Contact Queues Without Walls

July, 2014

The omnichannel/ multimedia/ multichannel approach has significant advantages in terms of keeping agent efficiency and customer satisfaction high, and customer effort low.

If your contact center handles many types of media – voice, email, chat, social media, etc – chances are that your agents are segregated so that each pool, or silo, only handles one type of interaction. Whether this is by choice or not, you are probably missing out on productivity, putting SLAs at risk, and/ or struggling to deliver a rounded and satisfying customer experience.

But help is at hand. There are technology designs that can help you achieve better results with the same resources. One of these is the omnichannel/ multimedia/ multichannel approach (pick your favourite buzzword). With this, the walls between contact queues are broken down, and agents can flow freely between them. Sessions of all media channels are handled and routed centrally, and all data generated is collected in a central store.

Here are 3 major areas where an omnichannel approach gives significant benefits over the siloed approach:

  1. Agent utilisation
    1. With silos:
      Forecasting is critical in scheduling the right number of agents to meet SLAs. But even the best prediction will be wrong some of the time. During slack periods agents may be sitting around waiting, or if demand spikes, they may be swamped and unable to meet SLAs. Any movement of agents to cover demand must be done manually, possibly from a pool of standby agents, and may have knock-on effects. Any way around, wastage occurs.
    2. With omnichannel:
      Forecasting is less critical. During slack periods, agents can be kept busy with less time-critical work, e.g. email. At peak times, they can be moved up the value chain in response to demand, and back again when demand allows. Agent movement is automatic. Agent wait times are low, and SLAs are rarely under threat.
  2. Customer contact history
    1. With silos:
      Customer contact history for each media channel is stored separately, so a single view of the customer is often out of reach. In order to find out if a customer has previously sent an email, text, etc, agents must log in to the relevant system – time-consuming for the agent and frustrating for the consumer. Or an aggregator application must be bought/ created that queries the separate systems and gives a unified answer.
    2. With omnichannel:
      History of customer contact across all media channels is kept centrally. This 360 degree view enables
      • a faster agent response, using a single system
      • an agent response more tailored to each customer, and made in the light of all previous contact
      • strategic analysis of the customer journey, e.g. discovery of what prompted customer actions
  3. Agent visibility across all media
    1. With silos:
      If agents are reassigned manually, it can be difficult to find out how agents have been spending their time on. Reports must be generated by separate systems, and compared by hand. This makes it very hard to spot any behaviours that need correcting, or opportunities for coaching.
    2. With omnichannel:
      All event/ outcome data is stored centrally. This enables centralised reporting across all media channels, which can be analysed to see how to improve agent efficiency, and therefore customer effort and satisfaction.

The omnichannel approach may be a new way of thinking for some, old hat to others. As we have seen, it has significant advantages in terms of keeping agent efficiency and customer satisfaction high, and customer effort low, but it’s surprising how few make use of it. Contact centers that don’t measure up in these areas may quickly find themselves overtaken by more agile and holistic competitors.

What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) – multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ – rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale

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    CCaaS for subscribers – global service​, with no upfront costs

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    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

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    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc – fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Optimise agent usage and balance workloads in real-time without human intervention, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and ‘best-available’ decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

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Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

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Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

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Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care