What is call center technology? Contact center technology is the software tool to handle all contact center operations, such as processing customer incoming calls or outbound calls, constructing live reports about contact center performance, performing workforce management, customer relationship management, and so on. Modern call center technology has to include numerous features that improve customer satisfaction, help to provide excellent customer experiences and ease the handling of customer interactions. Advanced call center technologies have to contain such options as an interactive voice response(IVR) system, automatic call distributor (ACD), outbound dialers like the predictive dialer solution, cover many communication channels, and the CTI call center technology to let you manage all processes from the PC or a laptop.
Additionally, advanced call center technology has to cover such an aspect of call center technology operations as contact center agents’ training and monitoring options. These processes are easily managed with the assistance of such functions as call monitoring in three diverse modes – call barging-in, whispering, hidden mode call recording, and live agent performance dashboards. Contact center managers get new opportunities to track agent performance and manage their productivity with the help of these features of advanced call center technology.
If to say what is call center technology for dummies, it is the software that allows you to make phone calls, process inbound phone calls, manage other digital channels, get insights, and monitor your customer service team’s work. How does call center technology work? Well, there are two types of call center technology products – on-premise contact center and cloud-based call center. They differ by the nature and location of the infrastructure. Therefore, an on-premise call center is located on physical infrastructure that has to be purchased, set up, and maintained especially for you in your office. This infrastructure includes servers, softphones, agent equipment, phone lines, and so on. Following this, an on-premise call center is much more expensive and complicated to be all set than its cloud-based brother. Cloud-based contact center solution has all its infrastructure located on the vendor’s servers in the cloud, and all maintenance and settings are completed on the vendor’s own. Thus, you get a cheaper and easier-to-set-up solution that has also higher reliability and a wider range of features and services for customer service.
Another criterion to differentiate call centers is their main type of communications to process – either inbound or outbound calls. Thus, you can set up either an inbound or outbound call center or a blended contact center. First of all, an inbound contact center processes only incoming calls from customers. The second type, the outbound call center, is used to perform outbound calling campaigns to make cold sales. The third and final call center type can deal with both incoming and outgoing calls.
Let’s deal with terms and find an answer to the question of how does call center technology work in the case of different types of call centers. First of all, inbound call centers exist to resolve customer issues and provide customer service to each client who has contacted the contact center agents with a request for assistance. In most cases, inbound call centers don’t do sales, but they play a great role in convincing warm leads to make a final decision to make a purchase. How does it work? In some industries, people who have already understood a need for your product are still doubting, so they make a “final” interaction and call you to get detailed information about the product and ask questions that they’re worried about. Thus, an inbound call center can be the last touchpoint before the conversion happens and it can hook customers if your agents are doing good. Anyhow, the main goal of an inbound call center is to resolve customer issues, answer customer inquiries, and provide a great customer experience during servicing.
Advanced call center technology for inbound call centers can offer many features that can boost the quality of service, improve customer satisfaction, and guarantee an exceptional customer experience at this stage of the customer journey. Let’s take a sharp look at these features. An IVR system is a perfect assistant in dealing with high call volumes during peak hours – it can recognize the nature of customer requests with the help of a speech recognition option to link them with the relevant agent who has the most suitable skill set or experience to deal with such issues. IVR solution can also manage call queues where customers wait until they’ll be linked to an agent – it can play music, remind customers of their position in the queue, remind them of estimated waiting time, or offer to order a callback if waiting time is too long. ACD system is also a great option to work in pair with the IVR solution – it starts working when the caller has made his menu selections in the IVR interface, so ACD recognizes these selections and, based on their nature, it routes the call to an appropriate agent or department.
Let’s take a close look at what are the IVR system and ACD solution.
IVR system is an automated interface that welcomes the caller before he is linked to an agent. It is a system of sections that relate to various questions that can be chosen by pressing a button on the phone. This system works by operating the dual-tone multi-frequency(DTMF) that allows linking menu sections with buttons. In short, when you call a contact center, you hear the greeting message, and afterward, you are offered to choose the section that suits your request, by pressing 1 button the phone you will go to the section “Billing”, 2 can be “Your account status”, 3 is “Shipping”, 4 is “Change subscription plan”, and so on until the 9 button – it is a reference to older phones that had only 0-9 buttons. Advanced call center technology can include an IVR system with speech recognition mode, where the software understands the customer’s voice and either transcribes the request into the ACD for relevant routing or selects a suitable menu section. Best IVRs have to offer an option to be passed through. Thus, customers can go to a call queue without surfing the IVR menus.
