Tags: Contact Center

How Artificial Intelligence Can Take Customer Service to New Heights

Posted by Jessica Andrews on Posted in Analytics, Cloud, Contact Center, Customer Experience, Hospitality Tagged , , , ,

A Look at the New Interaction Analytics and Evaluator AI Features in UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE

You have probably heard some of the recent buzz around Contact Center Artificial Intelligence (AI) – how it is the wave of the future for Contact Center technology and smart business. Emily Potosky, Senior Research Principal for Gartner’s Customer Service & Support practice, describes in the 2022 Gartner report entitled “3 Ways AI Benefits Customer Service Organizations” that “Customer service and support leaders are optimistic about the value AI can provide and plan to substantially increase their adoption of AI capabilities over the next two years.” At the same time, she explains how there are conflicting messages about the real benefits of AI and the right solutions in which to invest. According to the report, insights, user experience, and process improvement are three key ways that AI can benefit customer service organizations going forward.

Contact Centers as Critical Touchpoints

As you certainly know, your business thrives on creating and retaining satisfied customers. Your Contact Center is a critical customer touchpoint, where the quality of your interactions can determine whether a customer becomes a passionate, lifelong company advocate or chooses to exit your customer base forever. This is why the power of AI to offer accurate insights into your Contact Center’s daily customer interactions is an appealing way to maintain oversight and drive continuous improvement for customer service, experiences, and processes.

Consider the immense value it would have if your organization could gather meaningful, actionable insights from the voluminous inbound and outbound calls your agents handle each day. Your collection of customer conversations holds tremendous value. However, no one in your organization has the time to review each and every customer conversation manually, and random sampling will simply provide an incomplete picture. The beauty of AI is that it makes the impossible possible.

Gather Actionable Insights and Enhance Customer Experiences with UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE

UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE from NEC is a Contact Center as a service (CCaaS) solution offering not only the benefits of enhanced call center functionality and remote-office flexibility for a low monthly fee per user, but also a powerful suite of AI features that are reason enough to move your entire Contact Center to the cloud today.

The Interaction Analytics feature for ENGAGE uses Artificial Intelligence to enable Contact Center supervisors and your leadership team to easily identify and focus on those conversations that matter the most to your business. By analyzing and tagging customer conversations for sentiment and designated keywords, the guesswork eliminated. Supervisors can gather powerful insights about customer experiences, review recorded and transcribed conversations of interest, act quickly to address trends or issues they see, and move your business ahead of customer demands and expectations. Insights from ENGAGE Interaction Analytics can also be leveraged to help with coaching and training employees and improving customer satisfaction overall.

Evaluator, another AI-powered tool for ENGAGE, utilizes sentiment analysis to monitor the performance of frontline agents and helps supervisors to easily identify those agents requiring additional training or coaching, allowing them to act instantly on specific conversations as needed. The tool also allows supervisors to provide constructive feedback to agents and for agents to respond to this feedback within the application, as a way to build employee skills and improve customer service levels and retention rates.

The benefits of AI can extend to every area of your business, through an effective keyword tagging strategy. For example, a customer service manager could stay informed of any conversations containing keywords like “cancel” or “unhappy,” to see how frontline users are handling these difficult conversations. Sales and marketing could flag competitor names or review conversations that have been flagged for positive or negative sentiments to identify new product value propositions or customer pain points. Product development could tag for keywords like “broken” or “missing,” to identify opportunities for product improvements or new features.

ENGAGE: Real Benefits, The Right Solution

Salesforce quote

According to a recent research study conducted by Salesforce, 88% of customers indicate that the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services, and 94% indicate that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to purchase again. These customer statistics are really not surprising, but definitely help to explain why the right AI solution for any Contact Center needs to offer the real benefits of insights, user experience, and process improvements – as the Gartner report mentioned earlier explains. ENGAGE Interaction Analytics and Evaluator AI are the right solution for tapping into the wealth of information that is currently hiding in your daily customer interactions – insights that will allow your Contact Center and business to continually improve, create positive customer experiences, and soar to new heights.

