Apps vs Chatbots

February, 2017

As apps become more sophisticated so do some of their negative points. Whereas Chatbots are becoming more important for contact centers.

Applications that are downloaded to smartphones provide the user with functions pertinent to the companies that supplied them. For example, a utility company will provide options that allow the user to; view their bill, make a payment, etc.

Unfortunately, customers’ eagerness to download apps has cooled. This is partly due to the size of apps. Apps have become more sophisticated and their storage requirements have increased considerably, while users are becoming more selective with how they use the space on their smart phones.

Also, if a customer uses an app infrequently they are likely to become annoyed if they have to spend precious time searching for a function they need. The app may have been improved ten-fold, but this is lost on an annoyed customer who has to click through several pages to find what they are looking for.

Possibly, the most damning of all is the effect an app can have on the battery life. Many apps run in the background downloading news updates, which eats away at the available power.

Customers who don’t use apps still have several methods they can use to contact the company including; phone call, email, sms and chat. People are increasingly shying away from voice with its endless IVR menus. Email is often considered too slow. Chat is becoming more popular and the features it offers richer.

Cue the Chatbot! Chatbots are becoming very sophisticated with analysis of the text enabling answers and suggested links to be automatically supplied to the customer. Buttons can also be embedded in the chat conversations which guide customers quickly to what they need. Furthermore, a transcript of the conversation can be automatically emailed to the customer at the end of the Chat conversation.

As contact centers embrace multimedia and agents handle a mixture of media sessions a well-designed Chatbot can manage the start of chat conversations. It is often difficult to determine whether it is a human or a Bot on the other end of the conversation! If a chat conversation exceeds the capability of a Bot it can be seamlessly transferred to a human agent along with all the relevant information so the customer continues to be handled appropriately. The beauty of Chatbots is their ability to continuously learn. Investing time and effort wisely on Chatbots can greatly reduce the volume of chats a human agent has to handle while also building customer confidence and loyalty.

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
  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers - global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • 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

Automated, ‘best available’ decisions to manage agents and balance work load, 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

Small/ Medium Business

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