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How to Select the Best Call Center Automation Software for Your Business

The Guide to Identify the Best Call Center Automation Software for Your Business

In the modern businesses, there are multiple sources and types of communication sources that enterprises can utilize to their advantage. These sources and types of communication sources come in a set of technology. The technology is used to harness an enterprise's multiple communication channels. The set of technology is known as Call Center Automation Software.

When talking about a Call Center Automation Software, we define them by the technologies they employ. These Call Center Automation Software also include manager and agents as they are a huge part of having a successful software.

The Call Center Automation Software automates basic call center functions such as multi-channel communications, agent desktop interface, predictive dialling, and call routing. A Call Center Automation Software also supports integration to multiple systems such as workforce management and CRM integration's.

What are Call Center Automation Software?

The Call Center Automation Software is a system that enables businesses to manage numerous communication channels such as live chat, email, phone, social media, SMS text, and instant messaging. The Call Center Automation Software comes in many forms each with its unique functionalities. Some of the forms include computer telephone integration, automatic call distributor, interactive voice response, call center monitors, call analytics and all accounting solutions.

The Call Center Automation Software also enhances the functioning of your help desk and boost customer support. The most basic components of a Call Center Automation Software are a browser, a phone, and a PC. With these components, you can easily set up a Call Center Automation Software that can undertake call recording, quality monitoring, virtual queuing, and social media support.

How a Call Center Automation Software works, will determine the level of the quality of support it offers to your customers. In an organization, a Call Center Automation Software is the first management solution used for administering the incoming calls as well as communication-related to product support such as informational queries.

With a Call Center Automation Software, organizations can also make outbound calls to their targeted audience to market their product and boost sales. Typically, a Call Center Automation Software streamlines the tedious process faced by call center agents making those processes easier and less complicated. It, therefore, ensures productivity and efficiency to assigned call center agents allowing them to provide prompt and quality service to customers.

What are the types of Call Center Automation Software?

A call center agent has the power of managing customer communication coming from multiple channels with the help of a Call Center Automation Software. Based on the methods used to process the communication and ways of deploying the system, a Call Center Automation Software can be classified into the following;

Cloud-based Call Center Automation Software: It also serves as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. This type of a Call Center Automation Software has its call center hosted in the cloud. It, therefore, means it is accessible from any location and does not require installing or downloading the software. The cloud-based Call Center Automation Software is the most affordable call center automation systems available in the market.
On-premise Call Center Automation Software: They are sold in the market with a one-time utilization license. It means that the person or company that purchases it has an obligation of taking care of any upgrade or maintenance of the call automation center that may occur. The on-premise Call Center Automation Software also requires an installation of a private equipment and a branch hardware. This type of a Call Center Automation Software is the most used and professional type of call centers, however, they are also the most expensive.

What are the features of Call Center Automation Software?

Features of Call Center Automation Software

With a Call Center Automation Software, businesses have the relevant tools for improving the productivity of the agents, reduce service delivery costs, and achieve higher retentions and revenue. These benefits are achieved by the features offered by a Call Center Automation Software that enhance the coordination and automation of numerous tasks in a call center to improve each type of interaction with customers. Some of the common features include;

Automatic call distributor: It routes all the incoming calls to your agents across the call centers. The automatic call distributor typically provides the call to an agent who has been waiting for the longest. Other forms of an automatic call distributor may offer the call to multiple agents, therefore, ensuring an agent is available to take the call. With this type of an automatic call distributor, there is a decrease in the number of dropped calls due to in-availability of agents.
Automatic screen pop: The feature automatically shows the caller's information in the computer as the phone rings. The primary information displayed is the ID of the caller's phone. The automatic screen pop enables call center agents to offer a more personalized experience to their callers since the information displayed can be customized to meet the requirements of the caller.
Interactive voice response (IVR): It is a telephony menu system that functions by identifying route callers and segments to the most appropriate department, agent, pre-corded message or a waiting queue.
Skills-based routing: The feature sends calls to specific teams, agents or departments based on the set customized rules. The skills-based routing provides an excellent way for ensuring routing of callers to the call center agent who is most qualified to meet their requirements.
Controlled telephony: It enables you to use a mouse click to allow you to transfer, hold or mute callers. The feature typically allows you to use a Call Center Automation Software just like a typical phone.
Call queues: They ensure that the caller does not ‘disappear' after being told to wait. The feature is specifically designed to create a waiting queue for callers after being routed. The call queues also create a special dashboard that measures the statistics based on real-time data.
Disposition codes: It tags the outcome of every call. The codes are in a special menu in the Call Center Automation Software whereby the call center agents select the codes and attach it a profile of a particular caller.
Predictive and power diallers: Used for informing a caller when an agent becomes available. The feature also allows the caller to automatically make the call and connect to an agent.