Ready to learn more about UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE?

Contact Us Today

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Fill out the form, and we will get back with you.

Stop Struggling With Global Connectivity

Posted by Joe Salisbury on Posted in Cloud, Customer Experience, Intelligent Call Routing Tagged , , , ,

International call routing should be simple but it isn’t.

Take for instance a U.S. phone call to a call center in Delhi, India. Before reaching that destination, this call will bounce around … going through Tokyo, Singapore, then Bangalore before finally arriving in Delhi.

Not only is this costly and involves numerous disparate carriers but indirect routing leads to such issues as call latency and poor service quality. Then there are the compliance and regulatory challenges between and within countries to be concerned about. And this call hopping is common practice for international calls. Not ideal when looking to build or maintain a brand reputation or a global business.

Is there an alternative … yes there is!

Imagine achieving effortless international and multi-national connectivity. Where simple call paths and quality replace the complexity of complicated and costly global communications. Where a single contract and U.S.-based management ends the frustration and the inconsistency of internationally calling.

NETWORK CONNECTGlobal Orchestration – powered by NETWORK CONNECT – simplifies global telecommunications by delivering international U.S.-based calls directly to their destination anywhere in the world. No more contending with call hopping from one country to another, no assorted carriers, nor excessive costs or poor performance.

Instead Global Orchestration delivers:

  • Direct calling paths
  • Optimal call quality
  • Dramatic cost savings
  • One global bill
  • Managed compliance and regulations

All consolidated into one contract and a single support contact.

Its global connectivity made simple

Global Orchestration – powered by NETWORK CONNECT – is an innovative call routing solution. You work with just one provider – us – for your international carrier services and support as we consolidate over 375+ U.S. and global carriers into a single consumable provider-neutral service.

Call traffic becomes more direct, transparent and extremely dependable with five-nines reliability. Plus you can get started right away without the need to change any day-to-day operations and with little to no upfront costs.

  • M2M and AI algorithm-based call routing automatically directs calls to the best quality-of-service and most direct path
  • A single pane of glass management interface provides insight into your entire voice network with visibility down to the individual call regardless of where in the world

Take a closer look at what’s possible

Stop struggling

Let us show you how our global presence and our unmatched carrier diversity can transform your global reach and brand reputation.

Join us for a no-obligation lunch and learn demo and an assess of your current calling plan.

You Have Choices . . . In How To Improve Your Contact Center

Posted by Joe Salisbury on Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Intelligent Call Routing, Unified Communications Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

With our world increasingly becoming multi-channeled, companies – especially larger organizations with call centers – must come to terms with this.  Whether by text, chat, email, social or phone, support agents must be empowered to engage with customers in the way the customer wants and do it seamlessly regardless of contact choice.

Such agility doesn’t come easy, especially for contact centers managed in-house or at large enterprises where the complexity of on-site, remote and even overseas operations can impede highly integrated and consistent experiences.

So what can be done …

The most obvious choice is to concentrate on the customer experience. Smart companies are doing this by unburdening themselves from the technical aspect of contact center management by moving to the cloud.  Cloud Contact Center as a Service solutions – such as those provided by NEC UNIVERGE BLUE® – deliver relevant multi-channeled environments that integrate telephony, collaboration, responsiveness, security and transparency into a single, fully managed and interconnected ecosystem.UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT

Some of the value we bring includes:

