The first call a customer makes to your contact centre can be the very first impression they get of your business. That tells you two things: firstly, that your staff need to be well trained and welcoming on calls, and secondly, that your contact centre technology needs to provide you with everything you need to create that excellent first impression.
Here’s what you need to consider when choosing the right contact centre technology for your business:
1. Understanding Your Business Needs: Defining Key Requirements
While contact centre software and technology companies thoroughly understand what their solutions do and how they work, you are the one who understands your business well enough to know what you need. You know your objectives, current statistics and achievements, your current level of customer service and customer engagement, and more. All these things need to be considered when choosing new technology for your contact centre.
How many agents will your technology need to handle? How many calls do you get per day? Can your technology cope with times of peak demand? What features would you love to have but currently don’t?
Where is your business going in the future and what will you need then? Will your new tech be able to take you there and handle your future business successfully?
Take your time with this and think it through. Evaluate potential contact centre technology providers and don’t be afraid to ask questions to help you make the right decision.
2. Exploring Contact Centre Technology Options
The good news is that whatever your business does and whatever its size, there is a contact centre technology solution to suit you:
Cloud-Based
With a cloud-based contact centre solution, unsurprisingly, everything is in the cloud. (We’re not trying to blind you with science here!)
What this means is that your tech is highly flexible, secure, easy to upgrade and add new integrations. Cloud-based solutions can also be more cost effective than on-premise solutions, and of course, they allow your employees work remote. You can find the best people for each job from anywhere in the world, allowing for a diverse team with a range of skills and experiences, rather than having to stick to people from the local area of the contact centre.
On-Premise
On-premise technology is exactly what it sounds like. Everything is in-house, including the software, hardware, any other equipment. Often, the team to manage and support the system is also in-house, though it can be outsourced too.
This system can be less flexible and more expensive than other solutions, with more time needed to develop new integrations and upgrades.
Hybrid
The final solution could be the best of both worlds for your company, or it may allow you time to transition from on-premise to the cloud without disruption. That, of course, depends on you and your business needs.
A hybrid model allows you to have an on-premise contact centre but to also add cloud-based advantages in functionality, flexibility, and customer experience.
3. Scalability and Flexibility: Planning for Future Growth
The advantage of flexible tech solutions is that you can scale up and down as needed, even scaling to meet peak demand at particular times of the year, such as the Christmas rush, and then allowing for scaling down afterwards once peak demand has passed.
Not only that, but it also allows you to plan for the future and build a list of features and benefits you’d like to add this year and long-term.
When planning to invest in new contact centre technology, keep in mind where your business is going in the next five years and beyond. Ask your potential providers if they can scale with you and provide the right support.
4. Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly Connecting Systems
If you’ve ever worked in a call centre where individual systems didn’t easily connect and share information, you’ll know the frustration of not being able to quickly and easily help customers and provide a quality customer experience.
Whichever solution you choose must be able to allow seamless integration with your CRM and in-house software, and you must be able to add, scale, and upgrade to suit, without waiting for months for a solution.
Ideally, you need omnichannel software that can monitor customer communications across SMS, email, social media, Skype, and more, so that your customer service teams can quickly reply to customers via their preferred means of communication.
5. Cost-Effectiveness: Balancing Investment and ROI
Unless you have a bottomless budget, you’ve obviously got to consider the cost and cost-effectiveness, what ROI you’ll get, and how much of a difference your solution will make to your KPIs and objectives.
Consider all solutions carefully, talk to your potential providers, and make sure you get the right solution for you, your business, your teams, and of course, your customers.
Want an informal, no-obligation chat in jargon-free plain English? Get in touch with our friendly team, and we’ll help you walk through your options and choose the right contact centre technology solution.
