Communications’ Achilles Heel (And How to Strengthen It)

The communications landscape across nearly every industry continues to evolve rapidly to meet the needs of today’s digital consumer. And, as consumers now expect to access information directly from their mobile devices whenever they want – and from wherever they may be – those demands are greater than ever.

As many traditional industries such as banking and healthcare make the digital shift to meet consumers where they are today, designing a successful digital call center to better serve those needs is one of the most challenging – and critical – components of building a communications system.

What should be considered when designing a digital call center within a communications system? And how can a successful solution be achieved?

Creating Call Center Technology to Meet Shifting Expectations

Though communication systems have traditionally included very simplistic, basic desktop telephony services (with primarily only transfer and conference functions needed at a maximum), new cloud-based digital solutions have raised the bar and call centers now have the need for more advanced resources to meet consumer needs.

Routing, queuing, and advanced reporting are just a few of the services that industries across the board are now seeking when attempting to build better call centers. And perhaps the most significant shift in communications today is the consumer’s expectation to choose the type of media that she prefers to use when engaging with a business.

Though it was once sufficient for businesses to require consumers to call in and speak with a representative for certain services, while offering the ability to chat online with a representative for other types of services, consumers now demand the same multimedia options for all of the services they receive – leaving call center solutions to adapt.

Benefits of a Well-Designed Solution

A well-designed call center solution can bring about a wide variety of benefits. Perhaps the most significant of these is the ability to staff the call center appropriately to meet the service level expectations of consumers. Strategic staffing dramatically enhances customer experience and satisfaction by allowing customers to choose which type of media they wish to use to communicate with a business, whether it be chat, email, call or video.

An additional benefit to a strategically built call center is the ease and simplification of reporting, monitoring and managing staff. A cloud-based call center solution simplifies these processes, enabling staff to deliver a higher level of service that can be more accurately and easily measured, reported and managed. Additionally, all transactions with customers can be recorded for training and quality assurance purposes, greatly enhancing the customer experience.

Achieving Call Center Success

Industries that are making a digital transformation can approach the design of a successful call center in a variety of ways. But whatever their approach to design, it is critical to view all customers as equal regardless of what media type they use to engage. For instance, a customer who calls in via their cell phone must hold the same priority as a customer coming in through chat on the company’s website. Treating all customers and their choice of communication equally, ensures consumers feel comfortable engaging in their preferred modality.

Businesses can also approach call center solutions successfully by testing customer service representatives and call center agents for skills across all multimedia types to increase the chances of an enhanced customer experience in any modality.

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LinkLive Banking is for Financial Institutions who need to securely communicate with customers, clients, employees, and business partners and want it to work in the way that we all live and work across digital and physical channels.