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:
- Agent utilisation
- 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. - 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.
- With silos:
- Customer contact history
- 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. - 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
- With silos:
- Agent visibility across all media
- 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. - 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.
- With silos:
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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Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)
CCaaS for subscribers – global service, with no upfront costs
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Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners
Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software
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Contact Center Platform – Enterprise
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
Small/ Medium Business
Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves
By Industry
Customer Service
Connect quickly to well equipped agents
Market Research
Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration
Debt Collection
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