly aware that every customer touch point generates valuable data to better serve their needs. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based tools can share information beyond the call center across departments, help agents in real time, and ultimately redefine self-service.

How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Redefining Self-Service?

1) Conversational AI Gives Customers More Control

Companies are putting into practice conversation analytics, natural language understanding (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to improve customer experience (CX) across the full range of channels and modalities.

2) The Customer Experience (CX) no longer Resides Exclusively in Contact Centers

The same AI that understands and derives the intent of each customer from their own words can analyze the content of millions of conversations and extract valuable information for the entire company.

Thus, thousands of cases describing defects or deficiencies in newly launched products or service interruptions can be detected, thanks to the tone of the conversations that are then shared with the product development or customer service personnel to solve problems.

3) Everything Happens in “Real Time”

This means that the understanding of the expressions and the recognition of the intention are carried out in the course of a conversation between agent and client.

Call center agent workspaces and dashboards now routinely highlight customer intent and recommend the best action for an agent or intelligent virtual assistant (voicebot or chatbot) to take at the right time.

4) It Has Become both Predictive and Proactive

AI is great at pattern matching. It can quickly identify who is calling, process customer history, display conversational content (past and present), recognize user intent and match it to the resource that can resolve their query.

From a customer perspective, it lays the groundwork for AI to trigger outbound calls or messages when a business deems it necessary to initiate an action on a user’s behalf, such as rebooking a flight when a traveler’s plans fall through have been interrupted.

5) Facilitates Omnichannel

In the world of digital CX and self-service, it is vitally important to offer customers and agents access to omnichannel. Companies are literally putting the customer in charge of every interaction. It often feels like you’re browsing a website or collaborating in real time. Therefore, both the agent and the user benefit when conversational AI informs their actions.

These five pillars are representative of a host of attributes that make conversational AI a necessity, especially amid the accelerated migration of IT infrastructure to the cloud.

Whether in public or private clouds, AI-infused resources can more quickly:

• Recognize callers and determine the intent of their calls.
• Inform intelligent routing systems so customers are quickly connected to the right agent.
• Provide live information to both live and automated virtual agents to resolve customer issues.
• Detect trends and extract information that can be shared with the entire company to improve products, services and customer satisfaction.

These are the measurable changes in metrics that describe the customer and employee (EX) experience, as well as the bottom line for each company.

Today, customer experience (CXi) interactions take place across a multitude of devices and channels. Successful brands encourage their customers to communicate with them when they want, using any device and through their preferred channel.

La entrada How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Redefining Self-Service se publicó primero en Enreach ES.

For this reason, customer service has become a differentiator, whether it is to increase business, retain customers or increase sales. The main companies join this trend because it is already a reality that consumers give more importance to the service they receive than to the price of the product or service, according to the study carried out by Forbes con Shep Hyken.

In this scenario where the figure of contact center agents has become a bridge between the company for which they operate and new opportunities, it is essential that they understand the importance of their figure in the relationship with the client and know how to offer quality that they expect, being more communicative, proactive and using the technical mechanisms at their disposal to predict good customer loyalty.

To achieve this loyalty, Enreach, a leading European provider of converged communications solutions for companies, has identified three advanced technology procedures that every agent must have in order to create an ideal atmosphere with the client and achieve an excellent result in dealing with them:

1) Have a Unified Agent Desktop

Betting on a tool that facilitates omnichannel can be key when it comes to impacting the customer, since if the agents have a single interface with all the optimal day-to-day applications, it will be easier for them to have all the information of customers and dealing with procedures with greater agility and success. In this way, the agent will have more time to focus on the client, will have their data in advance and will provide a differentiating degree of personalization in the service, adapting to the client’s real needs.

2) Bet On an Interaction Guide

The symbiosis between the use of technology and human empathy raises the potential of companies, and this is so present that in 2021 one in three introduced Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. That is why any agent who wants to strengthen their relationship with their customers must have the Interaction Guide, an AI-based tool that, thanks to its ability to analyze the sentiment of conversations, allows agents to know in a way deeper expectations and needs to respond more quickly and build customer loyalty.

3) Have Robotic Processes (RPA)

To really focus on delivering a great customer experience (CX), agents need to spend some of their time building relationships. But even so, the different daily tasks of a contact center also fall under their responsibility. Therefore, the help of robotic processes (RPA) is a differentiating element that will allow the agent to focus on the client and leave behind those more repetitive tasks. Companies have realized this competitive advantage and 90% of senior managers interviewed by IBM say they have started to integrate intelligent automation, with process automation (RPA) being the most popular solution.

“In an environment as competitive as the one we live in, companies must align all aspects of the business with the customer experience. To do this, contact centers must involve agents by making them understand the importance of the customer, their role as the first link with the user and provide them with the necessary technology for success,” says Jorge García, Enreach Product Director.

La entrada 3 Key Technologies That Help Call Center Agents Boost the Customer Experience se publicó primero en Enreach ES.