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4 Ways to Review Your Contact Center Communications System

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4 Ways to Review Your Contact Center Communications System

Success in a contact center for a business is one of the often overlooked but highly important factors to running a successful operation. Contact centers are often the nerve center for a company whereby the total sum of all customer contact is funneled to the appropriate departments. This means that everyone from a sales prospect to customer needing support and even potential media and PR contacts all can conceivably have their first impression of a company determined by a member of the contact center staff. The critical nature of creating a uniformly satisfying call experience for people reaching out to any contact center, therefore, cannot be overstated. And while there are plenty of pieces of advice on how to properly staff and train call centers, how a virtual call center can save businesses a great deal of money, and even on how to teach millennial workforces about proper phone call etiquette, there isn’t much help for businesses that are already operating a contact center and need to review its efficiency. Until now, that is. These 4 ways to review your contact center communications system address some of the biggest challenges facing call centers as well as offer suggestions on how to address them.

review contact center communications system

4 Ways to Review Your Contact Center Communications System

As we’ve mentioned, hiring and training the employees of a contact center is essential to making the most of the communications hub of a business. However, even the best, most well-trained employees are left with their hands tied if the systems they rely on are inadequate when it matters the most. That’s why these points of review are to assess the needs and abilities of a contact center communications system so that the team you invest so heavily in can always get the job done.

  1. Review Call Volume The number of calls a contact center receives is more than just a static number. Time of day, originating time zones, time of year, relation to promotions/advertisements, and a host of other factors all contribute to the overall call volume consideration. Tracking all of these nuances is more difficult than using a simple call count, but can be done with a modern cloud-based business telephone system that utilizes intelligent call tracking like DNIS numbers. Additionally, hosted telephone systems can provide real-time data visualizations that add insight into peak call periods over the course of a year or intraday. If these features aren’t available for free on your current plan, it may be time to shop for a new option.
  2. Review Call Routing Flow A frustrating or lengthy call routing experience is likely one of the most often-cited reasons for dissatisfaction by inbound callers. Receiving a lot of missed calls and voicemails? Using the right balance of Ring Groups and/or ACD Queues will streamline callers to their desired departments or parties in a way that expedites their needs and evenly utilizes all of the call center’s employees equitably and effectively.
  3. Review Call Queue Administrator Tools Admins are responsible for managing hundreds or even thousands of calls a day, so the tools they rely on are subjected to even higher expectations of simplicity than anything else. Being able to monitor calls, agent status, and call traffic is just the beginning. Ideally, call queue management will also include the ability to assign agent strengths, assign overflow or escalation queues before traffic volume becomes an issue, and even determine how long agents should have between calls to wrap-up notes and prepare for the next call. A modern cloud-based call center can provide call queue admins with details and functionality well above and beyond what is typically available from on-site telephone systems. Plus, being cloud-based, admins of modern contact centers can accomplish this all from the palm of their hands or from anywhere that they have an internet or data connection.
  4. Review Quality Assurance Procedures We’ve alluded many times to the importance of hiring and retaining the best people for your business, but using the contact center communications system is one way many companies forget to ensure those teams are the best they can be. For example, recording inbound calls for quality assurance is better than a live eavesdrop because it provides the opportunity to have agents listen to their performance with a manager or trainer. Nothing prepares a contact center employee to improve their next calls quite like the chance to hear a conversation played back to them for guidance.

Move From Internal Review to External Search

These are just some of the areas where a contact center communications strategy is desperate to perform if it’s going to keep pace with a growing business and an increasingly demanding consumer. If your business phone system doesn’t support these any of the above mentioned advanced configurations, reporting, or functionality it’s definitely time to put it through some closer scrutiny. Did you know that some businesses that switched their call center operations from a legacy, copper-wired telephone system to a cloud-based business phone saved as much as 40% on their monthly expenses? It’s true. By cutting the cords to the outdated technology that traditional phone companies rely on you do more than just save money, too. The added benefits of mobility, flexibility, customization, and the ability to always have the highest marks in all of the above categories makes cloud-based communications an essential technology for contact centers everywhere.

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