Author: Franz Malten Buemann

The ideal contact center will deliver consistently excellent experiences to customers, via their preferred communication channels — whether that’s voice, email, chat, SMS, or social media. Moreover, a modern contact center’s feature set will allow agents — and the organizations they work for — to harness the power of cloud-based services, enabling much quicker time to market as well as superior flexibility and scalability compared to on-premises infrastructure. The worldwide cloud-based contact center market is predicted to grow to $36.1 billion by 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 25.8%. A major engine of this ongoing growth is the overall versatility of cloud contact centers. More specifically, cloud-based contact center platforms can:
Easily integrate channels such as social media and SMS to allow customers to reach you via the channel of their choice.
Connect to business-critical tools like customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.
Be modified as a company’s customer base grows or otherwise changes.
Full article: https://blog.webex.com/contact-center/how-cloud-contact-centers-empower-delightful-customer-experiences/
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A call routing system is an essential tool for a contact center. It helps customers reach the right representative in a timely manner, and supports contact centers with rushes of incoming calls at certain times of the day.
What is call routing, and how can you improve it? We’ll cover that, as well as the benefits and types of call routing in this article.
The Contact Center Guide to Managing Spikes in Call Volume
What is call routing?
Call routing directs incoming calls to the right representative. The right representative depends on the types of call routing, which we’ll discuss a bit later.
Call routing is usually integrated with Computer Telephone Systems (CTI) or Voice Over Internet Protocols (VOIP) to smoothly direct customers to the correct support agent. These systems allow contact centers to automatically answer customers’ incoming calls and redirect them to different people through extensions or other criteria.
Even with hundreds of representatives, call routing makes it so the customer only has to dial one number to reach the correct support agent. The way the customer is directed though, depends on the type of call routing used.
What is Call Routing in a Contact Center?
Types of call routing.
Call routing directs inbound calls based on criteria that the contact center sets. Here are some of the most common industry methods:
Skill-based call routing.
Inbound calls are directed to agents based on their individual level of experience. For example, if the system indicates that the caller had reached out multiple times without reaching a resolution, call routing should direct them to an agent with more experience.
Time-based and location-based call routing.
This is most often used for large brands with international customers or clientele. The call routing system notes the geographical location or time zone of the caller, and directs them to the department nearest to them.
Caller ID.
With this method, calls are directed based on details such as their phone number or contact history. For example, a caller who has an unresolved issue from a previous support interaction may be forwarded to the last agent they spoke with to continue the conversation.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
Similar to a traditional phone IVR, Visual IVR lets your customer navigate a menu from your website or mobile app. Pair it with call-back technology, and you can even let them schedule their own call-backs for a time that works for them.
Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Voice recognition software is capable of redirecting callers using voice biometric technology. This type of call routing can take your customer experience to the next level!
Benefits of call routing.
Call routing is not only beneficial — it’s essential for a smooth call center operation and customer experience. Some key benefits include:
Improved agent productivity.
A strategy for directing calls optimizes workflows, which lets agents be more productive. Rather than spending time redirecting calls, they can focus on providing quality support to their customers.
Happier customers.
When done correctly, call routing can lower wait times. Less time on hold means happier customers – 67% of customers say positive customer experiences are a big factor when it comes to brand loyalty.

FACT:
67% of customers will maintain loyalty to a company if they’ve had positive experiences.

Tips for improving call routing.
Call routing is necessary for a contact center’s profits and operations. However, you’ll only reap the benefits if you take the time to optimize your processes. Here are a few tips to get you started:
Research your customers.
You can’t optimize processes when you don’t know who it’s for. Call center KPIs like CSat and NPS are great for measuring what your customers like and don’t like about your process. Conducting market research on your customers takes things one step further so you can better understand their needs and concerns and keep them in mind when planning your strategy.
Test different approaches.
We covered several different call routing tactics, all with their own strengths and challenges. If you use the queue type of call routing based on agent availability, spice things up a bit! Try out skill-based or time-based call routing and see if it changes your customer satisfaction scores.

TIP:
No type of call routing is the best match for every single call center. Try out different kinds, like caller ID, skills-based, and time-based to see what works best for your contact center.

Make your criteria specific.
If you’ve opted to use skill-based call routing, be sure you set very specific criteria. For instance, “Technical Support Agents” can be broken up into “AI technology”, or “IT support”. Here are some other criteria examples:

Strong customer satisfaction record;
5+ years experience in the contact center;
fluency in Spanish.
The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

A feeling of entitlement is hard won.
You suffered to get to this spot. You were mistreated. You worked hard. You paid your dues. You were treated unfairly. It’s your turn. Justice demands it. You’re aggrieved. Or perhaps the thing you’ve worked so hard on is magical, special and totally worth people’s attention.
Like I said, you’re entitled. To your grievance or the meeting or even simply, the benefit of the doubt.
Alas: Our entitlement isn’t helpful.
Feeling entitled doesn’t make it more likely that others will listen to you, do what you ask or respect you. Feeling entitled doesn’t get you a sale or make it easier to merge into moving traffic, no matter how long you’ve been waiting.
So yes, you’re entitled. We all are, sooner or later.
But feeling that we’re entitled and demanding that others realize that we’re entitled is completely useless and might even get in the way of the work we hope to do.

Ensuring a happy first day of work for a new employee is much more important than many organisations would ever imagine. According to recent studies, the employee onboarding experience is crucial for long-term satisfaction and optimal performance, yet many brands fail to do it right. Without a strategic process, employers easily miss the essential steps…
The post Happy first day of work – improve your employee onboarding experience appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.