  • Interactive voice response wizards, voice prompts, customized call journeys and self-serve call management that make the customer experience crazily simple to implement, change and maintain
  • AI interactive analysis with sentiment tagging and automated phrase alerts for insight into trending customer requests and reactive agent amendments
  • Automatic call distribution synchronized to specific functions, regions, time of day and organization or industry-specific criteria for faster and more direct handling
  • Multi-channel options like chat, email and text to take the conversation beyond voice easily
  • Customizable desktop and browser agent clients that effortlessly integrate with standard CRM platforms and critical business apps for broad and intuitive access to vital information and resources
  • Call monitoring to help assess agent performance so reps are always ready to meet incoming requests and service gaps are quickly filled
  • Status alerts for heighten visibility into call center performance to improve staffing levels, conditions and availability

Hesitant or unable to totally transform …

Cloud adoption doesn’t have to be an all or nothing business directive.  Take for instance NEC’s partnership with T-Metrics and our ability to deliver an advanced blended omni-channel contact center solution – with comprehensive cloud-based services – that sits on top of existing infrastructure.
UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT

By integrating with most unified communications systems, cloud contact center adoption and expansion is easy to achieve and without having to replace existing or still valued tech stacks.

This is ideal for organizations with current contact centers or those  looking to build highly responsive, productive and cost efficient call centers but without having to contend with a major overhaul.

There’s even disaster recovery from the cloud …

Imagine the ability to move 1-800 and contact center numbers from one carrier to another instantaneously during an outage, ensuring inbound call continuity. This way customers can access agents and support without disruption.

It is possible with NEC NETWORK CONNECT Toll-Free Dynamic Protection – our cloud-managed disaster recovery solution for toll-free connectivity. Our service provides inbound call continuity by programmatically moving 1-800 numbers from a nonworking carrier to a working one. Our built-in inbound failover provides optimal toll-free and contact center resiliency by circumventing issues that are the root cause of downtime and outages and protecting against poor service quality.

This innovative toll-free protection service is easy to deploy, cloud-managed, and comes with no or minimal upfront cost and five-nines reliability. It also provides operational cost efficiency due to our carrier plan’s wholesale pricing.

Want to learn more …

Let us show you what’s possible and would work best for your organization with a no-obligation demo of our cloud contact center services and a free gap analysis of your current contact center environment.

Contact Us Today

Using Cloud Contact Center Technology to Improve the Customer Experience

Posted by Jim Cubby on Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Customer Experience, Servers and Storage, Unified Communications Tagged , , , , , ,

A positive Customer Experience depends upon a few critical elements. Having a streamlined Customer Journey process in place to effectively segment and route customer inquiries, to staff members (agents) that are best skilled and equipped to render the appropriate service or support, the first time. This results in an outcome (resolution) that should require little Customer Effort.

Sounds easy enough, yet businesses continue to struggle in making it easy for customers to conduct business with their organization.

The belief that having someone… anyone… partially skilled to answer a customer call was sufficient enough, is the new recipe for churn.

Today, 89% of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience – up from just 36% in 2010. But while 80% of companies believe they deliver “super experiences,” only 8% of customers agree. In other words, companies have a long way to go. And, that means there is tremendous opportunity to disrupt a competitor or gain market share in an industry. Shep Hyken – Forbes

For customers, the reasons really don’t matter. If it is deemed cumbersome and the Customer Effort is HIGH, the Customer Experience will be low, which of course can easily erode Loyalty and your revenue suffers. Customers want answers fast and in the most efficient way. That’s the American Way!

What’s driving the rate of change with respect to incorporating a Cloud Contact Center with an emphasis on Customer Experience (CX) within organizations today?

Some of the most common responses from speaking with Customers and channel partners over the past 3 years include: Business Growth by means of Customer Retention, Growth (Upselling/Cross-Selling), Referrals. Reduction of Staff (Agent) Turnover, Leveraging Data Insights to Handle More with effectively Less. Customers are seeking to Monitor/Manage by way of Business Outcomes and not legacy only Metrics.

Some Customer Experience (CX) observations that I think you’ll relate to/with:

A few interesting things.

