How to Easily Integrate Unified Contact Center Solutions with Current Operations-Authority Software

How to Easily Integrate Unified Contact Center Solutions with Current Operations

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Contact center managers and operating officers face the simultaneous challenge of delivering superior customer service while dealing with legacy systems and bolted-on solutions. These aging and pieced-together solutions are not only inefficient but add complexity to providing excellent customer service, causing frustration and challenges for both customers and employees alike. Learn how implementing a unified contact center solution can solve these issues and boost efficiency.

As your business grows, you need a WFO solution that scales with the needs of the business. Yet, many companies may worry that a fully-integrated, customized, and easy-to-navigate WFO solution that scales to the growth and budget of your company is out of their reach. Unified contact center solutions can help businesses increase productivity while delivering proactive and personalized customer experiences, ultimately improving customer relations. At Authority Software, we provide the expertise to ensure your call center systems integrate seamlessly with your business, supporting the customer success journey.

Why do you need unified contact center solutions?

Unified contact center solutions provide agents with everything they need in a single, integrated desktop when tools and services are combined under one system. These unified solutions help businesses increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

Outdated and Complex Systems Waste Time and Resources

A WFO solution shouldn’t cause frustration and challenges for customer success teams, but when teams have to maneuver through various cobbled together solutions, that’s precisely what happens. The bottom line is that siloed solutions may be negatively impacting your business, wasting time, reducing productivity, and hindering your ability to perform tasks at a satisfactory level. The most common challenges associated with navigating outdated solutions include a lack of flexibility, complexity, reduced productivity, and low customer satisfaction. 

Lack of Flexibility: Contact centers need a flexible solution that can increase efficiency; yet, due to outdated and complex solutions, many contact centers cannot easily add new functionality or scale their environment to meet growing business needs. 

Complexity: Primarily the result of technology barriers, trying to consolidate data and information from disparate systems is difficult, time-consuming, and may result in information that is incomplete or unreliable. 

Reduced Productivity: When outdated systems cause agents to have incomplete or compromised customer data, customers get frustrated, and contact center agents’ productivity is severely limited. Agent productivity is hindered further if they navigate between numerous systems to serve customers. Over time, these seconds and minutes add up to significant reductions in a contact center’s productivity and negatively impact a company’s bottom line.  

Low Customer Satisfaction: Customers want personalized experiences. They expect companies to remember their preferences and deliver seamless customer interactions. Unfortunately, siloed systems frequently force customers to repeat information and lead to a slow and frustrating experience, resulting in decreased customer satisfaction. 

Unified Contact Center Solutions Deliver an Enhanced Experience  

Contact centers need modern workforce optimization (WFO) solutions to increase efficiency, productivity, and overall satisfaction. Unified contact center solutions are easy to use, reduce complexity, and are fully scalable to meet your organization’s needs. These solutions deliver valuable intelligence for accurate forecasting and scheduling, balancing the needs of both customers and contact center employees while also saving time, money, and resources.

Unified contact center solutions from Authority Software can:

  • Bring together disparate data streams
  • Ensure immediate access to all customer information
  • Incorporate legacy systems and existing data
  • Aggregate all pertinent customer information
  • Access all history during each transaction
  • Incorporate single dashboard historical reporting

Implementing a unified solution in your contact center can produce measurable benefits for your business, providing contact center teams and their leaders with vital data and actionable insights that drive business decisions. When agents have easy access to everything they need to do their job, they can shift their attention from navigating systems to more fully focusing on customers and providing them with an enhanced customer experience. 

With extensive experience within complex voice and data technology environments, Authority Software provides the expertise to ensure your unified contact center solutions integrate seamlessly with your business. This includes integration to:

  • ERP systems
  • Call center voice technologies
  • Customer support applications
  • Ecommerce systems
  • CRM applications

At Authority Software, we understand the challenges of contact centers, and we have worked to provide a fully-integrated, unified solution. A suitable contact center solution from Authority Software is agile and flexible to meet your customers’ needs throughout their journey; it is easy to deploy and backed by a team of WFO professionals.

Delivering superior customer service depends on unified contact center solutions.

Exceed customer expectations with a fully integrated, customized, and easy-to-navigate WFO solution that can help drive business efficiency and speed of service. Authority Software can help businesses increase productivity profitability and lead them to success.

Learn what’s possible with AI-enabled workforce management.