IVR system exists not only to make call routing more precise and meet the nature of customer requests but to let customers resolve their simple issues or find answers to their questions without contacting a human agent. Such requests, such as working hours, location, payments, changing subscription plans, tracking shipping, offering a callback, checking discounts, and so on can be processed via IVR without involving agents.
The ACD system is a solution that performs routing. You set it in accordance with your needs, for instance, each combination of IVR menu selections will mean that this call should be routed to an exact agent, not someone else. ACD system can work in different modes, for sample, skill-based routing – it is the mode we have described in the previous sentence or priority-based routing – when some calls, selected by the persona of a caller, will have higher priority to be processed. ACD solution can also monitor agents’ activity, and longest idling agents will get higher priority to get a call for processing.
Let’s discuss also technologies that are used in advanced call center technology to make handling calls fast, effective, and cost-efficient. The main technology that is used for handling calls in cloud-based advanced call center technology is VoIP – the system that allows us to process calls via the Internet. Thus, you don’t need any landlines or physical desk phones to handle calls – the only thing that matters is the Internet connection, which ought to be stable and fast.
Now let’s move to an outbound call center. The outbound contact center is the department that performs cold-calling campaigns to make sales. Thus, agents who work at such call centers are sales agents and their main task is to reach the highest possible conversion rate. Outbound call centers are based on advanced call center technology products, such as outbound dialers and call analytics to track the effectiveness of each single cold calling campaign.
To set up and run an outbound call center, you need not only advanced call center technology but a huge number of leads to call. Thus, you have a thoughtful and efficient lead-generation strategy. There are a few ways to get leads – buy complete lead bases in special marketplaces, extract leads using parsing technologies, or generate leads by placing advertising. Organic lead generation can work via various channels, like blogs, social media, or websites.
The second step is to select and implement the right cold-calling strategy. If you think that manual dialing is efficient, you are wrong. When dialing each contact manually, agents spend more than half of their shift time filling lead phone numbers, finding a new lead to call, processing invalid contacts, or listening to answering machines. In this way, you will have to spend weeks processing huge lead bases, and the overall duration of live talking to customers would be very low – around 10-15 minutes per hour. Thus, you need an automated solution that would dial and connect calls, and avoid invalid phone numbers without losing time.
Such a solution is included in advanced call center technology and it is called outbound dialer software. This software has three main modes of working process – Power, Predictive, and Preview dialers. As you could guess, these three modes have distinct algorithms that are used for diverse purposes. The predictive dialer is a champion in lead generation, old base updating, outbound telemarketing, and cold base processing. Its algorithm is the fastest one – over 75 real calls per hour and 100 dialing attempts with an average talking time of over 45 minutes per hour. It works in accordance with a special dialing ratio that is calculated by identifying the average talking time of each agent. How does call center technology work in the case of a predictive dialer? It predicts average talking time by calculating it from previous calls and starts dialing even when the previous call is still in process and the agent is talking to a customer. Also, the predictive dialer can identify and detect invalid phone numbers, out-of-zone calls, busy signals, answering machines, and other types of unsuccessful calls and avoid them with an option to set up redialing rules for another attempt to call these phone numbers.
A predictive dialer requires at least five agents to be all set, as with fewer operators available it can’t show expected effectiveness and productivity, as well as too few agents or invalid settings, may cause dropped calls – the situation when the dialer has already called and connected a lead, but the agent is still not connected, so lead just hangs up.
Another type of outbound dialer is the Power dialer, sometimes called Progressive dialer, the algorithm that has a standard dialing ratio and calls another lead only when the agent is free and ready to pick up a call. Thus, the Power dialer is the best for warm bases, or for campaigns to call current customers. Power dialer can’t cause dropped calls, it needs only one agent to be all set, and it has an interesting feature that allows you to leave voicemails after each call, while Predictive dialer can’t do that. Nonetheless, the Power dialer is a bit slower than the Predictive dialing – it guarantees around 75 dialings per hour with more than a 50% of success score, but it can be over 75% if the lead base is properly completed and checked before the campaign.
