Call centres can be chaotic places. All those customers, wanting speedy resolutions about all manner of concerns. And the situation’s not been eased by the sheer variety of techniques customers can use to make contact.

However, there’s a tool that’s there to help call centres get their workload organised, with the net result being customer satisfaction. That tool’s name?Unified communications. And it’s becoming very popular.

Call centres used to be fairly straightforward. A room, full of phones, with agents all merrily dealing with customers about a relatively limited number of issues.

However, with the explosion of technology available to the average person came a concomitant surge in the number of means by which a customer could get in touch with a business. Great for customers to be able to send an email rather than call if that’s what they wanted. Not so great for a call centre still geared up primarily for phone calls. What happened to the email? It tended to get downgraded and sometimes even forgotten as the next call came in, and the next.

So, a new approach was needed.

Free as a Cloud

That new approach was cloud-based IP telephony, and unified communications was born. All of a sudden, it became possible for a call centre to effectively put all communications on the same interface.
Now, when a customer makes contact, no matter what the communication method, that customer will appear on an agent dashboard, in an orderly queue made up of a multitude of customers using a multitude of means of getting in touch.

This is fantastic for enhancing your communications, but how does this help with customer satisfaction?

1-The Choice Is Theirs

If you’re a customer who desperately needs assistance with a product, but can’t use (or can’t stand using) a phone, you’re going to want to use another method of getting in touch, whether it be email, SMS or whatever your favourite happens to be.

So you go to look up the company contact details, only to find that it’s a calls only situation, thanks very much. You’re not going to be best pleased. You’re probably going to look elsewhere. You’re going to look for a company with unified communications.

2-The Need for Speed

Whatever comms the customer uses, they want their issue dealt with in a rapid fashion. Unified communications can be set up so that customers appear on agent workflows strictly in chronological order, which should keep most people happy.

3-Smooth Operators

If a company’s agents are given effective means of organising their workloads so that everything becomes meditatively methodical rather than a random rumpus, they will be better able to deal with whatever the customer can throw at them.

Unified communications will also give the agent contextual information on the history of an issue so the customer won’t have to repeat themselves. Bliss.

A.I. can be used to spot growing trends, so that emerging issues can be flagged up to all parties. Using techniques like this, the whole operation can stay on top of developments, giving customers the very latest information.
Satisfied?

Customers expect an ever-higher level of service, so call centres have to up their game accordingly. With unified communications, you can enhance productivity, efficiency, and, more importantly, customer satisfaction.