Download Your Free Guide Today

Key Takeaways

  • Unified contact center solutions are easy to use, reduce complexity, and are fully scalable to meet your organization’s needs.
  • Implementing a unified solution in your contact center can produce measurable benefits for your business.
  • Unified contact center solutions can help businesses increase productivity and improve customer relations.
  • Authority Software provides a fully integrated, unified solution that is agile, flexible, easy to deploy, and backed by a team of WFO professionals.
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Use Your Workforce Optimization Tools to Transform Efficiency and Retention

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Managing a contact center has become significantly more complicated due to inefficient technologies, increased customer expectations, and rising employee burnout. While a contact center’s purpose is to deliver quick and efficient service, doing so becomes a challenge when your contact center software isn’t fully integrated. Workforce optimization tools improve the efficiency, productivity, and performance of a company’s employees and allow a company to provide excellent customer service, leading to an overall improvement in the company’s success. 

Workforce optimization (WFO) tools are robust solutions that help businesses streamline contact center operations and combat common day-to-day challenges, allowing them to run more smoothly and effortlessly. Authority Software, a leader in contact center solutions, can help you transform efficiency and retention with a modern, easy to install, and scalable WFO solution that enables superior customer service.

What are workforce optimization tools?

Workforce optimization (WFO) tools are contact center solutions that are customizable for your unique brand and customer needs. These tools may include quality management solutions such as audio recording, screen recording, audio analytics, text analytics, and workforce management tools such as forecasting, scheduling, and performance management. These tools help businesses optimize the performance of their employees and maximize customer satisfaction.

Workforce Optimization Tools Transform Efficiency 

Most contact center managers are probably familiar with the idea, “work smarter, not harder.” That’s the exact sentiment behind workforce optimization tools. When implemented correctly, WFO tools increase productivity, reduce errors, and improve operational efficiency, which, when put together, also has the positive effect of improving customer service. 

Workforce optimization tools unite the various functions of your organization, generating the critical data and analytics that businesses need to make more informed decisions, from more accurate forecasting of future workloads to improved staff scheduling. Contact centers of all sizes can benefit from this enhanced availability of performance data and access to analytics that help organizations use real-time data to drive business decisions. 

WFO tools improve efficiency by enabling organizations to schedule skilled agents, monitor agents’ activities accurately, pinpoint performance issues, and identify productivity bottlenecks. With access to more detailed data, organizations can better predict future workload volumes, calculate the time needed to accomplish specific tasks, and schedule the necessary staff. 

Simply put, WFO tools maximize the skills of your existing workforce to enable greater efficiency. No more guesswork; WFO tools ensure teams use resources efficiently, scheduling employees based on demand, and making sure your contact center can provide the correct levels of customer service at the right times. Designed from the ground up, fully integrated workforce optimization tools from Authority Software increase productivity and enable superior service through improved efficiency. 

Workforce Optimization Tools Transform Retention 

Rather than aiding business objectives, aging workforce optimization solutions may be contributing to lost time and productivity. These outdated contact center systems demand more time and energy from your employees, with valuable time wasted on navigating and troubleshooting segregated systems, creating unnecessary stress and frustration. 

Increased efficiency and retention go hand in hand. When organizations can effectively predict future workload volumes and then accurately schedule the correct number of employees, businesses can match customer demand with employee time, avoiding inefficiencies and employee burnout. Workforce optimization tools balance the needs of customers, the contact center, and employees, making the processes better for everyone. 

Recognizing hard-working employees is a simple but powerful way that businesses can improve employee retention. Workforce optimization tools support the ability to monitor agent performance through quality management that does more than enhance adherence and consistency. It also simplifies performance reviews and makes it easier for hard-working employees to feel like their efforts are appropriately recognized. As employee satisfaction increases, so does customer satisfaction. That means that when contact centers can provide employees with the resources they need to succeed and then recognize their efforts, the customer experience improves.

Workforce optimization tools increase efficiency, productivity, retention, and overall satisfaction.

Enable your team’s effectiveness and improve retention with a modern WFO solution that supports customer success. At Authority Software, we know workforce optimization tools deliver valuable intelligence for accurate forecasting and scheduling, improving efficiency and retention while saving time, money, and resources. That’s why we have made it our mission to provide a fully integrated, customized, and easy-to-navigate WFO solution.

Learn what’s possible with AI-enabled workforce management.

Download Your Free Guide Today

Key Takeaways

  • WFO tools increase efficiency, productivity, retention, and overall satisfaction.
  • WFO tools maximize the skills of your existing workforce to enable greater efficiency.
  • WFO tools allow businesses to match customer demand with employee time, avoiding inefficiencies and employee burnout.

WFO tools from Authority Software deliver valuable intelligence for accurate forecasting and scheduling, improving efficiency and retention.

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Signs Your Workforce Optimization Software is Ready to Retire

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Technology, including workforce optimization software, plays a significant role in the success of your business. From helping you improve the customer experience to ensuring you have the right employees scheduled at the right time, workforce optimization software (WFO) is critical for operational efficiency. Replacing outdated technology can be an opportunity to embrace change and provide your business with a competitive advantage.  

