Technology & Roadmap 
August 9, 2024 
5 mins read
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Subscribe Now!Today, the traditional contact center approach can only help companies so far. Businesses need to align their contact centers with customers’ expectations to succeed. That’s where good contact center technology comes to the rescue.
In this article, we explore contact center technology, along with its benefits and trends.
Contact center technology is the hardware and software ecosystem that helps businesses manage customer interactions across channels. It allows companies to smoothly run contact center operations by streamlining conversations and improving customer management.
It helps businesses offer customer service across channels like voice, email, live chat, and social media. It also helps them offer personalized experiences to build customer trust and loyalty.
Although different, call centers and contact centers are often used interchangeably.
The call center technology helps manage customer interactions through phone calls only. It offers features like call routing, recording, and monitoring. In contrast, a contact center combines multiple communication channels like phone calls, email, SMS, and social media. It offers much broader access to customer touchpoints to get customer insights.
The contact center technology could be either hosted on-site or on a cloud. The on-premise technologies require considerable upfront investments, infrastructure and physical space. Therefore, modern businesses are rely on cloud-based contact center technologies for their operations.
Cloud contact center technology is a web-based customer service software hosted on a cloud server. Unlike the on-premise setup, it does not require any specific hardware or software to access the platform. It can be accessed from anywhere through a web browser, offering customer service agents greater flexibility in managing customer expectations.
Organizations can eliminate the costly upkeep of hardware, software, and on-prem infrastructure by using a cloud contact center platform. Further, they can also access features like omnichannel routing, real-time insights, and predictive analytics to improve their overall customer experience.
Contact center technology helps businesses streamline their customer service operations and benefit them in many ways. Here are the key ones:
Businesses can manage their customer information including queries, requirements, and interactions through contact center technology. The agents can easily access this data, helping them offer personalized interactions and build customer loyalty.
Businesses can automate routine tasks, which frees up agents so that they can handle critical customer issues. In addition to resource optimization, contact center technology reduces process errors, which ultimately leads to lower operational costs. Further, you can have remote agents managing customer service effectively at minimized overhead expenses.
Contact center technologies like IVR and call routing can help efficiently manage a large volume of customer interactions. For example, an IVR can help route customers to the right department, without having any involvement of human agents for manual call routing.
Contact center technologies generate real-time insights into customer preferences, needs, and historical behavior. This information can help agents identify new sales opportunities. Upselling or cross-selling will not only add to your revenue but also stand testament to your exceptional customer experience.
Contact center technology is a culmination of different capabilities that allow businesses to efficiently manage customer conversations. Here are the core ones:
Contact center IVR is an automated interaction model where customers can resolve their queries through self-service options. It routes customers to the right agent through intelligent voice prompts, which can avoid long holding periods or delays for customers.
VoIP is a contact center technology that allows high-quality phone calls over the internet. It replaces obsolete landline functionality so that voice calls can be integrated with other communication channels like voicemail, SMS, and fax, enhancing customer contact.
CRM integration helps businesses to create a smooth customer data flow. Agents can easily view customer profiles and check notes from earlier interactions to gain context and offer personalized service. It’s a modern addition to contact center technology.
ACD allows contact centers to manage incoming calls without overwhelming the team. It’s a powerful telephony system that automates the distribution of incoming calls to available agents based on criteria like the type of query, agent’s skill and time zone.
Call recording technology allows businesses to ensure the quality of their customer service. By monitoring and assessing the conversations, you can gather insights and information like the most commonly asked questions.
Businesses can leverage new technologies to improve customer experience through modern contact centers. Proactive adoption of these advancements can help companies go beyond the limitations of traditional customer service processes.
Let’s delve into the top contact center technology trends that are transforming customer service experiences.
Omnichannel contact centers allow a seamless transition between the communication channels. It means the customers can switch between channels without losing the context of the interaction.
For example, a user can raise a complaint through a phone call, and then continue the conversation through an email, live chat, or a video call without losing the context.
Modern contact center technology integrates all the channels, conversations, and customer data on a single platform so that agents can resolve queries quickly. It not only makes your workflows streamlined but also improves customer satisfaction.
It involves leveraging a wide range of options like automated call routing, predicting call volume to optimize resource allocation, monitoring agent productivity, and using digital scorecards to identify improvement areas within your customer service workflows.
AI contact center technology can significantly upgrade customer experience by managing customer interactions at unimaginable speed, scale, and accuracy.
Here are three of its core applications:
» Conversational AI: Contact centers can deploy chatbots or virtual assistants powered by conversational AI to assist customers in a human-like manner
» Sentiment Analysis: Businesses can use AI to identify critical customer queries by evaluating their sentiments. Agents can prioritize negative messages for resolution to avoid losing the customer.
» Self-service channels: A hybrid of the above two, AI contact center technology allows you to build self-service virtual agents to solve support queries without human interaction.
Although it has been around for some time now, cloud contact center technology has yet to go mainstream. Cloud-based solutions can give companies massive advantages, including flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. These solutions can simplify the omnichannel customer experience through hassle-free integration and consistent service across customer touchpoints.
Cloud contact center technology lowers customer service budget by minimizing investment in hardware and infrastructure.
With personalization being one of the core tenets of customer experience, real-time analytics has become a key component of customer contact center technology. These insights help businesses design a tailored experience for their customers. For example, agents can pull up the web pages a customer visited and understand their journey while assisting them. It helps them resolve issues faster by accurately predicting customer intent and requirements.
Businesses can use call center technologies to offer an exceptional experience to customers. However, the key is to choose the right platform with features that meet your business needs and align with your processes.
Exotel is a good option for businesses looking to enhance customer engagement, increase agent’s efficiency, and get more sales. Try it for free or book a demo to watch product in action.
1. Why is Technology Important in a Contact Center?
Technology helps companies provide exceptional customer experience through streamlined and efficient contact centers. It helps personalize customer service, offers omnichannel capabilities, and generates real-time insights to resolve customer queries quickly.
2. What are the Four Pillars of a Contact Center?
The four pillars of a contact center are People, Process, Technology, and Data. The success of any contact center depends on people interacting with customers, efficient processes that minimize mistakes, technology that enables efficiency, and data that personalizes customer experience.
Shambhavi Sinha is an SEO expert at Exotel with a passion for writing about technology. With a keen interest in the latest trends in contact centers and artificial intelligence, Shambhavi aims to empower users by sharing insightful and up-to-date knowledge. Her expertise in SEO and her dedication to educating her audience make her a valuable resource for anyone looking to stay informed about the evolving landscape of tech in customer service and beyond.
Technology & Roadmap
3 mins read
Technology & Roadmap
3 mins read
Technology & Roadmap
3 mins read
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