September 30, 2022
No matter what your role is at your current organization, we are all customers ourselves. We, too, have yelled “representative” at an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system that keeps asking for information but can’t understand or process the information it’s been given.
Providing a better experience for our own customers is the right thing to do. It’s also good business. Today’s consumer typically has less time, and therefore, less patience. A company that can actually treat them like their time is “very valuable” will stand out from the rest.
AI can help streamline the customer experience and offer more personalization. When combined with UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), it can help companies build stronger relationships with their customers and win their loyalty.
Why Good Customer Service Is So Hard To Find
Today’s technology is up to the task of improving the customer experience, but it often isn’t applied properly or integrated well. That’s why your call might be automatically routed to customer service when clearly a service technician was needed, you may have to tell the same story over and over, and organizations never seem to address common frustrations.
Most contact centers today rely on technology that isn’t set up to work together. Their solutions don’t share information. So you may very well articulate your issue to a live agent, and that agent may have to hear about it all day long from hundreds of people just like you. But management isn’t hearing what’s going on in a timely fashion…if at all. When a recurring issue goes unresolved, those higher-than-normal call volumes are normal…so normal it makes you roll your eyes whenever you hear that message.
It’s maddening. But don’t worry — the future looks much brighter.
The Future of CX: CCaaS + UCaaS
Now the Customer Experience (CX) can be much better, thanks to the integration of UCaaS and CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) platforms. With these two powerful technologies working together, representatives can call upon the right experts to easily resolve the issue quickly. An organization can also get sightlines into repeat issues, so they can be addressed once and for all.
Add AI for Even Better CX
Most of today’s CCaaS providers also include powerful AI innovations in their offerings that can make chatbots much more helpful, so more issues can be resolved before a live agent needs to get involved.
It’s easy to confuse AI with those chipper but unhelpful IVR systems we’ve come to dread. After all, AI and IVR are both technologies that help bots respond to information. However, IVR is pre-planned — a sequence of if-then conditions. If the customer says this, the response should be that. AI, on the other hand, can respond more intuitively and naturally to what is actually being said or typed and learn how to respond better over time.
When a human being is needed to resolve an issue, AI will also help connect representatives with much better information about the caller and their issue. Callers won’t have to repeat themselves, and agents will be able to resolve issues quickly. AI isn’t yet capable of replacing all customer service agents. But it is ready to be a much better assistant that can reduce call volumes and hold times and make every call much less frustrating for everyone.
Additional Options With CPaaS
UCaaS and CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) sound similar, and they are. They’re both cloud-based services that help facilitate communication. Whereas UCaaS is a ready-built platform, CPaaS enables you to design your own solutions and is often the better choice for companies that need to engage with a large volume of customers directly. However, CPaaS requires more technical expertise to create and manage.
Most online information surrounding communications technology can be, rather ironically, a bit confusing. There are a lot of options and ways to buy, and some solutions go by multiple names. If you want to give your CX a boost, Marco’s communications experts can make your next steps much easier. We’ll get to know your organization so we can design a solution around you and speak to you in plain language about what we’re recommending and why.
And one last thing: your call is very important to us. We promise!
