Your traditional call center may be facing various problems. These can include long hold and wait times, misdirected calls, reduced first-call resolution, poor call resolution, and inadequate workforce management. If they are not resolved, overburden your customer care agents and frustrate your customers. Moreover, they can reduce the quality of your customer support service and eventually affect the reputation, growth, and competitiveness of your business.
Here, an advanced, technology-based call center phone system software can prove useful for your customer care service. Equipped with various useful features and capabilities, the software can help you resolve various problems and challenges faced by your customer support department. It will help to resolve them by organizing your workflows and streamlining your operations. Being scalable with the growing needs of your business, the software’s use will also help improve the efficiency and performance of your customer agents, save time, and reduce your costs. Moreover, its use will help boost your customer engagement and satisfaction, and enhance your customer support service’s overall quality.
With a lot of call center phone systems available, it can be challenging for you to choose the one that is the right fit for your business organization. We will guide you to make this choice easily and in an informed way. For this, we will discuss various critical areas that necessitate the need for a call center phone system for your business. Moreover, we will share important and worth considering things while assessing various call center solution providers. Furthermore, we will talk about various features required in your software solution to effectively fulfill your call center needs.
But first, you should know what a call center system software solution is actually about.
What is a Call Center Software System?
A call center software system is a technology-based solution that enables businesses to effectively manage various kinds of calls and organize call center operations. The system centralizes operations such as call routing, monitoring, recording, and reporting, while integrating with various existing business systems. These include customer relationship management (CRM) and interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Apart from facilitating smooth communication between customers and agents, the software system also improves response times and overall service quality of a business’s customer support department.
Types of Call Center Solutions
Let’s now know about some common types of call center software solutions.
Inbound Call Center Software
Developed to handle incoming calls, this software emphasizes on customer queries, service requests, and tech support. It is equipped with features like intelligent call routing and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for enabling efficient management of customer inquiries.
Outbound Call Center Software System
This particular software is utilized for sales and marketing-related interactions. It enables management of outbound calls for activities like lead nurturing and cold calling. The software’s main features include automatic dialers, scheduled callbacks, and call monitoring.
Blended Call Center Software
By combining inbound and outbound capabilities, the call center phone system software of this type provides a comprehensive solution for managing all types of customer-related interactions and enhancing the productivity of call center agents.
Contact Center Software
By integrating multiple communication channels such as live chat, email, and social media, the contact center software extends the capabilities of a call center beyond voice calls.
Cloud-Operated Call Center Software
With this cloud-hosted software, you need not install on-premise servers. Flexibility and scalability are the benefits imparted by it. The software also provides easy upgrades, making it an excellent option for businesses requiring solutions with reduced maintenance.
On-Premise Call Center Software System
This kind of call center software is installed and maintained on servers on the organization-owned servers. Granting complete control over both hardware and data, makes it suitable for organizations with strict compliance or security requirements.
You need to assess various crucial areas. This includes your business’s current communication requirements and business goals for the long term. Their assessment helps you determine if your business genuinely requires a call center software solution.
Important Factors to Consider for Assessing a Call Center Software Solution’s Need
Evaluate Customer Expectations
Your customers are asking again and again for swifter response times or extra support hours. Alternatively, they may prefer to connect with your agents through multiple communication platforms. In this case, you require better tools for resolving their needs.
The feedback given by your customers signals they are not satisfied with your present communication tools. Are your customers commonly complaining of missed inquiries, delays, or variable responses? Then automation and structured workflows provided by a call center software can help you fulfill your customer expectations more effectively.
Assess Your Present Communication Channels
Begin by performing an assessment of how you manage your interactions with customers. If your challenge is dealing with a high volume of calls that often overwhelms your team, then call center software can let you efficiently manage and distribute the calls from your customers. In a similar way, if your agents are based in different locations or they work remotely, cloud-based call center solutions can be ideal for you. They provide you the flexibility required for conducting seamless operations without dependence on physical infrastructure.
Analyze Your Workforce Efficiency
In case, your employees struggle to deal with customer inquiries, this clearly indicates that your current setup is not adequate for your customer support department. Unanswered calls, long hold times, or overburdened agents can frustrate your customer support team as well as your customers. Here, you need a call center software with a feature like automated call distribution. It will route calls to the most appropriate agent in an automated manner, reducing wait times for customers and ensuring consistent service quality for your customer support.