What are the benefits of Call Center Automation Software?

The overall objective of a Call Center Automation Software is to provide an excellent platform for businesses to maximize the use of communication technology when engaging and interacting with customers to address their issues. It achieves this as it is designed for productivity and efficiency in a call center. The following are the advantages of a Call Center Automation Software;

Boosts productivity: A Call Center Automation Software is packed with automated features and intuitive feature such as time routing, auto-dialers, call route matrices, and monitoring tools. These features work the key performance indicators to measure the productivity of each agent as well as to reveal a real-time feedback on how your customer support is doing when handling the callers.
Improved interdepartmental collaboration: A Call Center Automation Software improves the collaboration between call center departments by providing features that allow the call agents to smoothly transition a call to another agent who is in a better position of helping out on a certain issue. A Call Center Automation Software also allows a call center agents to initiate a conference call whereby other agents can listen to the live call and join the call without having to repeat information conveyed by the first agent.
Enhanced security: The security features offered by a Call Center Automation Software ensure that the operations in your call center are safe at all times.
Improved customer relationships: The software helps you to improve customer relations by enabling your business to provide on-time help and reliable and prompt customer service. Your call center agents also have the ability to provide the right answers that satisfy the requirements of the callers.

What are the latest trends of Call Center Automation Software?

New ideas and technology are being incorporated into the Call Center Automation Software to improve its functioning. The following are some of the latest trends in a Call Center Automation Software;

Agent-assisted automation: It is a new technology that automates the elements of what the call center agent says to the customers and does with his or her desktop tools during the call by using a pre-recorded audio. There are several types of the agent-assisted automation they include fraud prevention, outbound marketing, pre-recorded audio, and desktop integration. The primary benefit of the agent-assisted automation is improving the results of a call center while reducing the tiring aspects of the entire job for the agents. In other cases, the agent-assisted automation streamlines the process to enable a call to be handled quickly by the agents.
Integration with other systems: It is one of the latest trends in a Call Center Automation Software. The software allows being integrated with other systems such as CEM, CRM, e-commerce solutions, and marketing solutions. The ability to integrate with the other systems enable it to more than managing calls. The integration's also make it highly configurable to meet all the needs of an organization.
Data access and real-time analytics. The trend enables companies having a Call Center Automation Software to collect information of the customers from multiple platforms, analyze it, and then display it multiple and comprehensive ways. It contributes to having a 360-degree view of the customer and understanding structured and unstructured data.

How to Select the Best Call Center Automation Software for Your Business

Selecting to purchase a certain Call Center Automation Software is a serious business. It is because the quality of the service you offer to your customers highly depends on the technology you have in hand. The market is packed with Call Center Automation Software providers, therefore, it can be a herculean task to sift through the available options and land to the right solution. The following are factors for you to consider if you want a call automation software that fits your needs.

How to Select the Best Call Center Automation Software for Your Business

Additional hardware requirements: Purchasing another hardware places burden on your business. Therefore, the Call Center Automation Software should be able to function properly without the addition of a hardware. Addition of extra hardware causes your Call Center Automation Software lose extensibility.
Scalability: The Call Center Automation Software should not stall growth when your business demands it. The Call Center Automation Software you choose should accommodate growth by ensuring projects in your business are scalable to the Call Center Automation Software you choose.
Integrations: The software should allow integrations with ticketing technology and CRM. By integrating with other systems, you call agents consume little time inputting redundant data into multiple systems. Through integrations, you are able to streamline the agent workflow and equip them with concrete customer information.
Supports multichannel interactions: The software you choose should be able to support multiple multimedia interactions with your customers. The software you choose should also manage all types of media using the same routing engine.
Customization: The Call Center Automation Software you choose should sync with your projects to streamline call center operations. By being customizable, you can design automation rules and routing parameters easily.
Provision of critical data: The reporting and analytics tools provided by the Call Center Automation Software that you choose should provide real-time and historical data to enable you to make informed decisions that positively impact your KPIs
Flexibility: The software should adapt to the changing business requirements.
Ease of usage: Your call center agents are the one who daily uses the Call Center Automation Software. Therefore, the software you select should not be complex and easy to be understood by your call center agents.