  • It started with the early adopters, before Digital Transformation was a thing.
  • Cloud Contact Center initiatives propagated from being a Future IT Project Consideration to a Business Sponsor’s Speed to Market Weapon of Choice
  • Digital Transformation continued to surge as top planning initiative amongst executive leadership (CEO/CIO/COO/CFO/RO)
  • Speaking of surge, the pandemic (COVID I & II) accelerated the Cloud adoption model and gave most businesses a taste of WFH (Work from Home)
  • Schools and Parents learn about Distant / Online Learning really fast!
  • A frenzy of UCaaS/CCaaS acquisitions and strategic alliances emerge in the market
  • Some of the remaining blue chip hardware centric manufacturers of communication systems (PBX) exited the scene. A few limiting procurement through a subscription-based only model to further attempt to isolate them from future churn
  • We witnessed an additional wave or two of acquisitions and strategic alliances amongst Cloud Contact Center Technology (CCaaS) and UCaaS providers. Primary focus to balance and strengthen their portfolio and GTM strategies centered around single-pane of glass (unified applications)
  • Work from Home (WFH) adoption continues to grow, as employment of skilled “Available” staff (agents) become harder to source (hire). We’ve learned that Talent demands Tools.
  • Logistic Challenges to Supply Pent Up Demand compounded by Inflation makes for some interesting Customer Reviews. The Power of Online Reviews and the Suggested Customer Experiences of others (Good or Bad) impacts the bottom line
  • The Battlefield for Customer Loyalty affects ALL Businesses

CX Cliff Notes

Every Business wants Happy Customers and Profitable Growth
Loyalty of these Happy Customers is what drives Profitable Growth
Customer Experience drives Customer Loyalty

So… What Drives the Customer Experience?

Making it EASY and EFFORTLESS for Customers to Conduct Business with You (Customer Effort)

Through Effective Planning to Optimize the Customer Journey

By Enabling Staff / Agents with Appropriate Tools and Relevant Customer Information, that support Personalized Customer Interactions

Via Trained Staff / Agents that can easily Collaborate with Co-workers to Quickly Address Customer Inquires, the First Time.

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a single-item metric that measures how much

effort a customer has to exert to get an issue resolved, a request fulfilled, a product

purchased/returned or a question answered.

So where do customers go to find CX enabled solutions that better meet customer expectations while making their operations more efficient.

Customers typically have several channels when contacting organizations—email, chat, phone and even social media. Despite the choices, research shows that the phone call is still the preferred method of communication.1

A positive customer experience depends on having a streamlined process in place to handle incoming calls. Customers want answers fast and in the most efficient way.

Several common reasons cause a business to either mishandle calls or fail to answer calls altogether. Unexpected or seasonal volume can mean there’s not enough staff to handle the calls. Live agents might not be available after hours. Or perhaps the areas of responsibility of “who handles what” are not clearly defined.

For customers, the reasons really don’t matter. The customer experience suffers if they hear an annoying busy signal, get put on a long hold, or worst of all, get disconnected before their questions can be answered. Luckily, new technology is available to help organizations manage these and other issues while also enabling a more improved and often a more personalized customer experience.

Setting Up Call Queues

Call queues offer a way to handle incoming calls more efficiently. As part of a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution, call queues give the contact center a means to segment and route incoming calls based on information provided, such as reason for the call or priority level.

Specific queue segments can be configured to offer callback options or enable callers to leave messages on a specific voicemail box for after-hours inquiries. Pre-recorded messages can provide general information, including business hours, current outages or promotions. These multiple call queue options help organizations better meet customer expectations while making their operations more efficient.

Self-service Options

Intelligent call routing (ICR) is another way of effectively handling incoming calls. These options ensure the right agent answers a customer’s call. Using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems, contact centers can optimize the flow of customer interactions. When configured correctly, these systems help boost sales, reduce churn and increase customer satisfaction by making sure interactions are quickly and efficiently routed, handled and reported.