Evaluate Resources and Costs
Assess the budget you are currently spending on your customer service operations, including infrastructure and staff hiring. If hiring additional staff or maintaining on-premises is costing you a lot of money, then go for a call center software to streamline these costs. Features like call analytics and automated responses in the software can help you save money and time on a long-term basis.
Alignment with Your Business Goals
Assessing your specific business goals can help you decide whether your business requires call center software. These goals can be your operations expanding or your business entering new markets. The goals can also relate to your business, providing round-the-clock customer support. To fulfill the goals, you require a scalable call center software. It should be capable of swiftly scaling up with your growing business needs without warranting significant extra investments.
Perform a Competitive Analysis
You have to analyze how your competitors manage customer communication. They may be using a call center software system to provide faster responses or better service options to their customers. It eventually helps them gain a competitive advantage. Understanding their approach helps you identify areas of improvement in your communication strategy and choose software that brings these improvements.
Test with a Pilot Program
Before committing to invest in a call center software for full implementation, consider testing its capabilities during a trial. Firstly, opt for a pilot program to test various features of a call center software, measure improvements, and gather feedback from your team and customers. This data helps you determine whether the software positively impacts your call center operations or not.
Your business might need call center software in these situations:-
- High volume of customer inquiries through phone or multiple communication channels
- Customers expecting faster response times, extended support hours, or personalized service
- Delays or inconsistent service quality due to your staff’s inability to manage calls
- Expansion of your support operations for the inclusion of remote agents or for serving global time zones
- Aiming to provide an omnichannel experience that integrates chat, email, voice, and social media interactions
- Excessive spending due to manual management of customer interactions or the use of outdated systems
- Your competitors are gaining an advantage due to the use of advanced call center systems that let them deliver enhanced customer service
Main Things to Consider While Evaluating Various Call Center Solution Providers
Choosing the right call center software solution among various solutions offered by different call center phone systems providers requires considering these important points. This helps you ensure whether a given technology-based call center solution meets your needs or not..
- Scalability
The software should scale with the growth of your business, including the growth of operations in your remote centers, hiring of additional agents, and managing a huge number of calls.
- Integration Capabilities
A call center solution can be called a good option only when it can seamlessly integrate with various tools and software systems, including a CRM system. The integration provides your agents with access to customer information for making better, efficient, and personalized interactions.
- Ease of Use
The solution offered by a service provider should be easy-to-access. Moreover, it should have an intuitive interface. Furthermore, the solution should provide impactful training and useful reference materials for an easy onboarding experience of your agents. A call center solution that is difficult to access can leave agents frustrated and affect their productivity.
- Customer Support
The call center solution provider should be capable of providing reliable, 24/7, efficient, and prompt support for resolving any issues arising in the software that are affecting your call center operations.
- Cost
You should obtain clarity from the call center software provider regarding the overall costs. This includes the initial cost as well as the costs associated with maintenance, updates, and scalability of the solution.
Questions to Ask While Choosing the Ideal Call Center Software Provider
You can raise these questions to various providers of call center systems to assess their offered solutions. They will enable you to make an informed decision.
Which particular features does your call center software offer? Can the features be tailored as per my specific business needs?
Is your solution integrable with our present systems, including the Customer Relationship Management system or others?
Is your software cloud-operated, on-premise, or hybrid? Which of them fits well with my operations?
Can your software scale to accommodate my growing business needs or huge call volumes?
Does your solution allow multichannel or omnichannel interaction for a smooth and elevated customer experience?
Which specific analytics and reporting features do you provide for monitoring call center agents’ performance and customer-centered interactions?
What is your software system’s uptime? Do you also provide a disaster recovery plan?
Do you offer any training and support for my customer support team?
Are there any unseen costs involved with your call center solution, such as fees for setting up or charges for extra users?
What do you do for your software system’s security? Is it compliant with various customer data protection regulations?
Can you share with me any references, case studies, or insights to let me assess your solution’s reputation?
Are any flexible pricing packages available for my usage patterns and budget?
Prominent Features in a Call Center Phone System Software
Let’s discuss various key features that are required in your chosen call center solution. They can help you differentiate a good solution from an exceptional one.
