Make Your Contact Center Future Ready with Cisco and Digital Channel Integration

Customers interact with businesses through a variety of channels, and the phone is just one of them. Today, customers have gone digital. They rely on digital channels for their needs – from the most basic to advanced, and this reliance also extends to customer support and service. They expect their businesses to support them on the channels of their choice, such as phone, email, chat, etc. Success for your contact centers today translates to adjusting their services and operations to changing customer needs and also preparing for the future in light of emerging technological innovations.

This blog explores the need to integrate Cisco Finesse UCCX, UCCE, and PCCE Contact Center with digital channels. It highlights the need to unify your digital channels via an omnichannel approach and ensure the productivity of your Cisco Contact Centers.

Digital Contact Center: What and Why?

In today’s age and time of rapidly evolving technologies, most of us would assume that contact centers are digital by default, but that’s not the case. Of course, most contact centers have deployed tools and technologies that you might think make them digital, but there’s a big difference.

Let’s compare two contact centers. Both of them have deployed a chat functionality on their website. But one of them also uses an artificially intelligent chatbot that can cater to low-level inquiries and escalate the complex ones to a live agent. This can also extend to the use of skills-based routing for better resource allocation and omnichannel implementation for a seamless transition from one channel to the next.

So, being digital is more than just having some tools at your disposal. It also means reaping the right outputs in terms of efficiency and revenue.

Valuable Role of Digital Channels in Cisco Contact Center

Digital disruption has picked up speed and is transforming the way businesses deliver customer service. People are becoming comfortable with the idea of self-service, and as digital channels mature, we believe their role can be extended to mainly three areas:

• Enabling experiences through assisted channels such as Webchat and CoBrowsing
• Paving the way for an omnichannel experience by unifying different channels
• Ensuring personalization that seems to be lost in the absence of face-to-face interactions

Digital channels are being increasingly used across industries such as retail, healthcare, finance, and so on because of the convenience and accessibility they offer. In some ways, they have become integral to how companies interact with their customers. They are not just bridging the gap between customers and companies but also helping contact centers evolve so they can deliver superior customer experiences, unified interactions, and personalized services.

Phone Support is Still Relevant in the Multi-channel World

While voice channels are traditional, they are a crucial part of contact centers. One reason for this is because people want to talk to people. A lot of things can be automated, but as soon as something goes wrong, people want to pick up a phone and talk to someone who can help them.

A recent Statista report revealed that in the US, 44% of customers preferred phone support to other forms of contacting customer service.

No matter the advancements in technology, nothing can beat a human voice that empathizes with customers, and this is precisely what makes phone support hold a firm spot in the customer support landscape.

However, there are other channels that have created their own unique space when it comes to customer support. Let’s understand each of these.

Digital Channels and Cisco Contact Center: Underlying Challenges and Opportunities

Considering the valuable role that digital channels play in modern contact centers, it’s essential for businesses to leverage these. Integrating these digital channels with your Cisco Contact Center can allow you to cater to customer demands comprehensively. Here, we explore the challenges and opportunities underlying each channel.

Cisco and Live Chat for Real-time Assistance

With Live Chat, businesses and customers can connect in real time. Customers can reach out to businesses proactively and receive immediate assistance from agents while browsing the web pages. Integration of the Live Chat channel with your Cisco Contact Center can allow your agents to extend real-time assistance.

Email and Cisco Integration for Swift and Informative Communication

When the world today has clearly become mobile-focused, and there is no dearth of alternative channels, how much importance does email as a communication channel hold? The answer is significant.

As per a Hubspot study, 62% of customers prefer to communicate via email, and only 42% prefer other communication channels.

Why is that? The reason is that integrating your Cisco Contact Center with email as a customer support channel saves a lot of time by eliminating the entire hold-on-wait scenario. Customers can also keep track of their entire interaction history.

⦿ Going Beyond the Traditional Email Setup

Email channels have their own set of challenges in terms of inconsistent services. Especially in a hectic contact center environment, emails are overlooked. Failure to provide faster support on the email channel naturally shoots up the incoming volume on other channels. Here’s how you can make email break the shackles of traditional setups:

⦿ AI-enhanced Email Routing and Prioritization

The implementation of advanced AI algorithms can help contact centers reduce reliance on manual assignments or basic rules. AI can help in analyzing the content, context, and sentiment of the incoming email, and that too in real-time. This intelligent routing can help assign emails to the most appropriate agents and departments based on their skills and availability. This way, urgent emails can be addressed promptly, reducing the average response time and improving customer satisfaction.

⦿ Proactive Engagement

Traditionally, the role of an email is considered reactive, but with advancements in technology, this can be turned around. Using automated email campaigns, contact centers can reach out to customers with relevant information and product updates and get their feedback. This can create a feedback loop within the email ecosystem and allow them to adjust their services as per changing customer needs.

Cisco and CoBrowse for Guided Customer Support

A lot of times, voice and chat channels are not the ideal communication platforms to assist a customer. Also, many customers may not prefer to use “how-to guides” as they can be time-consuming to read and may not contain solutions to the problem at hand. CoBrowse is a real-time digital assistance tool that allows agents and customers to be on the same page. Integration of Cisco Contact Center and CoBrowse allows agents to control the customer’s browser or a specific tab they are currently working on.

Cisco and Video Chat for Face-to-Face Communication

Lack of in-person or personal interaction can be a big impediment to good customer service. Voice channels eliminate the friction and can help agents provide personalized recommendations and product demonstrations and tailor their sales pitch for the best outcomes.

In fact, customer preference for video support has increased since the pandemic by a whopping 89%.

By enabling humanized communication, voice chat can foster authentic relationships between agents and customers.

Precision and Speed via SMS and Cisco Integration

SMS has proven itself to be an effective method of communication for many reasons:

• Most people do not answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize; this is not the case with SMS. Approximately • 98% of messages are, and 90% are read within seconds.
• The average cost of sending an SMS is far less than the cost per call.
• When it comes to handling bulk communication, there is a limit on the number of calls a single agent can handle.  SMS, however, allows time-efficient mass communication
• SMS can be sent instantly, saving customer frustration by not making them wait for long in queues.

Integrating SMS with the Cisco Contact Center can make the agent’s job easier because all message interactions in the conversation are attached to the customer’s case. Customers can be assisted without waiting for long on hold, and agents can handle multiple customers simultaneously.

Facilitating the Omni-Channel Experience in Cisco Contact Centers

Each of the channels mentioned above has its own benefits and presents the contact center with a unique set of opportunities. However, when it comes to optimizing the Cisco Contact Center, a multi-channel approach may slow down agents and fail to meet customers’ requirements for prompt and personalized assistance. Let’s understand why.

• Multiple channels existing in isolation can take up agents’ time in switching between channels to address customer needs.
•  It is challenging to ensure consistency in customer quality across disconnected channels.
• A multi-channel approach can also significantly shoot up operational costs as you would require a different human resource to handle each channel.
• Since conversation context is not carried to the next channel, customer experience would suffer a great deal.

An omni-channel strategy resolves these concerns by bringing all your channels on a single platform. Here’s how adopting an omnichannel strategy can redefine customer interactions and elevate Cisco Contact Center performance:

Wrap up

Get your Cisco Contact Center on track of productivity and efficiency with NovelVox Omni-channel solution. Bring all communication channels on a single platform and tackle the complexities of catering to each channel with a separate human resource. Stay on top of conversation context and deliver top-notch customer service to your customers.

Meet and exceed customer expectations in the dynamic age of digital communications with NovelVox.