Preview dialer is the last one on the list and its main advantage is the ability to personalize each call – it is offered because of a feature that shows a customer card before each call, and this card includes data about all customer interactions, previous buys, surveys, feedback, etc. Thanks to the Power dialer, you can easily process VIP leads or offer more affordable service. The preview dialer is slower than Power dialing and it performs around 50 dialing per hour with a more than 50% of success rate. Preview dialer also detects invalid phone numbers, but it also allows agents to bypass contacts, depending on the agent’s decision. For correct performance, the Preview dialer doesn’t need more than one agent.
All three outbound dialer types have features to provide you with live dashboards and insights about campaign results. Additionally, each auto-dialer can run multiple campaigns at the same time.
Now, when we’re done with an outbound call center, let’s move to the blended call center. The blended contact center includes advanced call center technology components of both outbound and inbound call center technology products. It offers all options to process both inbound and outbound calls, and its main feature is call blending – an option to swap a group of agents from either inbound or outbound lines if on another line call volume is too high. In other words, it is like a symbiosis of two advanced call center technology components for inbound and outbound contact centers.
Advanced call center technology in 2023
Advanced call center technology trends in 2023 in New York are machine learning, artificial intelligence, wider automation, and self-service options. Advanced call center technology components in 2023 in New York have to cover much more increased customer expectations, provide faster and more transparent service, and offer customers and staff heightened flexibility.
How does call center technology work in 2023, if we talk about up-to-date and ultimate call center technology products in New York? First of all, it has to be omnichannel. What does it mean? The omnichannel call center has two main characteristics.
Firstly, it offers more communication channels than just phone calls. It has to be available to contact via email, messengers, social networks, SMS, webchat, and chatbots. Emails are used to follow up with customers after touchpoints, use up-selling opportunities, and send personalized offerings.
Messengers are growing in popularity because of people’s love to communicate with text messages and their flexibility.
Social media is the most adored platform for younger audiences, where people can discuss products, leave reviews, and, surely, get assistance.
Webchat is the greatest option to offer pre-purchase service, when the customer is already on the website, he is ready to make a conversion, but he wants to get some additional information or some answers to questions about the product or service.
SMS can be used as a great tool for reminding customers or sending them surveys or offers.
The chatbot is the fastest way to get answers to popular questions as it has less than five seconds of average response time. It is also considered interesting and adorable by most customers, in accordance with the last studies.
Another vital part of modern, advanced call center technology is the artificial intelligence integrations of third-party software tools to make the call center technology products more universal and additionally flexible and efficient in managing all processes in a contact center. The third-party software that can become one of the call center technology components with the help of artificial intelligence integration includes customer relationship management systems(CRM), billing systems, time-management tools, and screen recorders. These tools are extremely useful in many cases, for instance, CRM is irreplaceable in providing personalized service, building customer relationships, monitoring your success in working with existing customers, and so on. CRM software is integrated also to use a screen-pop technology that shows customer cards to agents with detailed information about each customer – what has he bought, what hast he asked for, and how has he interacted with a brand. CRM software is also closely connected to the Preview dialer if you want to use it.
Billing systems are crucial to be integrated because no customer wants to go to an external resource to pay for your services or products, and this feature saves your and your customer’s time.
Time management and time-tracker options are important to monitor what are agents doing during their working shifts – you can’t be sure that half of their day isn’t spent watching YouTube or scrolling through TikTok.
Personalization is also one of the most important call center technology components as most customers are no more ready to get non-personalized service. Personalization means more empathy, less time-consuming service, more value to the customer’s persona, and longer and warmer customer relationships with the brand. Personalization starts when you begin greeting customers by their name, and it can go a long way – from showing personalized offerings based on customer preferences and needs to sending special gifts on a customer’s birthdays or anniversaries. Personalized service also means a lot of data to gather and analyze, so the security of data is another important part – you have to use only the best safety protocols and store data only on proven servers, but in the case of advanced call center technology, it is done by your vendor already.
Compliance is also important for call center technology products, and, for instance, such a thing as HIPAA compliance for call center technology is necessary for call center technology products that are used in the healthcare industry. For outbound calls, there are drop call limits in some countries, and mostly this rate shouldn’t be higher than 3% or 5%, like in New York state.
What is the advanced call center technology in New York?
In this part, let’s discuss how to purchase, set up, and use call center technology components in New York in 2023. First of all, you have to understand and determine your needs and business requirements. If you want an inbound call center, you will have to work with one range of tasks, while for an outbound call center you will have absolutely distinct technologies and tools. If you want to discover all performance of call center technology, use a blended call center, but this can happen only if you are ready to invest in outbound calling campaigns.
