In the first part of this article, I mentioned that a voice tool tends to make customer support more satisfactory, providing the user with a customized, dynamic, and inclusive service.  Voice services also offer a more humanized and empathetic experience by allowing real-time reactions and the possibility to analyze and make exceptions, improving the quality of customer responses and solutions.   

In this second part, we will mention some of the specific characteristics of a voice-based contact center (Telephony). 

Inbound call center

This call center is for receiving and answering customer requests rather than making calls.  An inbound call center usually uses software – known as Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) – that allows it to filter incoming calls and distribute them to the agents who are best equipped to answer them. 

They can be as sophisticated as needed, measuring and recording call activity, and acting accordingly, prioritizing or predicting occurrences to inform the supervisor or administrator of how to prepare operators’ availability for intake, avoiding an increase in the abandonment rate (i.e., people who get tired of waiting for the service and hang up). 

Critical in this type of experience center (in addition to the ACD) is the IVR (Interactive Voice Response equipment), which also evolved from the old DTMF (Dual Tone Multifrequency) that allowed users to access a menu where they could press phone keys, select an option, and be sent to the sector indicated in the menu. Today’s third generation IVRs can be integrated with Amazon, Azure, Google, or IBM Cognitive Services and resolve complex requests, as well as incorporating bots, converting announcements from text to speech (TTS) or speech to text (STT) and routing to other digital channels, if required.  

Outbound call center

The agents’ job is to communicate with the user and not to wait for customers to get in touch with the company.  These calls (most often organized in campaigns) can be for sales, research, and collections purposes or for providing information about new products or services.  

In these cases, automatic dialing is key in optimizing the relation between lines, agents, and target contact.  This tool makes it possible to contact many customers in a short period, increasing the call center’s productivity and efficiency.  

They have greatly advanced and today can be combined, for example, with automatic messages through IVR, sending information online via email, SMS, or WhatsApp, and transferring the user to a survey at the end of the conversation with the human or bot. The predictive dialer (PD) can also carry out less aggressive dialing modes, such as power, progressive or preview dialing. 

Blended call center 

This is a combination of the above.  In this case, the telephone service is used for both answering and making calls.  This is considered the most complete type of customer service. The key is in the “orchestration engine’s” efficiency to implement the blend, i.e., to distribute and balance the groups of Inbound/Outbound agents according to customer demand. 

Implement each country’s applicable legislation 

Finally, your company should understand the legislation of the country in which it will operate in order to comply with service requirements or standards. I can give you two examples, but as I said before, each country has its own regulation, and we must understand them in detail to avoid incurring in fines and penalties. 

In the case of Argentina, Resolution 1033/2021 establishes the Minimum Mandatory Quality Parameters for Customer Service and Long-distance Communications Services, offered by Argentina’s providers of goods and services.  This resolution was published in the country’s official National Bulletin on October 12, 2021.  According to the resolution’s annex, providers’ customer services must be effective and accessible, and offer respectful, cordial, kind, considerate, affable, and attentive treatment, to facilitate information, receive and resolve complaints and claims, or any other incidences that may arise.  

Additionally, providers must offer consumers a free customer service and contact e-mail, which should in no way generate additional revenue for the provider or for third parties at the customers’ expense.   

In Brazilian law, the service must be active 24/7 and the option of “speaking to an attendant” must be available from the beginning of the call. Anyone running a Customer Service Center (SAC) should be aware of these obligations and adapt their business to avoid conflicts and fines.

Author:
Fernando Riedel
Voice and Collaboration Product Specialist
Cirion Technologies

Call centers play an important part in customer service teams. At Cirion, we believe a contact center has functions that go beyond answering the phone, responding to emails or chats, holding videoconferences, or developing service bots.  They must be strategically related to the customer experience (combined with the Customer Journey) and perfectly orchestrated.

Over the years, consumers have been accessing different channels to provide reviews, compare products and get in touch with companies and their customer service teams, whether through print media, physical stores or, more recently (and accentuated by the 2019-2022 pandemic), websites and apps. However, when it comes to services or “the last resort available to gain or regain a customer’s loyalty”, the only channel that hasn’t lost popularity or relevance is the telephone.