Intelligent Routing Capability
The intelligent routing feature transfers calls made by customers to the most ideal agent on the basis of various factors.. These include the agent’s specialty, knowledge, availability, and priority of the call. Therefore, customers can swiftly connect with the right call center agent, lowering wait times for customers, and bettering the customer support service’s quality.
Seamless CRM integration
The call center software should connect and integrate easily with your current systems. This includes the Customer Relationship Management system. This integration lets your call center agents immediately access customer information for providing personalized service. Moreover, the integration enables updation of data in real-time. This brings down the need for doing manual customer data-related entry and avoids errors.
Multilingual IVR
A multilingual Interactive Voice Response system allows customers to interact with a computerized call center communication system in their preferred language. They can communicate by using their voice or through keypad inputs. It directs them to particular departments of a business or helps them seek further self-services. This feature is useful if you have a varied customer base or your business is based in more than one place. By letting customers communicate in their native language, it can raise the level of customer satisfaction.
An IVR system offers customers customizable call menus through which they can choose the reason for their call. Accordingly, they are either provided with the required information or they are directed to a relevant, knowledgeable agent. This does away with the need for constant explanations and passing around of customers. By automating routine tasks and reducing wait times, the IVR system helps to reduce wait times for both customers and agents.
Live Call Transfer
It provides customer support departments the ability to seamlessly transfer calls between agents or departments without the loss of customer data. Live call transfer is useful for situations when an agent cannot resolve an issue. He can simply pass the call to another call center agent with the knowledge and expertise to handle the situation. Live Call Transfer is important for call centers for delivering efficient service to their customers.
Automating Tasks of a Repetitive Nature
Some tasks in call centers are of repetitive nature. These include data entry, call logging or customer verification, tracking numbers, or answering frequently asked questions. Automating these tasks saves time and brings down human error. Consequently, your agents can devote time towards performing complex tasks. This boosts their productivity and efficiency.
Priority Call Back
There are customers who cannot be reached immediately when agents make calls to them. A priority call-back feature is useful in such situations. The priority callback feature allows a call center to put these customers at the beginning of a virtual queue. Alternatively, it can schedule a callback call at a time that is convenient for customers. It brings down waiting times for customers. This saves them from waiting in the call queue for a long time. This also eliminates long hold times for agents. This ensures most critical or time-sensitive customer issues are resolved promptly, improving customer experience.
Conversation Analytics
Conversation analytics helps you evaluate the quality of your calls by analyzing interactions taking place between your customers and agents. It utilizes Artificial Intelligence to track the sentiments of customers, keywords, and the duration of calls. Accordingly, analytics provide valuable insights into the needs of customers and the performance of your call center agents.. This can help you enhance your customer support service strategy and the training of your agents.
Real-Time Monitoring Feature
The real-time tracking feature equips your supervisors with various capabilities. They can observe ongoing calls. Moreover, they can track the performance of agents and resolve issues as they occur. Supervisors can intervene when a need arises. Moreover, they can provide guidance to agents on ways to resolve customer concerns in a more effective manner. This feature is significant for maintaining your customer service quality on a consistent basis.
Automated Call Distribution(ACD)
ACD ensures even distribution of calls among available call center agents as per preestablished rules. It helps to prevent any one agent from getting overwhelmed and optimizes the allocation of resources. Apart from enhancing efficiency of call flow, the feature ensures every customer is dealt with swiftly.
AI-Powered Chat Option
AI-enabled chat systems automate interactions with customers. They utilize chatbots and live chats for automation. These systems can answer commonly asked questions, help customers access useful resources. Furthermore, they can transfer issues of a more complex nature to human customer care agents. This feature can significantly lower response times. Moreover, it can boost customer satisfaction.
Security and Compliance
It is a paramount priority of your call center to ensure the security of sensitive customer data. The solution you choose for your call center should give priority to privacy features and offer compliance with stipulated industry standards. Moreover, the solution should provide various security features and tools for enhanced security, including access control based on roles, encryption, and audit trails.
The sharing of invaluable insights and knowledge about the types of call center solutions, the need for these solutions, and their features here can guide you in choosing the right and best-fit call center software solution for your business with ease.
If you are looking for a specialist and reliable provider of advanced, feature-rich call and tailored call center phone systems, you can rely on Capanicus. We are a leading software development company that excels in building utilitarian and technology-based solutions for diverse businesses and industries. Discuss your specific requirements with our experts today to let us build the call center phone system software of your customer support department needs and customer expectations.