However, given the importance of this technology, far too many companies are holding on to outdated software. In the end, this outdated software may ultimately be negatively impacting your businesses, wasting time, reducing productivity, and hindering your ability to perform tasks at a satisfactory level. The problem is that sometimes it can be difficult to identify when it’s time to update your workforce optimization software. 

Rather than struggling with aging, inefficient, and pieced-together solutions, Authority Software can help your business drive efficiency and speed of service within a fully integrated, a-z WFO solution. Start by discovering the key signs that your WFO software may be ready to retire. 

How do you know if your workforce optimization software is outdated?

Loss of time or money are the two leading reasons to know if your workforce optimization software is outdated. Outdated software often cannot be updated, is frequently crashing and causing downtime, reduces productivity, and may even put your business at risk for failing to adhere to certain regulatory compliances. With Authority Software WFO, business leaders get modern solutions for a modern workforce that are fully scalable and an intuitive UX based on your unique customer journey.

Employee Productivity Is Declining

Workforce optimization software should be simple. If your employees are wasting time and resources navigating outdated and complex systems, it’s a sign that your WFO software is ready to retire. Outdated software is inherently slower than a new modern solution. While at first glance, the time spent by employees waiting to resolve IT issues, such as waiting for systems to reboot or waiting for data to process, may seem inconsequential, that time quickly adds up. When lost time is calculated on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, it can become increasingly significant, causing impacts to the bottom line. And all that time spent by employees waiting on software is time that they aren’t spending working, which ultimately leads to a decline in productivity.

Employees want a better user experience for the software they rely on daily. Rather than struggling with slow processes, workforce optimization software (WFO) should empower your employees to get their job done more efficiently and effectively. Authority Software helps businesses increase productivity with an easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy WFO solution, with an intuitive user experience based on your unique customer journey. In addition to providing a better overall user experience, a newer cloud-based WFO solution can accommodate remote workers, virtual contact centers, and other rapidly changing operational requirements. 

It’s More Cost-Effective To Use Newer Technology  

Outdated software can leave your business vulnerable to costly security risks, as well as increasing maintenance costs and operating expenses. Antiquated, siloed, and bolted-together workforce optimization technology is bound to leave your employees overwhelmed and frustrated, causing a strain on company resources. With employees struggling through inefficiency and being unable to deliver customer success, outmoded software may even cause you to lose clients, income, and suppress your company’s growth. At the end of the day, investing in modern workforce optimization software may help you save money. 

Your Software Isn’t Helping You Meet Your Business Goals  

As your business grows, you need a WFO solution that scales with the needs of the business, enabling efficiency and simplicity that drive outstanding customer experiences. Unfortunately, not all tools can scale to meet the needs of your business. If you find that your WFO software is unable to adapt to your growing business needs, it’s a clear sign that your workforce optimization software is ready to retire. 

State-of-the-art WFO software should help your business:

  • increase operational efficiency
  • improve employee productivity
  • modernize existing processes
  • improve the customer experience

Authority Software helps companies meet their business goals with a fully customized WFO solution that enables superior service, efficiency, and scalability. 

Experience the ease, effectiveness, and scalability of a fully integrated, cloud-based workforce optimization solution. 

With Authority Software, business leaders no longer struggle to navigate outdated, siloed technology, leaving their company to chase competitors and deliver status quo customer experiences. Instead, up-to-date workforce optimization software can help businesses increase productivity, profitability, and success.

Learn what’s possible with AI-enabled workforce management.

Download Your Free Guide Today

Key Takeaways

  • Workforce optimization software plays a significant role in the success of your business.
  • Declining employee productivity by wasting time and resources navigating outdated and complex systems is a sign that your WFO software is ready to retire.
  • Outdated software can leave your business vulnerable to increasing maintenance costs and operating expenses.
  • WFO software that is unable to adapt to your growing business needs is a clear sign that your workforce optimization software is ready to retire.
  • Experience the ease, effectiveness, and scalability of a cloud-based workforce optimization solution from Authority Software.
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How to Deliver Superior Customer Service with Solutions for the Virtual Contact Center

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The most important aspect of a business is satisfied customers. Superior customer service in a virtual contact center is more than simply delivering a product or service on time; it’s about making life easier for consumers and anticipating their needs. 

Successful businesses do more than merely offer customers a product or service; what they really provide is a solution. Your customers have access to tens, if not hundreds, of options to choose from, which makes providing excellent customer service a top priority. In the end, the quality of a customer’s experience will determine if a customer becomes loyal or switches to another company. 

However, even with the best intentions, some businesses find themselves facing aging, inefficient, and pieced-together solutions that keep them from providing an exceptional customer experience. The key to delivering first-rate customer service is modern, scalable, and rapidly deployable WFO solutions from Authority Software that enable superior customer service.

