Unifying the Contact Center

When contact centers were first set up, the original goal was to direct customer calls to a central place with trained agents, rather than have them randomly routed throughout the company to recipients who may not have been equipped to handle the inquiry.

Welcome to the New World

Things have changed a lot in recent years. Customers and prospects now want to make contact via their channel of choice, whether that’s voice, email, sms, chat, social or whatever new communication method may arise. They also expect a fast response to any queries they have and don’t want to be bounced around the system with promised callbacks only never to hear back from anyone. To put it bluntly, the reason most contact centers obsessively measure first contact resolution is because that is precisely what customers have come to expect.

Customer Experience is King

Something else that’s changed in recent years is the realization that providing positive customer experiences drives more business. In fact, it’s been broadly reported by several reputable analysts that customer experience is rapidly becoming a more important purchasing criterion than price.

This changes everything. With customer experience so key to company success, responsibility for delivering it cannot reside solely with the contact center. It has to transition to become the responsibility of the entire organization.

Those are very easy words to say, and many a CEO will have included such mantras in staff briefings, investor presentations and the like. The reality is often unfortunately very different - legacy systems and processes can make the contact center an isolated island, lacking the communications tools to ensure pain-free collaboration with the rest of the business.

Delivering a Fully Integrated Experience

So, let’s imagine a world where the contact center and the rest of the organization are all on the same communications platform and able to communicate and collaborate across multiple channels, effectively allowing the customer to access the knowledge and intellect across the entire company.

This is where Vonage comes in, delivering on its mission to make communications more flexible, intelligent, and personal to help enterprises stay ahead. Vonage’s integrated experience ensures that contact center agents can see every employee within the business and whether they are available for consultation to help the customer.  For example, they  can similarly check other agents' availability to chat with a subject matter expert. And this is not limited to voice interactions - they can connect via multiple channels, such as messaging, conference calls or video meetings - enhancing productivity while simultaneously boosting customer satisfaction.

Leveraging Technology to Drive Customer Satisfaction

The technology that allows all this to happen is the common platform across Vonage’s contact center and their business phone system. They share a single intuitive interface, with single sign-on, common call controls, professional presence and availability, and a common directory. 

Vonage's seamless integration of unified communications and the contact center ensures that agents can easily connect with colleagues throughout the organization. By bringing in experts with the right skills and knowledge to most effectively solve customers issues, the business should experience  higher levels of first contact resolution that could result in  highly satisfied customers. As we’ve demonstrated, the contact center alone won’t drive a memorable customer experience; it takes a village of experts working together to make it a success. 

Watch this video to learn more about how Vonage Integrated Experience can help your organization.

Download the data sheet that details how the Vonage integrated experience brings together unified communications and contact centers to break down the silos in your organization.

Click here to read part II, how to avoid your contact center getting stuck in a silo. 

Click here to read part I, why the less communication vendors you have, the better.