Today's contact centers have to face a lot of challenges: optimizing staff productivity, keeping staff, driving customer experience because of extremely high customer expectations, highly competitive nature of the contact center market as well as increasing cost pressures are just some of them. In order to stay on top of that challenges and also to stay ahead of competitors, contact centers need to gain actionable insights into customer behavior, provide higher quality and identify new trends in their industry. One way to achieve these goals is to one hundred percent record all interactions with customers, suppliers and partners, analyze them and perform traditional quality management tasks.
Interaction Recording
With Interaction Recording contact centers can record voice, chat function, video, screen etc. With that they are able to bring all those interactions together, gaining the full picture of the customer experience. So, even when using several channels for the same topic, the customer wants the person to know about the issue they are calling in about and with Interaction Recording that is possible. In short: Interaction Recording provides cradle to grave omni-channel recording for customer-agent conversations and thus simply helps driving efficiency for the resolution of the issue.
Quality Management
Quality Management enables contact centers to monitor the quality of conversations and evaluate agent performance on a periodic and consistent basis. With quality management tools contact centers can build up a picture of the agents: they are able to look at every interaction with the customer and determine which elements of the conversation were very good but also determine knowledge gaps. By identifying knowledge gaps and training needs contact centers can specifically train that agent on that need with coaching and eLearning tools that should be part of every quality management. And that does two things: Number one, giving the contact center the tools to help their customers and number two, giving employees more skills to do their job more efficiently and in a better way which results in higher customer satisfaction as well as higher employee satisfaction.
Analytics
With analytics tools contact centers are able to identify keywords, spot trends and critical issues within the contact center at an early stage. This is the basis for important management decisions in real time. And also, agents can be warned when a customer is not happy with the company and then initiate appropriate measures in order to solve the discontent. In addition, speech analytics tools provide automated speech analytics capabilities on all recorded customer-agent interactions and deliver valuable insights into these conversations. This contributes to improving the customer experience, increasing efficiency, and revealing new revenue opportunities and business risks.
True Power of Partnerships: ASC & Mitel Improving Customer Experience Together
Global, strategic alliances with leading companies that share the same visions and ideas are of great importance. When both parts understand the driving forces of mutual customers and decide to bring together the own competencies, in the end they are able to offer ideal solutions. Having such partnerships and networks can be an integral part of the company’s long-term strategy as it is our strategy at ASC. One of these partnerships is with Mitel, a global market leader in business communications, powering more than two billion business connections with their cloud, enterprise and next-gen collaboration applications. With more than 70 million users in nearly 100 countries and about 1 million contact center seats, Mitel is the only company that wakes up every day exclusively focused on helping customers take their communications from where they are today to where they expect them to be.
When Mitel did their selection process for choosing a partner to bring in powerful solutions to their Mitels Workforce Optimization (WFO) Suite, ASC came out on top of all the recording and analytics vendors in the market. We were chosen as the best one because of our ability to offer flexible and resilient solutions for contact centers with the right recording and analytic tools. So, Mitel offers ASC applications as integral components of its Mitel Workforce Optimization (WFO) Suite. The joint solution enables Interaction Recording, Quality Management, Coaching and Learning as well as Speech Analytics, in conjunction with Mitel’s leading communication platforms.
Part of the strength of the relationship is the flexibility to move to a cloud solution. As many of ASC’s and Mitel’s mutual customers are planning to take their communications to the cloud, cloud solution offerings are the next steppingstone for this strategic partnership. The Mitel Workforce Optimization Suite comes with a modular multi-tenancy architecture that allows for implementing enterprise projects as cloud services. This gives our customers a sustainable and future-proof solution, supporting on-premise solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing infrastructures as well as cloud services.
Helping Contact Centers to Cope with the Crisis
One of our mutual customers is a contact center with 100 users. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic they had to continue working but with the staff working from home. They had the challenge to record their communication and still provide full service. Because of the flexibility of the solution from Mitel and ASC they were able to record all users and at the same time maintain a high level of service and analyze all conversations from wherever they were working. One of the challenges was also that this contact center had to take card payments online and we helped them stay PCI DSS compliant. This is achieved by providing detailed instructions on how to configure the interaction recording to avoid the capture of credit card information. In addition, templates for Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the customers will be provided, detailing the procedures for muting audio or pausing the recording, so that credit card information which must not be recorded at all really is not recorded at all.
What is PCI DSS?
PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is a worldwide security standard assembled by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The standard was created to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud, hacking and various other security vulnerabilities and threats. A company processing, storing, or transmitting payment card data must be PCI DSS compliant. Non-compliant companies who maintain a relationship with one or more of the card brands, either directly or through an acquirer risk losing their ability to process credit card payments and being audited and/or fined.
How to Take your Contact Center to the Next Level
Any company that communicates with their customers, clients, partners, or suppliers can take advantage of greater insight into the interactions that shape their day-to-day operations. With Interaction Recording contact centers are able to seamlessly capture, organize, reproduce, and pass on voice and screen recordings. Quality management ensures intelligent monitoring and reporting features for a complete view of customer happiness and agent effectiveness. With Coaching and Learning functions agents work at the best possible agent level. These functions provide targeted training to agents by suggesting courses that would fill gaps in customer service skills identified by Quality Management. Analytics tools help managers sort the data from all customer interactions through different channels and identify changes in consumer behavior so they can take appropriate action to reduce call volume and increase customer satisfaction. All this offers managers the following advantages and takes any contact center to the next level:
- Capturing the whole customer journey
- Finding ways to improve the customer experience
- Optimizing internal processes
- Identifying and share best practice sales techniques
- Keeping compliance with legal regulation & fraud detection
- Uncovering trends and areas for improvement with keyword recognition, speech transcripts and emotion recognition
Four questions to ask when researching WFO Software
When deciding to invest in a WFO Software you only want to make that investment once, so here are five questions that a contact center should ask and that will help you get it right the first time.
- Does the solution capture every way that you interact with your customer?
Top solutions can record every interaction from whatever channel, so you get to whole picture of how your contact center is performing. - Can the solution work with existing systems, so you don’t have to make big changes?
Concerns over implementation and ease of use have kept many contact centers from acquiring the technologies they need. But there are solutions that offer an easy transition from any previous technology, allowing for easy customization as needed. The objective is a minimal transition period for your personnel. The software should also have the flexibility to grow with your business. Review all features listings and compare them with the features most important to your contact center. - Does it help the customer stay compliant?
In almost every industry and country, contact centers must comply with a number of legal regulations (such as MiFID II, Dodd-Frank Act, GDPR, PCI-DSS). Ask if the solution specifically meets the strict regulatory requirements in your industry. The solution should always be safe and implemented with the proper restrictions regarding employee access. Make sure the solution provides a management of complex user rights, the data collected is secure, encrypted if necessary and protected. - Is it an all in one solution?
Ask if the sharing of the information from the PBX to the recording to the Quality Management sit together well, so your agents no longer have to switch between multiple applications and can work more productively.
Unlock the Full Potential of Your Customer Experience
Are you making the most of the data you’ve collected? Are you making use of all of it? Are you getting the small things right? Little issues in service eventually result in big problems. Make sure that best practices are being maintained in every aspect of the call from the greeting to the final ‘click’. So, take a closer look at what your contact center is doing right, and where improvement is needed. The sooner issues can be identified, the sooner they can be solved.