When your needs are clear and you have them in a detailed checklist, you have to understand your target audience and predict estimated call volume to understand how many employees you need to deal with it. The next step is to start a hiring campaign with the help of experience call center managers who would deny unsuitable candidates at the early beginning of the interview process.
Another thing you have to do is to create the service level agreement and call center business continuity plan. These two documents have diverse purposes, but they are irreplaceable if you want to achieve high outcomes and avoid huge problems in the future.
Service level agreement in the call center industry is a bit different than it is in other niches. For instance, in any other industry, it is a kind of agreement between vendor and business, where the vendor’s responsibilities are fixed and described with sanctions for improper following these rules. For call center service level agreement(SLA), it works diametrically opposite – it is an agreement between a business owner and employees with exact KPIs and performance rates that has to be reached monthly, quarterly, and yearly. It also covers the list of metrics that should be measured and the time frames for each rate and each KPI.
A business continuity plan for a contact center should include direct guidelines about how to act in emergency situations or in situations when the call center is at risk of breakdown or the breakdown has already occurred. It should cover such situations as natural emergencies, connection problems, technogenic emergencies, and so on. It has to be accessible and understandable for both agents and managers to let them use it as a guide on any occasion.
When you are all done with these tasks, you have to select a proper call center software with all the required call center technology components.
Advanced call center technology reviews in New York
You don’t need a call center technology demystified PDF to learn all about it. When you are in the stage of selecting a proper call center software tool, you require all information about existing offerings to compare them and choose the most appropriate one for your business needs.
Do you remember what we said about the requirements checklist? It is your greatest assistant at this stage as it contains exactly what you need from your contact center solution, and the feature list too.
Contact center solutions differ by price and features included, and if the second position is more vital than the first one. Actually, you require the features of a contact center solution to achieve high productivity, performance, and better quality of customer service.
Use respectful web resources to find the reviews of the best call center software solutions on the market, but before you will go for reviews, choose a list of a few solutions that have all the needed features and options to have various offerings to compare.
Then, go and compare the offerings in accordance with your needs and the pricing policies of the chosen vendors. Additionally, it is important to mention that it is better to select offerings from companies that offer a personalized approach to you and who are ready to customize the product following your preferences and wishes.
Advanced call center technology to enhance security in New York
As we have already mentioned, the security of data is a fundamental part of call center maintenance and running. You have to choose only that offering that guarantees the security of all data and operations that are processed during work.
You will definitely collect customer data, no matter what data it is, but your customers will never forgive you even for a small issue with their data.
When we are talking about data security, we have to keep in mind that it covers both external and internal dangers. When picking up a contact center solution, make sure that all potential risks and dangers are understood and eliminated by the developer.
Call Center Technologies Every Business Leader Must Know
You, as a business owner, have the responsibility to understand all aspects of contact center operations. And as the topic is technologies, you have to keep in mind what solutions and tools are available and needed for your business.
- IVR system – an automated information system for customers that provides self-service, recognizes the nature of customer requests and links them to agents
- ACD solution – the software tool that routes calls from IVR solution to human agents
- Knowledge management system – the system where all knowledge materials, like training courses, product information, SLA, and other documents are stored
- Omnichannel mode – an ability for customers to switch between different communication channels without losing the progress of the dialogue
- Live chat(webchat) – a chat that is integrated with your website and is available for each website visitor
- Chatbot – a bot that can answer customer queries, or send information without a request
- Call monitoring – a feature that allows controlling each call in three modes: barging-in – you take part in a call and both customer and agent hear you; whispering – only agent hears you; hidden mode – no one hears your voice.
- Call recording – a feature that lets you record calls and uses them for further training or analysis
- Live dashboard – an up-to-minute report that is shown to a manager and contains all data about agent performance metrics, call volume, dropped calls, etc.
- Outbound dialer – a tool that automates the outbound dialing process and works in three modes – Predictive, Power, and Preview dialer.
- Call routing – transfer of call in the system to link agent and caller.
- Call queuing – putting customers in a queue if there are no available operators.
- Third-party software integration – a feature to integrate external software tools like CRM systems into call center software with the assistance of artificial intelligence
Taking Customer Experience to the Next Level with advanced call center technology in New York
Call center solution is an incredible tool to build a positive customer experience on servicing stage of the customer journey. Call center helps to create customer retention, establish brand advocacy, improve customer loyalty, and boost customer lifetime value.
