Does your contact center deliver competitive advantages? Is it meeting today’s business needs?
Organizations with legacy contact center systems often struggle to keep pace with evolving technology and customer expectations. Legacy systems rely primarily on voice calls and cannot support digital channels effectively. Outdated technologies and practices frustrate customers, resulting in poor customer satisfaction and a higher likelihood that customers will abandon a brand.
Legacy systems are costly to maintain, difficult to scale and unable to adapt to flexible work models. Agents often have to switch between multiple systems to find customer information, leading to longer call handling times, agent frustration and inconsistent answers.
That’s why organizations increasingly prioritize contact center modernization. Modernization transforms the contact center from an operational cost to a strategic asset and improves metrics such as customer satisfaction and agent productivity. It also allows organizations to take advantage of AI and automation to streamline their operations.
The Role of the Modern Contact Center
Many organizations made significant investments in phone systems that were designed for older ways of doing business. Customers called in, and agents who worked onsite focused on answering their questions quickly. Agents used separate CRM tools to track customer inquiries, and managers were concerned with metrics such as call-handling time.
Today’s contact center platforms reflect dramatic changes to this model. Customers are still likely to call in by phone, but they increasingly use email, chat and other digital channels. Agents often work remotely. Organizations need to be concerned with the customer experience or risk losing customers to their competitors.
Advances in technology make this new model possible. The modern contact center enables customers to use their preferred channels and devices and seamlessly switch to a different channel if needed. Cloud-based platforms enable agents to work from anywhere and still have access to all the tools they need. Data is collected at every touchpoint and continuously analyzed to optimize the customer experience.
Contact Center Modernization Delivers Real Benefits
These advancements drive top- and bottom-line benefits. Research by the Aberdeen Group and Harvard Business Review found that organizations with strong omnichannel strategies retain 89 percent of their customers, while those with weak strategy have a 33 percent retention rate.
Omnichannel customers also have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than single-channel shoppers. As a result, organizations leveraging strong omnichannel strategies see an average of 9.5 percent annual revenue growth, compared to a 3.4 percent decline for those with weak strategies.
Cloud-based platforms allow organizations to tap a broader workforce and scale up or down to meet changes in demand. Omnichannel strategies increase productivity by allowing agents to handle multiple inquiries simultaneously.
Having the right tools and greater flexibility increases agent satisfaction, reducing turnover and fostering more effective, efficient and knowledgeable service. Happy agents are more motivated, leading to a more positive and consistent interaction that builds customer trust and loyalty.
Intelligent Solutions
AI and machine learning are central to contact center modernization, powering an array of automated tools that further enhance productivity and customer service. Intelligent call distribution systems interact with customers, analyze their inquiries and automatically route calls to the most appropriate agents. The latest chatbots use natural language processing to handle routine inquiries, routing callers to live agents if needed.
Modern contact center platforms integrate with other internal systems, especially CRM software, to provide a unified view of the customer and streamline workflows. They also leverage data analytics to identify customer trends, improve decision-making and personalize service.
Each organization has unique contact center needs based on its business model, workflows, staffing levels and other factors. That’s why it’s important to partner with an experienced technology provider for contact center modernization. Cerium’s specialists will learn your pain points and objectives, analyze your existing platform, and develop a contact center modernization strategy that will take your business into the future.