Should I invest in solutions for a virtual contact center?

Traditional contact centers have often been seen as expensive, primarily due to expenses such as rent and hardware. The emergence of virtual contact centers has provided a lower-cost alternative for companies that offers increased flexibility, allowing agents to work remotely. With Authority Software WFO, businesses can utilize a fully integrated solution suite that is agile and flexible to meet the needs of their customers throughout their journey. 

Virtual Contact Centers Lead to Improved Customer Experiences 

Improved customer experiences begin when businesses keep customers as their focus. Don’t risk losing customers due to outdated, siloed systems that force customers to repeat information and lead to a slow and frustrating experience. Maintaining the same goals and operations of a traditional contact center, virtual contact centers have additional opportunities to help businesses deliver an exceptional customer experience, and with that, high CSAT scores. 

Virtual contact centers deliver improved customer experiences thanks to:

  • Personalization – Customers expect companies to understand their individual preferences and engage with them as individuals. Empower agents to deliver superior customer experiences with more personalized and seamless customer interactions. 
  • Faster resolutions – By equipping contact center teams with an intuitive cloud solution that eliminates the guesswork, businesses will be able to improve first call resolution rates and enable exceptional speed to customer resolutions.
  • Reduced On-Hold Time – Customers want their time to be valued, and being put on hold is often a frustrating experience. Thanks to efficient call monitoring and predictive AI, virtual contact centers can significantly reduce or eliminate on-hold time, matching the right agent to the right customer from the start.  

Cloud-based virtual contact centers (VCCs) allow businesses the opportunity to extract insights from a variety of touchpoints and deliver a more comprehensive customer experience no matter the agent’s location. As customers interact with businesses using multiple communication channels, it becomes increasingly important for these systems to be fully integrated in order to meet customer expectations and demands.

Authority Software helps companies exceed customer expectations with a fully integrated, customized, and easy-to-navigate WFO solution that enables superior service, efficiency, and scalability. 

Higher Productivity Leads to Better Customer Service

More than simply providing answers to customer questions, customer service is the support that you offer to customers, both before and after they purchase a product or service. Offering exceptional customer service is an important component for retaining existing customers and reaching new customers. One way to measure customer service effectiveness is through CSAT scores. Short for Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), this score measures the quality of customer service interactions. 

With customized tools to meet the needs of your contact center teams as well as your customer’s journey, virtual call centers can boost productivity enormously. When companies focus on having a more productive workplace, agents can get more accomplished, resolve more issues, and, most importantly, improve the customer experience. As businesses make their contact center operations more efficient, they not only increase productivity but ultimately improve their CSAT scores. Authority Software helps your company increase productivity and improve customer service with an easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy solution. 

Delivering superior customer service depends on cloud-based contact center solutions.

Solutions for virtual contact centers are necessary to improve customer service and lead your business to success. With Authority Software, contact center teams and their leaders are no longer frustrated with aging, inefficient, and pieced together solutions that keep them from delivering an exceptional customer experience. Instead, Authority Software provides a customized, scalable, and easy-to-navigate WFO solution suite that ensures superior customer service.

Learn what’s possible with AI-enabled workforce management. 

Download Your Free Guide Today

Key Points

  • Improved customer experiences begin when businesses keep customers as their focus.
  • Virtual contact centers allow businesses the opportunity to extract insights from a variety of touchpoints and deliver a more comprehensive customer experience.
  • Increase productivity and improve customer service with solutions for virtual contact centers. 
  • The key to delivering first-rate customer service is a modern, scalable, and rapidly-deployed WFO solution from Authority Software.
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A Guide to Contact Center Forecasting & Workforce Management

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Maximizing your Contact Center Forecasting Starts by Understanding the Laws of Supply and Demand.  

When measuring your contact center forecasting success, it’s easy to get caught up in reaching service and financial goals, forgetting the need to keep staffing costs down. One of the most common challenges facing workforce managers is balancing the two. Many different forecasting techniques are available, but you probably struggle with knowing which system works best for your contact center. The end goal is to balance your supply of employees with the demand of calls, emails and web chats. 

First, it is necessary to understand the law of supply and demand. Demand consists of calls, emails, web chats and other forms of communication taking place with the customer. The number of contact center employees available to assist a customer determines supply. When the demand surpasses supply, service levels reduce, employees become overwhelmed and customer satisfaction decreases. When the supply is greater than demand, service improves at the cost of advisors being paid with no work to do. The key to contact center forecasting is finding the perfect balance between your contact center’s supply and demand. 

What is Contact Center Forecasting?

Contact center forecasting is a projection process to schedule the optimal number of employees to meet the contact center’s demand. The goal is to have enough agents to meet caller needs without having too many agents being paid without any work to do. Forecasting accuracy depends on considering call volume and omnichannel interaction averages from previous years, current trends and the time of year.    