How does it work? First of all, a great call center solution offers wide self-service options. Customers are no more pushed to call operators to solve each simple problem, they can find all needed information in a knowledge base or in a FAQ. Chatbots or live chats are also strong features that allow customers to find answers without stopping their current activities while calling a call center is sometimes effortful and uncomfortable for some persons.
Secondly, a call center solution can offer you an omnichannel model to operate, so every customer will be able to contact you via their preferred channels and enjoy the service. No one likes to be pushed to do something that they don’t like, and this is where an omnichannel call center helps to share comfort and efficiency for everyone – agents don’t have to switch between millions of tabs to process customer requests on diverse platforms, and customers use the digital channels they love. Additionally, the omnichannel call center offers an option to switch to a call from any contact channel without a need to repeat the request to another agent – he gets all info about the request’s essence before the call is even linked.
Thirdly, a call center solution gives you wide insights into contact center performance, so when something is going wrong you can easily detect the problem and make an informed decision to eliminate the issue. A call center solution in New York is also great to improve your service personalization strategy as it helps to gather customer data – by collecting feedback via automated calls or surveys in other communication channels, and by interacting with the CRM system with the help of artificial intelligence.
How to use advanced call center technology to delight customers in New York
First of all, a call center solution allows you to collect customer feedback via distinct contact channels to use it for further improvement of customer service and to show customers your care. Feedback can be collected via calls – as pre-recorded IVR messages that are automatically sent to a chosen contact list directly from the contact center software’s interface; by email as a follow-up mailing campaign after purchase or another interaction; as a link in SMS or as a survey in a chatbot to make another follow-up or just remind and make some fun for customers between their interactions.
The call center also has strong features that build personalized service – screen pops and a Preview dialer. The first option works as a CRM software integration when agents can see detailed customer data as a visualized card before a call. This lets agents learn some info about clients who they’re going to call, or who are calling them and vice versa. Preview dialer has the same principle of work as screen pop, but it works during outbound campaigns only.
Delighting customers is also about improving service on regular basis. Powerful training features, like call recording or call monitoring, can help in building the right training strategy, as you will see all imperfections and areas for improvement in agents’ work on real examples of their calls – in live mode, or after listening to recordings. Call center solutions can also offer escalation features, and fast routing, so if the call is going to be escalated, you can barge in and overplay the situation.
Customers also love fast service, and contact center software has everything you need. Average response time would be lowered because of the smart routing system, call volumes would be also reduced with the help of the IVR solution and other self-service features, the First-Call Resolution rate would be heightened thanks to great call scripts integrated into the software, and intelligent, skills-based routing that routes exact calls to agents who are the best for exact issue.
Advanced call center technology in action
Where to see advanced call center technology in action? Well, we know how difficult it is to read all that terminology and learn those features and options that are familiar only to those who work with call centers for a while. Anyhow, most business owners who are going to set up a call center don’t have experience in running such departments, and the software is also unknown to them. Thus, the best way to understand how the software works, why is it so beneficial, and what can it offer to you is to schedule a call with a specialist from the company you like the most.
Such a call may be a video call, where you will be shown all the functionalities of the software tool, its interface, settings, and other vital information. In other words, it is a kind of demo version, because a real demo is almost impossible for such software because it is too complicated and needs the proper setup made by specialists.
Thus, you can surf and read advertisements on various landing pages of distinct vendors, but it is always better to see the solution in action once than to read about it ten times a row.
Examples of advanced call center technology in New York
We have already discovered that you need a cloud-based call center software, with a wider range of options including call monitoring, call recording, IVR system, call scripts builder, outbound dialer, workforce management tools, ACD solution, third-party software integration, and deep reporting options.
There are many offerings on the market, but the best idea is to choose the one that is enjoyed by real customers, designed by experienced professionals, filled with all modern features, and offered with opportunities to customize it for your specific needs and requirements.
Contact center solution is half of success, so make sure that your choice is thoughtful and that you are buying the right solution. Nonetheless, never become too focused on beautiful advertisements – look for real cases and compare software capabilities with your strategic goals and current requirements. A fun thing is that many people are buying predictive dialer as it is the most advertised and popularized one, but sellers don’t say them that there are five agents needed to run it. Consequently, they have no working dialer and no money – and this is just one case.