How Digital Service Channels help to reduce costs in Contact Centers

How Digital Service Channels help to reduce costs in Contact
Centers

The world has changed at an unimaginable pace in the last decade. As recent as 2010,
smartphones were still evolving, it was rare for customers to place inquiries via email to
companies. Calling a customer care number was the norm to get answers or get any issues
resolved.

However, as technology and smartphones evolved, people had easy access to many
alternate digital channels (email, SMS, chat, social media, self-service) of communication
and they soon started reaching out to companies through all these alternatives.
Omnichannel contact center software thus became a necessity for businesses to up their
customer experience game. In the process, they discovered that the new-age contact center
software which integrated these digital service channels helped contact centers save costs
too.

The new-age ‘Digital Contact Center’

Digital contact center software solutions offer business access to tools and applications for
omnichannel connectivity with customers. Some of the best contact center software
integrates digital communication channels such as SMS, social media, and chatbots. They
also integrate technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing
(NLP), and the Internet of Things (IoT) into the software enabling agents to track the
customer journey across multiple channels. These new-age contact center software
solutions help:

● Reduce overall operational costs

● Boost agent productivity

● Optimize efficiency

● Streamline workflows and processes

● Businesses scale easily

● Simplify agents work

Digital transformation: Turning contact centers into profit centers

Integrating digital service channels in contact center software helps businesses save costs by
leveraging analytics to predict and solve problems, streamline the call handling processes,
deliver personalized service, and overall enhance customer experience. Let’s look at ways in
which digital service channels help save costs.

● Self-service channels: IVR (Interactive voice response) is the first point of contact for
most customers when they dial into a customer service line. Integrating a proper
customer authentication process, and answers to commonly asked questions into
the IVR reduce the number of calls diverted to an agent, significantly reducing call
time, costs, and increasing the overall efficiency. Another self-service solution could
be a ‘knowledge-base’ or FAQ section on the company website.

● Intelligent Live Chat options: Omnichannel contact center software allows agents
to seamlessly switch between multiple communication channels. This enables agents
to respond to customers reaching out on chat through the website. What’s more, an
agent can respond to multiple chats in parallel which costs less than responding to
voice calls and of course saves time. Another option is to integrate a support chatbot
into the website. These help to significantly reduce customer wait times and keep
costs in control.

● Virtual agents: Many customers reach out to companies on social media platforms
and online community forums. Omnichannel contact center software, enables
agents to interact with and respond to these queries on the platform itself. Many
times queries get resolved on such social forums.

● Analytics: The new-age omnichannel contact center software enables companies to
track the customer journey across all channels of communication and generate
dashboards on metrics such as call waiting time, hold time, identify channels where
they receive most inquiries, problem resolution rate, kind of complaints they receive
most and more. This goldmine of information helps contact centers better
understand their customers, own strengths and weaknesses, and helps optimize
operational efficiency, maximize agent productivity, which ultimately translates to
cost-saving.

The integration of digital service channels into contact center software means more
interactive customer engagement. This naturally translates to quick resolution of customer
queries, significantly low operational costs, and more opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell
products and services leading to more profitability.

About HoduSoft

HoduSoft is well-known for being cost-effective and the best VoIP software provider that in
turn make your business successful. With a dedicated approach towards developing world-
class products, HoduSoft has emerged as leading business VoIP software provider. With a
wide array of products, HoduSoft also ensures best returns on technological investments.
Having a decade long experience in the VoIP industry, founders of HoduSoft have decided to
come up with various innovative products for communication.

To know more visit https://hodusoft.com/

Original Source: https://bit.ly/3tp8NAC