The automated IVRs interact with callers to gather information and route calls to the appropriate recipient. Examples of self-service prompts include:

  • Initial greetings and welcome messages
  • Options for language preference
  • Answers to common questions (hours of operation, location, access to personal account data)
  • Choices for customer actions (cancel an appointment, place an order, speak to someone in a specific department)

Giving customers a straight-forward way to address tasks, such as checking an account balance or paying a bill, enables customer self-service without using a live agent. It can also provide customer access to information during off hours, such as personal account data. If a problem or question goes beyond the offered menu options, an IVR system quickly leads the caller to the most relevant agent available, providing more personalized service.

Benefits of Contact Center Automation

Automated contact center systems benefit companies as well as their customers. Improving customer interactions through call queues and IVR, creates more efficient contact center operations, saving time for customers and contact center agents alike. Self-service options help eliminate the frustration of long hold times and enable a company to serve customers after hours and on holidays. Companies won’t miss a customer call, which ultimately help sales and creates a better customer experience benefitting your company as well as your customers.

NEC offers UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE, our cloud-based contact center solution. ENGAGE uses IVR to give your customers options on how they want issues to be resolved and enables them to obtain the right information or to engage with the right agent for a personalized experience. What makes UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE different from other offerings is that configuration and deployment is simple. Using the user-friendly and intuitive wizard, Easy-IVR gives organizations the power to build highly customized IVRs that drive business and improve customer interactions. Non-programmers can either build an IVR or enhance an existing one through simple, easy steps.

To learn more about NEC’s contact center offerings, fill out the Contact Us form below or visit our website .

Source:
“40 Customer Service Stats to Know in 2021,” Swetha Amaresan, HubSpot, 6/9/21

Contact Us Today

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Fill out the form, and we will get back with you.

Is Your Customer Service At Risk?

Posted by Joe Salisbury on Posted in Contact Center, Customer Experience, Intelligent Call Routing Tagged , , , ,

So much depends on your company’s 1-800 numbers and call center.  Periodic outages, dropped calls and poor signal service can leave a lasting negative impression.  Such incidents aren’t easy to recover from, tarnishing your brand name and possibly even leaving your organization scrambling if a disappointing experience goes viral.

What is your disaster recovery plan for Toll-Free Number (TFN) connectivity?

Lacking such a plan could be a costly financial and reputational mistake for your organization.

What to do …

Imagine having the ability to move your 1-800 and contact center numbers from one carrier to another instantaneously during an outage, ensuring inbound call continuity. This way your customers can access your agents and their support with no disruption.

It’s totally doable …

NETWORK CONNECTWith NETWORK CONNECT Toll-Free Dynamic Protection – our disaster recovery solution for toll-free connectivity – call traffic is protected regardless of carrier outages at your location. Our built-in out-dial and inbound failover provides optimal toll-free and contact center resiliency by circumventing issues that are the root cause of downtime and outages while protecting against poor service quality.

  • NETWORK CONNECT’s M2M and AI algorithm-based call routing automatically directs out-dial calls to the best quality-of-service from over 375 U.S. and international carriers.
  • Our Toll-Free Dynamic Protection Service provides inbound call continuity by programmatically moving your 1-800 numbers from a non-working carrier to a working one.

This innovative toll-free protection service is easy to deploy, cloud-managed and comes with no or minimal upfront cost. It also provides operational cost efficiency due to our carrier plan’s wholesale pricing.

NETWORK CONNECT platform of services provides five-nines reliability, optimizes cost, and adds an extra layer of service assurance without the need to change any day-to-day operations. Additionally, it provides a single pane of glass management interface for your entire voice network, with visibility down to the individual call level.

Want to learn more …

Explore firsthand how we can protect the integrity of your major customer touchpoints with uninterrupted access from everywhere and in the most proficient and cost-efficient way possible.

Request your no-obligation toll-free disaster recovery lunch and learn demo to get started.

Contact Us Today