- Customers have many choices at their disposal, and delivering on their high expectations is a challenge for any contact center.
- Embracing these challenges by leveraging cloud technology can delight contact center agents and customers alike, making contact centers more productive and profitable.
- Cloud-based solutions can live alongside or supplement existing on-premises systems, adding functionality without requiring complicated migrations.
Customers today expect fast, friendly, and personalized service. They expect this whether they’re talking to a retail clerk, a bank teller, or a contact center representative. Customers have many choices at their disposal and will be quick to pass the word on when they have a good or bad experience.
Delivering on these high expectations isn’t easy. But with technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics, your contact center can go beyond meeting expectations to becoming a center for growth.
Today’s Contact Center Challenges
Ultimately, the goal of a contact center isn’t just about solving customer problems. It is to contribute to the overall success of an organization by increasing revenue and helping gain new customers. Yet contact centers today face several challenges that are standing in their way.
- Connecting the customer to the right expertise. Agents need quick and easy access to context, customer data, and experts in your organizations. You need to find a way to give them this without overloading or distracting them.
- Seamless omnichannel experience. Customers want to engage easily with you on the channels of their choice. But when channels are siloed, it hinders your agents’ productivity and delivers an inconsistent and fragmented experience for your customers.
- Accessing innovation. Contact centers have traditionally struggled to adopt modern technology. While the Cloud has led to rapid innovation in many areas of organizations, contact centers have been left behind.
- Agent productivity. Keeping agents productive requires efficient processes and intuitive desktop tools. The more you can automate routine tasks and connect them to the people and content they need, the more successful they will be at serving your customers.
- Agent turnover. Contact center agents are valuable resources. Keeping them happy and productive is the number-one challenge of contact center managers. The average agent turnover rate is 30% to 45% in the U.S. Agents need tools that help them manage information overload. That means there is less agent turnover, so you can minimize recruiting and training, which is expensive and time-consuming.
- IT productivity. IT staff needs to be able to manage your contact center efficiently and cost-effectively while meeting the strategic needs of the business. You need a solution that minimizes cost and complexity. It should also have an open architecture to ensure that your contact center connects to your in-place systems and investments. Be sure it’s scalable as well, as this will improve IT resource productivity.
Benefit from a Cloud Contact Center
Contact centers are the faces of their companies. Trends in consumer behavior and new technology mean contact centers have their work cut out for them in keeping customers happy. The challenges facing today’s contact center present an exciting opportunity. Solving these will exceed customer expectations and power business growth. A cloud-based, software-as-a-service contact center is the best way to achieve these benefits:
- Easier implementation of new technologies like AI.
- Better integration with other cloud apps like Salesforce.
- Access to new features as soon as they’re available.
![[Read: The Contact Center Made Collaborative EBook]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/979031/bbbc0134-366f-4a26-8bd4-03083c2565ed.png)
A move to the Cloud doesn’t have to be difficult, either. Cloud-based solutions can live alongside or supplement existing on-premises systems, adding functionality without requiring complicated migrations. Cloud innovation will ultimately result in:
- Boosted agent productivity and minimized agent turnover.
- Improved first-contact resolution.
- Increased customer loyalty and lifetime value.
- Boosted business operations and performance.
Webex Cloud Contact Center Technology Can Make the Difference
If you’ve made the decision to move to a new contact center—one that uses technology to help every agent and every customer—solutions are available. Platforms like the Cisco Webex® Contact Center is a native cloud contact center solution. It enables enriched customer engagement experiences between businesses and their customers.
Webex Contact Center is also a cognitive contact center. By using AI, it empowers agents with the knowledge, data, and context they need to have fast, accurate, and more personalized conversations with customers. After all, 46% of people will abandon a brand if employees are not knowledgeable.
Transitioning to a cloud-based solution and integrating business applications in your contact center can improve customer and agent experiences. The Webex Contact Center has prebuilt connectors for deep integration with your most common CRM and other apps, including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Zendesk. The result? Higher productivity, minimized siloes, and streamlined workflows.
Learn how AI can make your contact center smarter. Read the eBook: The Contact Center Made Cognitive.
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