Forecasting Factors to Consider

Contact center forecasting consists of projecting the number of incoming calls and aligning them with the actual number of calls that occur. Then, managers can schedule the optimal number of contact center agents. A big part of accurately forecasting is accounting for change. Factors such as days of the week, months, seasons, holidays and time of day impact the demand of an average contact center.  

These are all regular events that impact demand, but forecasts must also consider irregular factors. These factors include variations in call volume, call time, different needs and the amount of assistance required. Contact center managers must consider regular and irregular factors to make the most accurate forecast.         

Workforce Management Integration 

Properly integrating knowledge from your workforce management system is vital to accurate forecasting. Then, you can consider historical data in the forecasting process to better understand what happened in the past. 

You must also understand how other departments operate and consider their workflows, such as meetings, training and marketing campaigns. This knowledge will enable you to understand the staffing demand of the entire organization to project the supply and demand of your contact center.  

Trends and Seasonality 

One way to consider historical data in contact center forecasting is to assess trends and seasonality. Trends can show call volume levels being consistent over the same time as previous years. Seasonality impacts forecasting similarly by considering the time of the year and holiday seasons in their projections. For example, November and December  may be a season where retail companies see an increase in calls, but accounting and insurance businesses may see a reduction as people focus on other things during the holiday season. 

Previously, forecasters used an average of the past two or three years to project call volume. Now there are more efficient ways to project through exponential smoothing. This forecasting strategy prioritizes recent years to produce more accurate forecasts. Don’t forget to remove any outliers or oddities from specific years that occurred in a unique circumstance.    

Scheduling the Right Workforce 

Once you make your forecasts and projections, it’s time to start scheduling your contact center staff. Ideally, you would always have the perfect number of agents to respond to the exact number of calls. Unfortunately, in a world of employees getting sick, running late, or unexpected call volumes due to unpredictable circumstances, changes to the schedule must occur to best meet contact center demand, achieve business goals and provide quality customer service. 

Even a schedule based on good forecasts is not final, and you should change it according to employee and contact center demand needs. The contact center manager should regularly make adjustments to ensure workforce efficiency. Automation from a workforce management system can make the adjustment process much easier by searching a database of all worker availability, looking at employee history, and comparing workforce supply with the forecasts to make better predictions in the future.      

The Key to Improved Contact Center Forecasting Starts with Optimizing Your Workforce Management System.

An outdated, siloed workforce management system is a thing of the past. Your forecasting success depends on optimizing the perfect balance between your contact center’s supply and demand. Download your free whitepaper today, and discover what’s possible with an AI-enabled workforce management system.  

Download the Guide

Key Takeaways

  • The key to contact center forecasting is finding the perfect balance between your contact center’s supply and demand. 
  • When the demand surpasses the supply, service levels reduce, employees become overwhelmed, and customer satisfaction decreases. 
  • When supply is greater than demand, service improves at the cost of advisors being paid with no work to do. 
  • Factors such as days of the week, months, seasons, holidays and time of day all impact the demand of an average contact center. 
  • Even a schedule based on good forecasts is not final, and you should change it according to employee and contact center demand needs.
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5 Keys to Improved Customer Experience with Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions

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Optimize your customer journey with cloud-based contact center software

You may understand the internal benefits cloud-based contact center solutions provide to your business, but they also impact your external customer experience. Customers expect quick response times and accurate answers to their questions. Don’t let your WFO solution be the reason customers turn elsewhere out of frustration. Improve your customer experience with cloud-based contact center solutions. 

How does a cloud-based contact center work? 

A cloud-based contact center relies on fully integrated workforce optimization solutions hosted in the cloud. These solutions provide access from anywhere to quality management systems, workforce management, customized designs, and CX applications all while delivering superior service to customers.

1. Get Better Value with the Cloud. 

Your bottom line relies on customer satisfaction and retention. Since using siloed and outdated contact center systems demand more time and energy from your employees, your team can become frustrated and worn out during customer interactions. Helping to recapture this lost time and productivity should be the chief concern of workforce optimization tools now and in the future.

With a cloud-based contact center solution, your team recovers valuable labor hours, previously wasted on navigating and troubleshooting segregated systems. A WFO solution focused on ease of use and speed of service is more likely to improve the customer experience and CSAT scores overall. Don’t let technology get in the way of day-to-day operations and limit the time you spend with your customers.  

2. Cloud-Based Contact Centers Optimize Workforce Efficiency to Meet Demand. 

If it wasn’t clear before the pandemic, it is certainly clear now that the 9 – 5 workday is history. Today, businesses must serve the 24/7 needs of consumers who expect fast, if not immediate, response times. 

