The Rise Of The Machines

November, 2016

What is the future for contact center agents? Will they become redundant? Hardly! If anything, the contact center agent will have a more important role than ever before.

There is much talk about automation in the news at present. Robots are replacing workers at car factories, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used in ever more situations and there seems to be a sense that we will all soon be replaced by machines of one sort or another.

This also applies to the contact center industry. Wise companies have invested in creating portals and mobile apps that allow their customers to use and change services with little, if any, human contact. The Internet of Things (IoT) has given us consumer devices that can automatically advise companies of their customers’ needs. And when a customer needs to ask a question very often an AI agent will interpret the question and provide an answer.

This is all highly efficient of course and very good for the customer. The customer doesn’t want to wait in a contact centre queue if they can help it, plus the reduced need for manpower will reduce the cost of whatever service is being provided.

What future then for contact centre agents? Are they redundant? Hardly! If anything the contact centre agent has a more important role than ever before, for two reasons;

Firstly, no matter what marvels we work with AI and automation there will always be customer issues that fall through the cracks. So placating a frustrated customer, addressing the issue thoroughly and sealing up that crack for the future requires a highly capable and responsible agent. This is not someone who just answers questions or reads scripts – but rather a customer service expert, an analyst and a trouble-shooter.

And secondly, consider how your relationship with a company is shaped by its employees, and how much more likely you are to buy something when you have spoken to a charming, knowledgeable and helpful employee. Each interaction creates the opportunity to build a lasting emotional relationship between customer and company, buyer and seller – one human to another. That relationship is gold.

So the future agent is a representative of your company who can make the difference between a faceless automaton and a company with character who cares about its customers.

So what does the contact centre need to do in the future? As simple as always but more focussed than ever: people who can communicate well with customers are a scarce resource. Their time must be managed in the most efficient way, and that must be done by well-designed software.

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