CCaaS Features To Empower Hybrid and Remote Agents

CCaaS Features To Empower Hybrid and Remote Agents

CCaaS, or Contact Centre as a Service, represents one of the most popular formats for the modern contact centre.Part of what makes CCaaS solutions so beneficial, is their ability to empower a new age of contact centre agents. As companies continue to move towards the remote and hybrid working trends, CCaaS solutions ensure agents can access the tools they need to support customers in any environment.

As cloud-based ecosystems, CCaaS environments don’t require any manual installation or setup for individual remote workers. Companies can provision teams with the tools they need anywhere and roll out new functionality remotely. Modern agents can even use the same business phone numbers and connections when logging into a CCaaS environment from home.

Today, we’re looking at the CCaaS features most likely to empower the new age of hybrid agents.

1. A Single Environment for Multiple Channels

The contact centre is growing increasingly complex as customers demand more ways of communicating with brands and organisations. Today’s agent doesn’t just have phone calls to keep track of, but messages on mobile applications, web chat conversations, emails, videos, and even SMS. A CCaaS solution built for the omnichannel environment will be able to bring conversations from every platform together into a shared inbox.

This single-pane-of-glass environment ensures team members don’t need to jump between multiple applications to keep track of discussions with consumers. At the same time, many CCaaS solutions can integrate with things like CRM systems and help desks, to give your agents access to even more contextual information about each customer.

Not only does the connected environment make life easier for your agent, it also ensures that remote and hybrid workers have the tools they need to deliver more personalized, relevant, and consistent experiences to your audience.

2. AI Assistants and Chatbots

When considering the benefits of digital assistants in the transforming contact centre, most companies focus on the benefits of having self-service solutions available for customers who want to address problems on their own. These tools can be extremely helpful in empowering your agents because they ensure that fewer repetitive questions and issues are passed through to human employees.

Virtual assistants as a self-service solution also ensure that you can deliver the kind of experience your customers are looking for. Around 70% of today’s consumers expect to see a chatbot or self-service solution on a business website today.

However, AI assistants and chatbots can also support agents in another way, by helping them to access information at a faster pace. In the back end of a CCaaS platform, companies can use smart bots to immediately scan through information in a database and collect data on a customer or purchase. The same tools can be set up to automatically record and transcribe conversations or convert text into different languages.

AI in the contact centre can further support agents by making sure the right conversations reach the correct people in the first place. Intelligent IVR and ACD systems can route customers to agents based on skill set, availability, and location.

3. Automation and Workflows

In the Contact Centre, automation is sometimes met with some concern from modern employees. The rise of automated systems initially caused some staff to worry that their jobs would no longer be necessary in a modern CX strategy. However, the reality is automation can actually make teams more efficient in their roles, while eliminating the repetitive tasks that would take up a significant amount of their day.

Automation in the CCaaS environment could ensure that agents don’t have to spend as much time on the “wrap up” part of a customer service inquiry, by ensuring information can be automatically routed to the right data storage system, delivered into a CRM folder, or transcribed for compliance purposes. Automatic tools can help agents to schedule call-backs when dealing with B2B clients and offer guidance on how to approach the next step in a sale.

Increasingly, companies are relying on automation and workflows to remove some of the more time-consuming processes from a contact centre’ agents day. This leads to greater job satisfaction for the agent, and better customer experience, because team members have more time to focus on the conversations that matter.

4. Real time and Historical Analytics

The modern contact centre is a hub of constantly flowing data and insights. This information can be extremely effective in making team members more productive, and business decisions more meaningful, but it’s only useful when paired with the right analytical strategy.

The modern CCaaS environment needs a strategy for managing, evaluating, and leveraging data, both historically, and in real-time. For historical data, AI systems offer an excellent way to sort through huge amounts of information about the customer experience, and pinpoint potential patterns or trends in customer demands. This could lead to better staffing, and less pressure on agents in the future.

Real-time data, on the other hand, can be used to keep employees focused and engaged in an increasingly hybrid environment. Metrics sent to personal dashboards and wallboards allow employees to track their progress in any environment. These analytical systems can also be programmed to alert supervisors when agents appear to need additional support.

Tip 5: Reporting, Analytics, and Security

Finally, it’s time to make sure you can keep an eye on all the important metrics and operational elements of your contact centre. The best contact centre solutions will always offer end-to-end visibility into all the KPIs that matter most to your business. A good solution should support both historical and real-time reporting, so you can identify more actionable opportunities for better efficiency and performance. Combined with AI, reporting tools can help you to rapidly pinpoint potential trends in customer needs.

Analytics and reporting tools can also help you keep track of things like security issues, by notifying you when a potential breach of fraudulent event occurs. These tools should be implemented alongside other security solutions, like end-to-end encryption for all of your conversations, and recording solutions with secure storage for compliance purposes. If you have specific requirements for compliance, make sure you check if your service provider can support them.

5. Simplified Onboarding and Training

Finally, perhaps the most valuable feature of the CCaaS environment for the age of remote work, is the ability to onboard, train, and support agents anywhere. Today’s contact centre networks can be managed entirely from a cloud-based portal, making it easier for business leaders to bring new professionals into the workplace within a matter of minutes.

With a simplified onboarding and training strategy, teams can get all the guidance they need to start taking advantage of the digital workplace as quickly as possible. Many CCaaS solutions can even be equipped with knowledgebases for access to valuable information, and on-demand video training sessions for new employees.

As mentioned above, access to ongoing analytics and reporting also means that supervisors and managers can determine what kind of specific guidance certain employees need to do their best work.

Empower the Modern Workforce

Offering the benefits of flexibility, agility, and scalability, CCaaS solutions can adapt to suit the needs of any business. These cloud-based platforms are applicable to a range of use cases, from fast-paced retail environments to medical help centres

Does your CCaaS solution have the essential features mentioned above?



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