Cloud-based contact center solutions ensure employees can be scheduled based on demand rather than the same hours every day. WFO software optimizes labor through algorithms that anticipate customer needs at all hours of the day. This process prepares contact center employees for spikes in customer demand. Scheduling and forecasting prepare the workforce to provide the right amount of customer service when it’s needed the most. No more guesswork. No more massive spreadsheets.  

3. Look to the Future of Customer Communication.

Customer communication has expanded from calling a single toll-free number to including digital channels, such as email, messaging, and live chats. Legacy WFO systems are pieced together segments of software that fail to meet customer needs in a world of multi-channel communication. 

Cloud-based contact center solutions provide easy-to-use and modern UX, so you can follow the customer journey from one channel to the next. Integrated technology and customized delivery connect to allow contact center agents to anticipate customer needs and stay one step ahead of demand. Cloud solutions improve CSAT scores by eliminating the guesswork and enabling exceptional speed of customer resolutions.

4. Match Agent Skills with Customer Needs. 

We’ve all experienced the agonizing frustration of being put on hold for what seems like an infinite amount of time, only to be transferred yet again by the next uninformed person we encounter. Cloud-based contact centers eliminate this frustration through call monitoring and predictive AI to efficiently match your need with an agent who has the answer. This process matches individual agent skills and knowledge with customer needs to prevent wasted time getting to the right person. By following and integrating each unique customer journey, the cloud-based system enables the right agent to match with the right customer. 

5. Ensure Continuity Between Disaster Recovery and Business Flow.  

When disaster strikes, the cloud enables software to continue operating without interruption, unlike premise-based contact center solutions. Infrastructure and data is stored offsite in a secure place to prevent the entire system from going under in the event of a disaster. Mobile-friendly features allow the contact center to be accessible from phones or any device with WIFI access, ensuring business flow continuity that isn’t possible when an onsite contact center goes down. 

In addition, cloud-based solutions provide greater security for contact centers and customer data. By housing the infrastructure and data in a cloud-based model, greater measures are taken to increase security and ensure data protection that couldn’t occur onsite. 

Your customer service depends on cloud-based contact center solutions. 

Cloud-based contact center solutions are necessary to improve customer service in a 24/7, digital world. With customers using multiple communication channels, siloed contact centers cannot adapt to customer expectations and demands. If these systems do not fully integrate, customers will experience slow and frustrating responses. This causes the risk of losing customers because of technology. 

Learn what’s possible with AI-enabled workforce management. Download your free guide today. 

Key Takeaways

  • Siloed and outdated contact center systems demand more time and energy from your employees, creating frustration. 
  • Businesses must serve the 24/7 needs of their customers who expect fast, if not immediate response times. 
  • Communicating with customers expanded from calling a single toll-free number to including digital channels, such as email, messaging and live chats. Cloud-based systems fully integrate these channels to follow the customer journey. 
  • Cloud-based systems enable the right agent to match with the right customer. 
  • Cloud-based contact centers are necessary to improve the customer experience. 
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3 Ways Your Contact Center CRM Integration is Costing You Time & Money

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Inaccurate or lost customer data can result in losing the customer

When your contact center CRM integration system is separated from your contact center solution, customer data can easily get lost or compromised. This can result in incomplete information on the customer, which in turn affects their experience. Lost customer data results in a frustrating experience for both the customer and agent, losing time with redundancies and possibly losing the customer altogether.

Should I have a built-in contact center CRM integration for my workforce optimization solution?

To better support your customers and provide a best-in-class experience for them, your contact center solution should be fully integrated with your CRM. This provides a higher level of service and can increase CSAT scores and profitability.

1. A limited view of your customer means limited support for them.

When customer data is incomplete or compromised, a contact center agent doesn’t have a full view of the customer’s needs or history. This can result in frustration for the customer, as they have already explained this. The process of customer engagement with a contact center can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience for customers. Therefore a contact center must make every effort to retain customer records and serve them efficiently. Better customer insight translates to better customer service, which is key in contact center profitability and efficiency. With CRM integration, a contact center can have a full view of the customer and provide exceptional service.

2. Without CRM integration, customer privacy can be at risk.

When a contact center is unable to integrate its CRM system with its operating solution, customer data can have exposure to risk. Especially when a contact center has responsibilities such as fundraising or payment processing, this secure data can be compromised when it is not managed properly. A security risk such as this not only has serious implications for the customer but also for your contact center’s compliance. Being out of compliance when it comes to secure data can cost your contact center its ability to operate.

