The pandemic has brought a seismic shift in the business landscape and businesses are now operating with most of their workforce at home. This has elevated the role of Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions that easily empower a hybrid workforce that operates from anywhere. Some organizations downplay their contact center and treat them as operational cost center instead of the strategic value they hold as the primary face of the customer experience. How the contact center responds to customers will leave a lasting impression and define a company’s brand.
The Problem: Disparate Contact Center, Telephony and Collaboration Solutions
The global pandemic forced contact centers to spin up patchwork, work-from-home solutions, or dramatically alter their physical contact center footprint. This approach, although good enough, has left businesses with five1 disparate remote working technologies with overlapping functionalities. This has not only increased an organization’s spend in cloud-based tools by 25%2, compared to pre-Covid levels, but has also prevented agents from being fully efficient. According to our recent remote working survey, 67%1 of employees believe they would be more productive if their CCaaS and remote working solutions were integrated2.
The Solution: Unified, Omnichannel CCaaS that Seamlessly Integrates with the Rest of the Business
This cloud sprawl along with the rise in remote and hybrid work has forced most businesses to rethink their long-term strategy. IT and CCaaS leaders are looking at better ways to connect agents to the contact center solution and critical applications they need to do their jobs.
In addition to a cloud-based, omnichannel CCaaS solution that was recommended pre-pandemic, leading analysts and product experts are suggesting a unified solution that seamlessly integrates contact center with the rest of the organization.
CCaaS, when integrated with a telephony and collaboration solution provides streamlined access to tools and applications that help agents find the right answers quickly, thereby improving first contact resolution and customer satisfaction.
Benefits of a Unified CCaaS Solution with Teams Integration
- Visibility into Coworker’s Presence Status: CCaaS agents can see the presence status of all employees in the organization, allowing them to connect to the subject matter expert (SME) whenever needed.
- Flexible Work From Home Deployment Options: CCaaS agents can operate via the best endpoint for their needs including a softphone (Evolve Contact Suite or Microsoft Teams), their mobile phone, a physical handset (SIP or Microsoft Teams), etc.
- Seamless Customer Experience: CCaaS agents can collaborate with anybody in the organization to get the answers they need plus they can instantly conference or transfer a Supervisor or SME.
- Leadership Empowered: CCaaS supervisors can remotely listen to live interactions and “whisper” in their Agent’s ear to provide instant coaching.
- Expanded Labor Pool: Leadership has the flexibility to hire staff that can Work Anywhere.
- Ability to Transfer Calls and Send Notifications: CCaaS agents can transfer calls to coworkers that are not part of the contact center and can alternatively send notifications to them should the need arise.
- Consistent User Experience: The end-user experience remains consistent across all platforms and all agents are defined and authenticated in Microsoft Active Directory, like other employees in the organization.
- Improved Meetings Experience: According to Gartner, CCaaS advisers working remotely during the pandemic have experienced better quality connections to meetings using platforms like Microsoft Teams than using CCaaS platforms.
Other Benefits of a Cloud-Based, Omnichannel Contact Center as a Service:
- Lower TCO: A cloud-based CCaaS solution allows businesses to eliminate CAPEX, maintenance costs, upgrade charges, and reduce traditional telecom expenses. They only need to pay for the services they need.
- Improved Customer Satisfaction: An omnichannel CCaaS solution can improve a caller’s experience with advanced routing tools, surveys, callback capabilities, CRM integrations, and business intelligence insights.
- Increased Business Efficiency: CCaaS solutions that deliver advanced features such as AI-driven speech analytics, call recording, workforce management, reporting etc. can further enhance business efficiency
Top 10 Questions Businesses Should Ask Themselves
Like most contact centers, if you are looking to redefine your CCaaS strategy, here are the top 10 questions you should ask yourself:
- Have you standardized your remote working environment (Internet / ISP/router, ergonomics, headset, HR policies, employee reimbursement, etc.)?
- Do your agents have access to the applications needed to perform their daily functions?
- Can the business operate as effectively with everybody remote (coaching, training, QA, new hire shadowing/learning)?
- Do your leaders have access to the customer experience metrics, agent performance insights, and call recordings they need?
- How much IT effort is required to remotely support the end-users?
- Are agents able to BYOD? Are you providing them with expensive desktops/laptops to work remotely? Are you making the shift to “throwaway” IT (cheap end-user devices)?
- How quickly and easily can you onboard a newly hired class of agents?
- Are the IT & Legal teams comfortable that the contact center is addressing the organization’s security and compliance expectations?
- Which collaboration platforms do you use? Does your contact center solution integrate with your current collaboration platform?
- Are you looking for a quick fix, disparate solution or a unified, long-term strategic solution that can improve both customer & employee satisfaction?
How Can Evolve IP Help?
Evolve IP is a true technology partner that can help businesses future-proof their CCaaS strategy along with the rest of their business. No one besides Evolve IP provides a complete solution for agents and managers that delivers award-winning omnichannel features, secure access to desktop services and business applications, and integration with the rest of the business via Microsoft Teams; all from a web browser on nearly any device.
Contact us today for a free consultation on your CCaaS strategy.
[1] 2021 Remote Work Survey Results, Evolve IP – Published 2 March 2021
[2] A Strategic Approach to Reducing Communications and Collaboration Spending in Light of COVID-19 Published 28 May 2020 – ID G00721325