The right contact centre solution -

Today, delivering excellent customer service is essential, which means you need the right contact centre technology in place to support your operations. Every organisation is different, so it’s important to choose the right solution for you.

Making the right choice

Start the process of choosing a new contact centre solution by asking three key questions:

What are your business needs? Review how the contact centre fits into your overall business goals and strategy and what you need from technology to help achieve them.
What do your customers want? The solution you select will need to closely match your customers’ requirements including the channels they prefer and the types of questions they ask.
What is your existing (and planned) tech infrastructure? Your new technology will need to integrate with current and planned customer service and wider business solutions.

Reviewing these areas will help you identify what you are aiming to achieve. And while every business is different, many use cases are common to multiple organisations – here are eight that we often see:

1. Need for controlled migration to the cloud

How do you ensure that migrating to cloud contact centre technology does not disrupt existing service levels and protects investments in existing systems?Landmark Information Group, the UK’s leading provider of land and property search information has achieved this thanks to the close integration between Enghouse and a wide variety of unified communications (UC) environments, including Skype for Business and Teams. Landmark has been able to roll out a gradual migration from its existing contact centre solution to a new UC platform, minimising disruption and ensuring a better experience.

2. Moving to the cloud but still providing a customised solution

How do you move to the cloud but still ensure you have a customer contact centre solution that is tailored to existing processes and will work with third-party systems now and into the future? One business, which runs a 300-agent contact centre, was able to do just this. It used cloud-based technology from Enghouse that it could customise, optimise and automate, achieving both efficiency and full control of its contact centre, while being able to securely exchange confidential data with in-house systems.

3. Quickly enabling home working

The pandemic has forced businesses to try and find a way to rapidly allow customer service agents to work from home, while providing them with access to the information and technology to do their jobs. At the same time, they needed to maintain the ability to monitor operations and ensure the highest quality standards.Mayo County Council in the west of Ireland and gas and electricity supplier, Flogas, are two organisations who have successfully done this using a combination of Microsoft Teams and Enghouse Interactive contact centre technology. Both delivered a high level of service for consumers, while ensuring business continuity and increasing efficiency and control.

4. Delivering a digital, omnichannel experience

With customers wanting to interact with companies using a variety of channels, how do you achieve a seamless omnichannel experience, however they choose to make contact. Leading contact centre outsourcer, Ascensos, worked with Enghouse to implement an omnichannel solution that is easy to navigate by agents and provides good visibility of incoming interactions. It delivers a seamless omnichannel experience embracing digital channels such as social media, video and chatbots backed by intelligent routing and a single view of the customer.

5. Empowering agents

Ensuring that agents are empowered with the right technology, knowledge and training is key to customer service success. But how do you do make that happen? Specialist lender, George Banco, switched from a primitive phone system to a flexible solution from Enghouse Interactive that automatically gives agents instant access to a full history of each caller’s previous interactions, helping them to quickly understand the nature of the call and deliver a more personalised service.

6. Rationalising systems to reduce complexity and cost

Successfully rationalising contact centre systems or migrating to new technology is often vital if you want to increase efficiency, improve the customer experience and enable agents to operate effectively. When it took the strategic decision to switch to Microsoft’s unified communications platform, one global law firm chose to extend its current Enghouse Interactive implementation, allowing it to replace its existing contact centre technology and benefit from a solution that integrates closely with Microsoft, offering a seamless upgrade path as the new UC platform is rolled out globally.

7. Leveraging collaboration environments

Putting the customer first requires an integrated, collaborative approach that spans the whole organisation. To achieve this Mayo County Council, which supports over 130,000 local residents, has implemented Microsoft Teams throughout the organisation. Thanks to the flexibility of Enghouse Interactive’s contact centre solutions and close integration with Microsoft it is able to manage calls made within the Teams environment while improving efficiency, reporting and collaboration.

8. Driving operational efficiencies

How do you maximise contact centre efficiency without negatively impacting customer service? By implementing an Enghouse Interactive solution, Sedgemoor District Council is achieving this balance of efficiency and quality. It is now able to handle a higher volume of calls with reduced wait times and intelligent routing to ensure queries are handled faster. Switching to a digital approach has also reduced telephony costs and enabled remote working.

To help you map your needs and start the process of picking the right new contact centre technology, Enghouse Interactive has created a new guide: How to Choose a Contact Centre Solution. This includes advice on tackling key challenges and templates to help you understand your needs, as well as tailored examples of successful implementations. You can download it here.