3. Inaccurate Data can result in customer loss.

Customer retention and satisfaction are key for your contact center. When your CRM system isn’t fully integrated, call logs, photos, and information can be lost, overwritten, or incomplete. An incomplete customer record results in duplicating efforts, which is inefficient, time-consuming, and frustrating for all. In order to drive profitability and customer retention, a CRM system should be fully integrated with your contact center solutions. The loss of customers isn’t an option in today’s competitive environment, which is why CRM integration is key to your contact center’s success.

Contact Center CRM Integration is Imperative.

Today’s contact centers cannot afford wasted time or effort. Efficiency is key to productivity, which is why your contact center’s solution should seamlessly integrate with your CRM system. When these systems are not integrated, it can result in incomplete or lost customer data, costing your contact center time, money, and customers. An integrated CRM system is crucial for bottom-line results.

TLDR: 

Contact center CRM integration is necessary to ensure customer retention, satisfaction, and data privacy.

Call to Action:

Find out if one of our CX Application Packs is right for your organization. Request a demo today.

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Empower Your Workforce: Automated Contact Center Solutions Can Simplify Operations in 2022

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It’s almost 2022, and with the change of the year, it’s time to evaluate 2021 performance and set goals for the new year. As a contact center manager, your goals are to increase operational efficiency, profitability, and customer experience. This is why it might be time to consider automated contact center solutions as the next step to making your operations run smoothly, efficiently, and profitably.

How can automated contact center solutions improve my organization’s operational efficiency?

A modern automated contact center solution is easy to navigate and saves valuable time and resources. Customizable tools can drive efficiency and increase CSAT scores while automating day-to-day operations.

Efficiency, Profitability, Productivity

Without an automated contact center solution, you are losing valuable time and resources every minute of the day as your employees navigate difficult and siloed systems. Between scheduling, scripting, and managing call volume, these systems can not only cause frustration but cost time and money in the long run.

An automated contact center solution increases productivity across the board, cutting resource waste spent navigating outdated and complex systems. With a simple and easy-to-deploy solution, employees and customers have a higher satisfaction rate, and your contact center saves time and money.

Quality Management

When quality management solutions use multiple bolted-on systems, it limits the capability to manage quality assurance easily or efficiently. This can be counterproductive as you work toward increased operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

An automated contact center solution will have integrated quality assurance forms, with easy and quick access to metrics in real-time, as well as audio/video reporting tools that make finding quality recordings a cinch.

Workforce Management

With outdated contact center solutions, scheduling is a constant challenge. You may know the ebb and flow of call volume as an experienced workforce manager, but there are times when a guess results in over or under scheduling, which costs your contact center and your valuable client resources.

In 2022, it’s time to upgrade your contact center software to an automated solution with workforce management built-in. This ensures suitable agents are scheduled at the right time with no more guessing. An automated solution makes workforce management simpler and performance-based.

Designer

Have you ever experienced this scenario? Your script verbiage needs updating immediately but you know it’s going to take days to roll out. When you have siloed and bolted-on solutions, you don’t have the time or capacity to disseminate information, build new scripts and manage deployment to an entire contact center.

An automated contact center solution increases efficiency with drag-and-drop tools that makes scripting easier than ever. You should have easy-to-use tools to customize and deploy simply, quickly, and efficiently to ensure all employees are delivering the highest caliber experience for customers.

Advanced Outbound List Management

In 2022, it’s time to deploy data-driven campaigns. Call the right customers with the right products to avoid wasting valuable time on a high-volume approach. Without first analyzing who the ideal customer is and what products and services they may respond to, you can waste resources across operations.

An advanced outbound list management tool is a great way to make your automated contact center solution work for your strategy. Outbound list optimization tools can provide advanced management of complex campaign strategies, which drives results for any campaign, no matter how complex. This type of tool prioritizes contacts based on real-time data and increases your contact center’s success rate with campaigns.

Talk to your current solutions provider about Authority Software or Contact Us. 

Authority Software has a fully integrated, easy-to-deploy automated contact center solution that will boost productivity and profitability in the new year. In 2022, set a goal to increase your operational efficiency with a customizable, efficient tool. 

TLDR: 

An automated contact center solution can increase operational efficiency and productivity using an integrated and data-driven approach. This customizable tool can help you better serve your customers and increase CSAT scores and the overall profitability of your contact center. 

contact center software and worker providing service

4 Ways Your Contact Center Software is Undermining Superior Service

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Antiquated systems can limit productivity, efficiency, and client satisfaction

A contact center’s purpose is to deliver quick and efficient service. Doing so provides a stellar customer experience that allows the business to retain and recruit loyal customers. But when your contact center software is aging and siloed, delivering a competitive customer experience becomes difficult and complicated. 

Contact center managers and operating officers face antiquated systems and bolted-on solutions that are inefficient and add complexity to delivering superior customer service. These inefficiencies can have real downstream consequences to not only the contact center’s business but the clients and end-users. To deliver the very best user experience that results in positive business outcomes, contact center managers must find a superior solution to integrate systems, run efficiently, and deliver accurate analytics. When a contact center runs efficiently, the end-user wins.