This is not to say that a multichannel customer service with an ominichannel strategy isn’t important (more on this later), but I underscore the importance of call centers for complex services (ex.: collections and sales), critical moments (emergencies and urgencies), and customer retention (customers dissatisfied with a bad service or product).

A voice tool tends to make customer support more satisfactory, providing the user with a customized, dynamic, and inclusive service.  Voice services also offer a more humanized and empathetic experience by allowing real-time reactions and the possibility to analyze and make exceptions, improving the quality of customer responses and solutions.

Call centers are a critical component of customer service teams and their performance can be routinely analyzed.  Therefore, customer service managers must monitor their teams’ efficiency closely and seek the necessary information to improve customer experience.

 The most common KPIs for this type of channel are:

• First-call resolution,
• Customer satisfaction,
• Average handle time,
• Service level,
• Abandonment rate
• Adherence,
• Availability for calls, and
• Contact quality.

Today, according to statistics from the world’s leading consultancies, 45% to 55% consider that the telephone is still the most used channel in call centers, followed by chat, email, social networks, and video, in that order.  Specifically, in Latin America we are closer to 55% and there is naturally some variation according to age. However, when things get complicated or become urgent, no matter through which channel the conversation started, we always end up on the phone and asking to speak to an attendant.

That said, if your company offers an omnichannel service, the call center will be part of that strategy and you’ll know for sure that the customer will be well cared for, regardless of the channel they choose or if other digital channels fail or aren’t enough to meet the user’s expectations.

In general, you just have to apply telephony and call center best practices: keep employees motivated (“gamification” can be an excellent tool) and trained to provide the customer with the best support and the highest level of customized information, with cordiality and availability. Training and feedback, from both the staff and the customer, help maintain service excellence.

Technology reaches the cloud

Since “democratization”, which implied taking Contact Center systems to the cloud, everything has become more accessible, agile and cost-effective.  In times of innovation, companies are recommended to invest in good technologies to improve and ensure maximum employee productivity, as employees’ wages represent 65% to 75% of a call center’s cost.   In this sense, nothing will be as profitable as a tool that reduces conversation time, improves FCR (First contact resolution), or reduces the abandonment rate, thus obtaining increased productivity per employee.

A complete ecosystem, such as Cirion Technologies’ Cloud Contact Center platform, guarantees “end-to-end” the Total Experience project proposed for your business.

Author:
Fernando Riedel
Voice and Collaboration Product Specialist
Cirion Technologies

This new technological trend, related to the application of fun in work environments, involves the use of game mechanics in business contexts, uniting the entertaining elements of games and things that are relatively boring and commonplace, but probably very important to the company. 

Santiago, April , 2023 – Increasingly, organizations are looking for ways to optimize their processes using different technological tools, with the aim of improving work standards while keeping their teams motivated and focused on achieving goals.  

The digital transformation that the world is experiencing has brought some challenges to companies, especially considering that the new generations of digital natives are the ones joining the business life of corporations. Their virtual digital identity is completely intertwined with their daily lives, and this applies to the way they work, buy, and socialize. We are talking about generation Z which, along with the millennials, represent 80% of the workforce present in work environments such as Contact Centers, and is within the age group that is redefining consumption and hiring trends.  

This is where Gamification comes into the picture – a new technological trend related to the application of fun in work environments, normally the opposite of that. This means using game mechanics in business contexts, combining the fun elements of games and things that are relatively boring and commonplace, but probably very important to the company. This is why gamification is useful when motivation and behavior are key to success. 

Which industries are served by Gamification? 

“In general, departments related to user experience (UX) are the ones that can get the most out of this format,” explains Fernando Riedel, Voice and Collaboration product specialist at Cirion Technologies. “For example, in Contact Centers (of patients, members, beneficiaries, or whatever the identification according to each company’s segment), employees who work in a multichannel format (via chat, email, phone or video) deal with a high volume of interactions and with the tension of having to offer an exceptional service and, in many cases, with demanding and even moody customers,” adds Riedel. 

In this context, agents’ motivation is often put to the test and the prolonged absence of stimulus can lead to a high employee turnover and unsuccessful campaigns. “With gamification strategies, we can foster and improve employee satisfaction while achieving a better culture in the workplace,” says Riedel. He adds: “According to a recent report by Qualtrics and ServiceNow, during the pandemic 3 out of 5 customer service agents reported that customers were becoming ruder and more aggressive. As a result, every week 1 in 5 considered resigning, according to the Qualtrics research.  This isn’t sustainable for any business or anyone, and it’s something tougher to address without solutions of this kind when employees are working remotely/home office.”  

