Contact centers with a need to develop call scripts/ call flows for both IVR and live agents, really have just 2 possibilities:
- In-house IT resources – for script development in C# or HTML; usually only available to larger organisations, but often very expensive in terms of time and specialist resources
- Script design products – for script development by non-programmers
Some have access to both, and find that design products offer a way to substantially cut the time, effort and cost involved in script development, even if they enhance further with in-house resources. Many others rely on design tools only.
But such call center scripting tools are often built either for IVR only, or for agent scripts only, and are entirely separate entities. We see much frustration in the marketplace over how productivity is hindered by having to use a variety of tools to design and implement standard services.
Why is it so difficult? After all, in practice, calls travel between IVR and real agents all the time: a caller might navigate an IVR menu to get to an agent, who sends him to an automated payment script, which returns him to the agent. Simple!
But in order to make that flow happen, there could be a great deal of pain behind the scenes. Anyone who has ever had to design an IVR logic flow will testify to how time-consuming it can be.
There is no shortage of tools to develop IVR flows. Most of them provide integration with a PBX and/ or database. But because of the complexity, many of these tools come with an offer to buy in 3rd party script writing expertise.
There are also plenty of development products out there for building scripts for live agents. Or maybe MS Word has served you well for this over many years.
But by and large IVR and agent scripts are not built using the same tool. Why not? Surely they are fundamentally the same thing: routing and branching decisions based on user input. One reason may be that specialist agent scripting products don’t require inbuilt telephony integration (e.g. DTMF capture), and therefore many don’t offer it. With IVR, on the other hand, CTI is a basic necessity.
The cost of using separate tools is multiplied because they require integration, often a painful business, and the result often feels held together with string and sticky tape. A great deal of time and money can be wasted trying to force disparate applications to play nicely together.
The magic bullet would be a single environment – a Grand Unified Theory – for development and delivery of both agent and IVR scripts, that would
- handle logic flows for both IVR and agent scripts
- allow rapid development by non-programmers
- integrate fully with PBX telephony functions
- allow seamless transfer between IVR and live agents
- handle both development and deployment
If you are frustrated with the number of tools your team has to work with, or the shakiness with which they are held together, be more demanding of your supplier, or contact us to point you in the right direction.
What We Offer
Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) – multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.
Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.
All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.
Flexible Contact Center Software
Softdial Contact Center™ – rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale
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Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)
CCaaS for subscribers – global service, with no upfront costs
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Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners
Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software
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Contact Center Platform – Enterprise
High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid
Blended Media Desktop
Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace
Work Anywhere
Browser-based tools, no software installation required
Customise, Localise, White Label
Design all user interfaces to individual requirements
Integration via APIs
‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps
World Class Development
Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries
Capabilities
Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.
All Media Channels
Voice, chat, email, social, etc – fully integrated and blended
Agent Multi-Tasking
Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel
Dynamic Workforce Management
Optimise agent usage and balance workloads in real-time without human intervention, across all media channels
Predictive Dialing
Best-of-breed performance under compliance
Optimised Inbound Routing
Smart rules and ‘best-available’ decisions to drive great customer service
Agent Scripts
Help agents achieve and maintain excellence
Voice and Screen Recording
See and hear exactly how agents are interacting
Analytics and Data Feeds
Measure and evaluate performance at every level
IVR, Bots & Conversational AI
Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers
Customer Journey Tracking
Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations
Modules
Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance
Softdial One™
Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators
Softdial Scripter™
Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications
Sytel AI Dialer™
Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules
Softdial Pathfinder™
Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection
Softdial Media Server™
Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls
Softdial Reporter™ 5
Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels
Softdial Publisher™
Comprehensive data output to build your own reports
Softdial Recording Monitor™
Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards
Softdial Campaign Manager™
Automation to optimise any outreach strategy
Softdial Repository™
Central storage and configuration of common resources
Sytel Global Compliance™
Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer
Solutions
Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications
By Business Type
Enterprise
A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale
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Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves
By Industry
Customer Service
Connect quickly to well equipped agents
Market Research
Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration
Debt Collection
Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app
Sales & Telemarketing
Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing
Healthcare
Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care