Do Your Media Channels Blend Seamlessly?

July, 2017

When SLAs are breached agents need to be deployed accordingly, but what happens when the channels are handling different media channels?

A new idea?  Step back a minute.  Remember the days when call blending was all the rage?  Any self-respecting vendor claimed that they could blend inbound and outbound voice queues.

Just to remind ourselves…

…. call volume builds up on an inbound campaign, breaching service targets. The system looks for agents with the right skills and finds them on an outbound campaign. An algorithm then starts up which assesses matters such as outbound calls in progress, how many agents are needed on the inbound campaign and without human intervention moves one or more agents across from the outbound campaign to the inbound campaign in an orderly way. Result – SLA on the inbound campaign back under control.

Sounds straight forward, but for the operation to work effectively it means that the software must have effective control of both the inbound and the outbound activities, and that these are not siloed activities.

Now fast forward to today…

Omnichannel management is all the rage and, increasingly, call centers manage queues not just for voice, but for email, chat and SMS. What price blending now – and is it still relevant?

Well, some call center activities are undoubtedly siloed and agents will be focusing on just one activity, be it chat, outbound voice or email. That’s OK for some – but in the call center of tomorrow supervisors will want multi-skilled agents who can handle all media channels to respond to shifts in the patterns of communications. The customer will be king and will dictate how the call center responds to him.

Not only will agents have wider skills but crucially, call centers can’t rely on siloed media channels any more. Depending on workloads there will be growing demand to shift agents around to keep SLAs in check and make sure that customer response times are managed properly.

The way to do this is by blending across all media channels, hence the term multimedia blending.

Multimedia blending

Your solution may manage all media channels but the key to blending is that the software does this seamlessly, so that the blending algorithm can kick in as soon as SLAs get out of control. Be aware of any “multimedia solution” where you have to manually modify an agent or queue to keep SLAs under control.

If you want to offer a competitive service to your customers in the future, it is wise to be prepared. In the coming world of customer service, multiskilled agents and automatic or seamless multimedia blending are going to be the norm.

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

  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

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

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

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

  • 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