12 Must-Have CCaaS Features that Deliver Awesome Customer Experience

The Covid-19 pandemic has skyrocketed the number of people working remotely and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever go fully back to the “old normal” of office working.   

Employees don’t need to be in an office if they are connected, available, and have the tools they need to do their job properly. This means that contact centre agents no longer need to be on-premises or have specific pieces of software installed on their computers.  

Also, customers don’t always want to contact your customer service department directly these days. They may prefer to write you an email, use web chat to communicate with you or connect on social media. As a result, the way contact centres work has changed a lot in recent years.   

For both of those reasons, adopting a Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) model is essential for present and future customer care. It increases the flexibility to quickly scale up or down and meet customer needs, while still offering a quality customer experience. 

How do you begin your CCaaS journey? 

The global contact centre solutions (CCaaS) provider market has grown substantially in recent years. Evaluating your business needs, vetting suppliers, and comparing options can be pretty challenging.   

This article will assist you in cutting through the noise and identifying the best choice for your unique business requirements.   

The first thing you should do is consider the following criteria when choosing a platform for CCaaS providers:

1. Ease of use

Choose a contact centre solution with an easy-to-use interface. You want one that can help to set up your account, integrate with your existing systems, and be up and running on the cloud solution right away.   

CCaaS solutions with an intuitive interface is important as it avoids complicated configuration or intensive user training.  

Save time and money by eliminating software, code, or other on-premise equipment for quality management and storage that aren’t core to your business. 

2. Reporting & analytics

Agents may work from a variety of places, including their homes, and across time zones if full reporting and analytics are available. A CCaaS solution providing a real-time dashboard can be an excellent tool to monitor all the key call center metrics in real-time. You can easily view how many calls are ongoing via your account at a certain point in time.   

Advanced reports allow businesses to get end-to-end visibility of every customer interaction through real-time and historical reporting. Agent performance data helps managers to identify training gaps and ensure compliance in all interactions. This will enhance customer experience and improve agent performance. 

3. Call recording and quality management

Check for CCaaS solutions that provide easy to search and quick access to call recordings, allowing you to monitor agent performance.   

With features like “Monitor” on the call of your choice, you can immediately listen in without the agent or caller knowing. This tool will help you ensure a more positive customer experience and provide data-driven feedback and coaching to your agents.   

Managers can listen to any call in real-time from their “Live Calls” dashboard. They can also escalate from silent monitoring to “barging in” to speak with all parties when necessary. This feature is ideal for training new agents, resolving disputes effectively, and case collaboration to expedite problem-solving. 

4. Real-time agent monitoring

Look out for a CCaaS solution that gives you a real-time overview of each team member’s activities. This allows you to shift resources as needed and boost productivity. 

5. Flexibility

Flexibility is the key to the modern contact center. A cloud-based solution allows businesses to communicate with customers at any time and through any channel. Agents may work from a variety of places, including their homes, and across time zones, with complete accessibility. 

6. Survey management

Best in class CCaaS solutions provide customer survey management features. For example, it’s possible to integrate IVR surveys that automatically request feedback from every interaction with a client. It’s a powerful way to keep a close eye on your customer satisfaction KPIs and NPS scores. 

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7. CRM integrations and other crucial extensions

Look for CCaaS solutions that seamlessly integrate with the CRM and Helpdesk of your choice and deliver round-the-clock support from anywhere, anytime, and on any device.   

The Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) allows one-click calling and lets you customize workflows, improve team productivity, and boost customer experience. By creating a seamless integration with your CRM or helpdesk ticketing tool, you ensure that all systems are up-to-date with the most recent call activity.

This allows service agents to easily access past call history without changing screens and log new interactions and incoming requests. 

8. Call routing

CCaaS solution offerings also enable automated contact centre workflows with advanced call distribution features. This easily connects clients with suitable agents using smart IVR. You can also perform intelligent routing of call requests to the appropriate agent using powerful business logic.   

This way, you can create a consistent Customer Experience (CX) by transferring calls to the best-fit agents and helping to divert a high volume of incoming calls to multiple departments based on preset parameters. 

9. Support with your migration to the cloud

If you are moving away from an on-premise contact centre to a cloud-based solution, you will need a vendor who can make the process as painless as possible. Look for a solution provider who can offer a phased approach if necessary, and hybrid technologies and software that can be used on any endpoint. 

10. Telecom connectivity

The vendor should be able to provide telecom connectivity as part of the contact center service, including competitive voice, and messaging. Most CCaaS providers focus just on the software aspect, which is their main area of expertise.   

They reach out to a third-party aggregator when it comes to the local connectivity layer and work with providers who hold telecom licenses and can buy minutes at wholesale rates. Very few CCaaS providers have a comprehensive network of regional connectivity. Solutions providers that do have a complete regional connectivity network can successfully tackle two region-specific challenges.  

Firstly, it enables them to offer full PSTN replacement coverage for local companies (currently, Toku is the only player in the APAC region to offer this). In other words, make sure they offer a comprehensive, country or region-specific business telephony service. Look for a service that includes guaranteed CLI (Caller Line Identity), emergency call features, and reachability to local services such as freephone numbers that are only available in the region.   

Secondly, it means that whoever connects to its PSTN replacement service does not have to deal with strict telecommunications regulations – since the CCaaS solutions provider would navigate that complexity for them. 

11. Service-level Agreement (SLA) support

Look for a vendor with the ability to support meaningful service-level agreements (SLAs) and provide open visibility into its performance. In today’s fast-moving world, you need your customer contact centre to be up-and-running as much as possible without any software failure.   

It’s imperative to look for a vendor who is committed to performance transparency. Providers that meet this requirement will have a telecom license for the markets they operate in.   

Trust is one of the most significant hurdles for customer service organizations to overcome. You need to be able to answer yes to the following question: “Can this provider manage my customer service platform better than I can?” 

12. Bring-your-own-carrier (BYOC) offering

In countries where customers still have legacy contracts or are not yet allowed to have a PSTN replacement – the ability to connect a customer’s existing carrier to the CCaaS cloud solution is critical. 

Good customer experience depends on a high-quality contact centre. For a business on a rapid growth trajectory, finding a CCaaS vendor with high guaranteed uptime and a commitment to robust reliability and redundancy is critical.   

By utilizing a CCaaS platform for your customer support team, you are opening the door to many tools, benefits, and opportunities that ensure your customers remain the top priority for years to come.