Call center software solutions successfully complement customer relationship management solutions. Due to their rewarding capability, many BPOs, particularly those dealing with call center services are succeeding in withstanding the SLAs (service level agreements) as mandated by their clients. Besides, their affordability attribute has erased the TCO and operating expense concerns that has puzzled startups and small entrepreneurs over the years. Since, customer relationship management is directly proportional to the revenue model of an organization, it’s vital to make a prudential choice assessing all pros and cons associated with available call center software solutions, call recording software solutions and cloud computing solutions.
To help you with the pursuit, Fonebell here discuses 10 tips for choosing the right call center software solutions.
Define your goals
Don’t get swayed away by the features and benefits of any proposed call center software solutions. Instead, first chalk out your goals. Ask yourself the simplest question “What you want to achieve with it?” Divide goals into short- and long-term categories. Imitating competitors is not a way out. Your needs may differ from what your counterparts have. Some may be focused on reducing the average call handling time (AHT) while some others may be aiming to increase customer acquisition rate alone, and some might be at a position from where they need to pay greater attention to customer satisfaction, and others may be simply interested in reining the churn rate. What exactly do you want to achieve? This will help you figure out the right features and tools into your call center software solutions. Do a brainstorming keeping your staffs, managers and decision makers in the loop. Give weightage to their opinions while finalizing your product.
List challenges faced by your customers
Remember, impediments are everywhere. Sometimes you are able to figure them out easily while sometimes not and the realization comes at a time when it’s too late to combat with. If you already own a call center, you might be acquainted with a few of them. The best approach to list challenges is to read the customer experience. Follow the journey of the customer from getting into your network to quitting, and everything in between. Track the delivery system of your business, and see how customers approached, reacted and what they got from you, and last but not least, were they satisfied with your attempts or services.
List challenges faced by your agents
Assess the experience of your people, i.e. agents, supervisors and managers at workplace with the particular operation they are into, and its components. They will give you significant insights as what they need and what they exactly need to deliver their best. Get the right contact center software solutions comprising valuable features and tools as per their need, and also make sure that they are able to harness the capabilities of the built-in tools to the fullest. They should have quick access to customers’ information that they need and at the time when they need. Let them access KPI (Service level, average speed of answer (ASA) and average handle time (AHT), etc.) details, customer feedback scores and quality scores from the quality desk anytime. This will keep them on their toes.
Assess the possibility of customization
How do you want to respond to your prospects and customers: just through a voice-based system or a unified communication system that facilitates multi-channel interactions via voice, email, chat, social media, fax and voice mail? Or want them to seek solutions from your auto-attendant and knowledgebase? The chosen call center software solution should be competent in meeting the expectations of prospects and customers as and when they arise. Also let them have a say on how your call center helpdesk works as that would eventually reflect nothing but the performance of your call center software solution.
Assess the possibility of integration
What kind of information you need, and will need to serve your customers? Is your CRM software sufficient in facilitating all the information that you need, or do you want to access information from other silos or channels as well? If you nodded favoring the latter, then you would like to have some add-on or new applications into your call center software suit. Thus, your call center software solution should be flexible to embrace all that you need or may need. Does your call center solution bear the right integration feature? Not sure? Get answer from the provider.
Assess the business-hour flexibility
Is your software solution competent in dealing with the varying level of call volume against different business-hour slots from the beginning of the day to its end? Are your agents equipped with the right features and tools to respond to your callers efficiently anytime? Are your customers getting the right information and resolve whenever they connect with your desk? If you are in a dilemma then it’s the time to demand for flexibility in your call center software solutions to make sure that your customers don’t have to struggle to access your services and your people are always there to answer them. You should be able to configure business hours against each helpline number that you own. You should have the flexibility of routing calls to the preferred devices of your agents, and you should be ready to go the extra mile, i.e. to provide resolution to callers beyond the business hours, if the need arises.
Assess the level of personalization
Enhancing customer experience is a must in today’s era and personalization of call center services is one of the various ways, this is what scholars, customer service experts and business heads believe. This brings the customer and agent both in their comfort zone and eases business transactions and helps the brand to build a healthy rapport with their customers, which is also dubbed as customer loyalty in the parlance of customer service.
Evaluate TCO (total cost of ownership)
Like any other business assets, a call center software solution also comes at a cost. However, most of the times, entrepreneurs consider just the getting started cost, i.e. installation and deployment, which is one-time cost. They miss to reckon upgrade and maintenance costs which are often periodic or recurring in nature. Cloud based call center software solutions are known for maintaining an edge in terms of affordability over the on-premise solution. However, as an aspirant, it’s your responsibility to keep the right estimate of one-time and recurring costs. The calculation of TCO should be done over a prolonged duration or time slot, say for a year, two, three or so on, and business dynamics or evolving business demands must be kept into account. A solution that appears cheaper in the first year, might go costlier with times say in the 2nd or 3rd years, while a solution that appears dearer in the beginning can alleviate your financial burden in the coming times.
Evaluate operating expense
Keeping a tab on operating expense is a must-do task and that should be a periodic phenomenon. Besides assessing expenses incurred on staff and labor and other tangible aspects, you must ensure that your call center software solution is delivering the warranted performance. Because any failure on its part would mean compromising with profits. Spot trends linked with call abandonment, customer-satisfaction, customer churning, repeat queries or customers, availability of the service, compliance costs, etc. to make sure you have a strong grip on the operating cost.
Review performance
Nothing is constant in the call center industry, remember, survival of the fittest, this is the only theory that rules here. Keep reviewing the performance of the adopted call center software solutions on regular basis. Keep a tab on the customer and agent experience as what is working and what’s not. Keep your software vendor updated regarding the same. It would help you figure out shortcomings and seek remedy well in time
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