How do I know when to upgrade my contact center software solution?

Aging contact center software can be a liability for the business, which is why an integrated, efficient system is crucial for a superior customer experience. If you find your contact center employees complaining about technical issues which have led to poor CSAT scores, you are likely due for an upgrade.

 

1. Siloed systems impact productivity and efficiency

 

Today’s contact centers need seamless integration between CCaaS and other systems. When these systems are integrated, delivering an enhanced customer experience becomes an easy task. No more switching back and forth between programs, wasting valuable time that could be used serving customers. Access to key analytics, reports, and trends should be available with one click. 

Can you imagine a day at work without multiple screens open? The amount of time that contact center employees spend between programs is one of their top complaints. Seamlessly integrated solutions provide the agents with everything they need in a single, unified desktop. 

 

2. Delayed implementation causes inaccuracies and frustration

 

Launching workforce optimization tools usually takes weeks or months, as siloed, antiquated systems and tools become combined to increase efficiency. During a long implementation, work can get lost or delayed, resulting in a lag in productivity and accuracy. Contact centers need to be confident that business results will not be impacted during a system change. Slow implementation can also impact agent scheduling, which has downstream effects on wait times and quality of service. 

Today’s contact centers need a 21st-century tool that deploys immediately and efficiently, integrating systems with no downtime to ensure superior customer service and experience.

 

3. Inaccurate Analytics

 

Sometimes spikes and lulls can create inaccurate analytics. The success of a contact center hinges on accurate analytics and scheduling. An aging system can produce inaccuracies which translates into scheduling misses, which then affects average handle times, CSAT scores and overall customer experience.

A contact center manager needs accurate analytics and reporting in order to help agents achieve their highest potential. They require tools that produce accurate, actionable reports. 

 

4. Lack of real-time data

 

In a contact center, trends can shift on a dime depending on many factors. A contact center needs real-time data on staffing and call volume to achieve maximum productivity. Without real-time access to reporting that evaluates both current and historical trends, it is impossible to operate a contact center as efficiently as possible. Contact center managers need workforce optimization tools with immediate access to real-time reports in order to schedule staff and respond to the customers’ needs. Inefficiencies can cause customer frustration and lowered CSAT scores for the client. Therefore, real-time reporting is crucial in maintaining client satisfaction.

 

Authority Software: Workforce Solutions that Work

 

At Authority Software, we understand the challenges of contact centers and we have worked to provide modern Workforce Optimization solutions that will increase efficiency, productivity, and overall satisfaction for contact centers.

We lead with empathy, listening to the needs of contact center managers and developing customized solutions for each unique center. 

We demonstrate authority, with over 20 years of industry experience and veteran Contact center managers to guide us. We deliver a white-glove service that has earned us a 98 percent client retention rate year over year.

 

Talk to your Contact Center Solutions Provider to develop a plan that’s right for you

 

When you work with Authority Software, contact centers experience the ease, effectiveness, and scalability of a fully integrated, cloud-based workforce optimization solution that ends frustration and long handle time. 

Don’t spend another day trying to manage an outdated system that continues to deliver siloed, ineffective results. 

Need help with your contact center?

Contact Us

Authority Software Delivers General Availability of Workforce Management Solution

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Authority Software is excited to announce the general availability of Authority Workforce Management. Authority’s workforce management solution rounds out an offering of established industry applications that include quality recording management, customer relationship management, and rapid applications development.

“We are thrilled to enter this arena and to offer an alternative to existing legacy solutions that at their core, are premise based.  Our WFM is 100% cloud native, designed by WFM subject matter experts, and built by us from the ground up with nothing bolted on,” said Lou Mandic, the company’s chief executive officer.  “Our domain expertise in the contact center industry goes back decades, and in designing this solution we sought to make improvements in available functionality, efficiency, and cost.”

Authority WFM eliminates the need for spreadsheets as part of the everyday life of workforce management professionals, is easy to learn, and is faster than any other WFM solution on the market today with proprietary technology that levels calculation intensive processes, resulting in unprecedented speed in forecasting. “Our time to launch can be measured in days, not months. Coupled with our concurrent licensing model, our WFM solution is the most cost effective to implement and use. Billing for named agents is an extremely dated model that only serves to eat into a contact center’s profit margins. Our solutions are scalable, and our customers only pay for what they are using in any given month.”

Recently listed in the “Vendors to Watch” category of DMG Consulting LLC’s 2021 – 2022 Workforce Management Product and Market Report, Authority Software will be demonstrating its solution at SWPP’s 2021 Virtual Summit for Workforce Management, which runs from April 5-27, 2021.