Organizations are migrating to creating a total experience (TX).  They increasingly align EX (Employee Experience) with CX (Customer Experience) and UX (User Experience) to create a multiplier effect that benefits both employees and customers, while driving business and brand performance.  Their most important step is modernizing their IT (Information Technology) platforms – something critical, as these three platforms underpin these three experiences (EX + CX + UX), which added together and orchestrated correctly result in a memorable Brand Experience (BX, Brand Experience). 

“For Cirion Technologies and our partner Collab, Gamification has a disruptive focus that challenges employees daily through a series of interactive gaming experiences aiming to increase motivation, improve skills and optimize performance,” comments Fernando Riedel. “Agents become players and are rewarded for their progress and achievements in an attractive and fun work environment, while meeting their company’s goals,” he adds. 

To achieve this, Collab developed Gamification, a cloud tool offered by Cirion in Latin America which enables the application of gamification in contact centers, automatically and seamlessly. It is a per user license (player/supervisor/administrator) that gives web access rights to the Gamification Portal, while the platform’s structure allows it to integrate with the KPIs obtained from Cirion’s own Cloud Contact Center system or with third party products. 

The system can include Narratives, Quizzes and Matchmaking as add-ons that allow product customization according to themes and the possibility of selecting opponents. As to rewards, there’s an online store with its own currency used to redeem rewards, called Credit Points.  

There are different types of rewards in the store, each with a different value – for example, a treat or snack, an extra day of vacation or a bonus.  The positive side is that everything in the store can be customized, so platform administrators can create their own rewards. For this, the licenses are customized (named) because they record each agent’s individual experience or credit points. 

In addition, Gamification by Cirion Technologies can be integrated with third-party contact centers and other systems to play with KPIs generated in other services, such as human resources applications, sales CRM and e-learning applications, among others.  

This way, gamification leads to a better customer experience and added work value, as it increases employee motivation and retention, speeds up the employee training process, and promotes positive competition and staff loyalty in the contact center. 

“Both employees and companies are benefited from the implementation of gamification, as they are able to achieve goals and improve performance, therefore obtaining a better customer experience,” concludes Fernando Riedel, Voice and Collaboration product specialist at Cirion.

While we experience a new business paradigm, it’s essential to identify tools that support smart ways of working and drive connectivity between teams to promote business growth.

Collaborative tools are critical to manage telecommuting or hybrid work models, offshore teams, and flexible working hours.

Digital transformation requires the implementation of corporate software solutions that allow companies to automate processes, save time, efforts, and improve their employees’ ability to work as a team.

Thanks to these platforms, companies can supervise their employees’ work even when they are spread around the world.

1- What can a collaborative tool do?

In the corporate environment, collaborative tools (CaaS) allow people to be productive and in constant communications from wherever they are, with whichever device they’re using (notebook, tablets, smartphone).

2- What types of collaborative tools exist?

Basically, they can be grouped into 3 branches: Unified Communications as a service, Contact Center as a service, Communications platform as a service.

3- Where can these collaborative tools be found?

Today they are already offered in the cloud; they are services that companies consume through a monthly subscription and within their solution are permanent updates, 24/7 online support, stability, and end-to-end security.

4- What are collaborative tools used for?

When we mention collaborative tools, we’re talking about the integration of voice and video call services, voicemail, messaging or chat, mailings, and mobility. This includes Online Conferences and Webinars.  

5- What is the importance of using collaborative working tools?

Collaboration is critical to people’s lives, to their progress and interaction within their environment. The best companies base themselves on seamless and efficient collaborative processes, with collaborative offices and spaces empowering their employees.

Collaborative tools are essential in our daily journeys in the office and it’s no longer possible to consider working without them.

Teamwork is essential in achieving business success and accomplishing this in a realm where digital transformation is the protagonist, communications and coordination between members must be maintained, from any place and device, in addition to strengthening their motivation with flexible work models.

This is all achievable if the company has a virtual work environment built with the appropriate collaborative tools, aligned to the company’s needs.