Is Your Customer Service Joined Up?

July, 2010

How should your technology be empowering your CSRs to deliver top class customer service? Here's a list of 10 must-haves.

This month we turn our attention to customer service and inbound help desk operations, but not the ‘smile when you’re talking’ kind of advice. As we are a call center software provider, we are (as you might expect) going to identify the more critical capabilities that you can and should expect from 21st century customer service software. How should your technology be empowering your CSRs to deliver top class customer service?

We often speak to clients with legacy systems which have grown over some years. The common complaint is that the separate, discrete bundles of apps just don’t communicate well with each other. What is needed is ‘joined-up customer service’, where people, data and services all communicate freely and seamlessly throughout a customer interaction, providing a more satisfying and productive experience for both customer and CSR.

Here’s a list of 10 must-haves; see how you fare.

1. Send data with call transfer

“Can you send captured or MIS data to the receiving agent (CSR or IVR) when transferring a call?”
How many times have you gone through a long qualifying call with a first agent, and then been asked for the same data when you get transferred?

2. Integrated email/ text capability

“Can our CSRs easily send emails/ texts to the customer so that they are received by the customer immediately, while he is still on the line?”
Agents need a desktop with immediate access to other communication media.

3. Identify caller/ account by CLI lookup

“Do our CSRs have access to customer data before they say anything?”
Pretty mandatory these days.

4. Instant access to customer data

“Do CSRs have immediate access to service/purchase history?”
Think customer! Have all history available immediately and you are on your way to having a repeat customer and not just an old one who has gone elsewhere.

5. Instant update of customer data

“Can my CSRs easily make notes and update the customer’s record?”
Essential to capture the nuances that make ongoing customer relationships top quality.

6. Transfer to/ from IVR

“Can my CSRs switch a customer to a prerecorded message and can you then give the customer the option to come back to the same CSR if he wants, or to get another call booked, if that CSR is then busy?”
Be careful about leaving a customer stranded in a message or IVR session. He may actually want to talk to the CSR again and give you some business.

7. Response to emails

“Can you take any email, analyse it and give an instant response, based on level of importance?”
How many times do you get a response saying “we will get back to you within three days”!?

8. Integrated follow-up

“Can our CSRs easily schedule or initiate a variety of follow-up activities?”
e.g. set timed callback.

9. Queue management

“Do we get tight control over ‘Time-to-respond’ and other critical QA metrics?”
The ability to set thresholds, alarms and response targets is key to keeping quality high, not only for voice calls, but also for email, text and chat.

10. Efficient call blending to handle peak demand

“Can we take agents off outbound campaigns to handle peak inbound demand?”
To do it is a must; to do it automatically is a bonus.

Pretty simple and obvious, aren’t they? But how many of these things does your organisation actually support? If you are not joined up in all these areas, it’s time to be a little more demanding of your supplier.

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

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

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    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

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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

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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