What is a unified contact center enterprise and what are its benefits
Contact centers are typically divided into two parts: back office and front office. A contact center’s front office is the part of a business that serves clients directly, through either phone or email. The back-office is the part of a company that handles matters relating to the actual operation of the contact center and provides support for the front office. In general, the back office provides the front-office with a wide range of services including customer support, help desk and technical support.
Contact centers are organized in a number of different ways to meet two primary goals:
To reduce costs. To increase customer satisfaction.
It was this clear goal to improve customer satisfaction that led to the historical rise of contact center outsourcing (CCO) and “virtual contact center” (VCC) models in recent years.
Unified contact center:
With the advent of unified communications (UC) technology, however, a new approach to contact center management has emerged: the unified contact center (UCC). A UCC is an organization that handles both outbound and inbound interactions from a single platform. If all communications channels can be handled from within a single organization, then it will be easier for them to take advantage of what technology like UC offers. If a UCC can implement UC in all channels, the result can be a tremendous boost to customer satisfaction.
A comprehensive analysis of the benefits of the unified contact center model revealed that it has both cost-cutting and customer-satisfaction advantages over CCO, VCC and traditional contact center models:
How can your business benefit from a unified contact center enterprise
Business will benefit from a unified contact center enterprise as it can provide a flexible and effective platform to handle multiple channels of communication and can increase the business flexibility by increasing the efficiency of its operations. A unified contact center enterprise is based on the principles of process, information sharing, integration and automation. A unified contact center enterprise can help businesses in the following ways:
– Increased efficiency: A business can reduce the costs associated with call centers and provide a more efficient service to customers.
– Improved customer experience: A unified contact center enterprise can improve the services of call centers as it provides a better, more efficient service and also reduces errors.
– Reduce operating costs: In businesses which provide online services, a unified contact center enterprise can offer automated system for providing phone services.
– Increase profitability: A unified contact center enterprise can increase the profitability of the business as it enables businesses to handle multiple channels of communication.
– Reduced number of employees: A business can reduce the number of its employees by outsourcing their jobs to companies in a unified contact center enterprise. The employees in a unified contact center enterprise are more efficient, they possess advanced skills and they are trained to handle multiple channels of communication.
– Reduced training costs: A business can reduce the costs associated with its training by outsourcing its training to a unified contact center enterprise.
– Increase customer satisfaction: A unified contact center enterprise can help a business to improve the level of customer satisfaction as it can provide a better and more efficient service to customers.
The different features of a unified contact center enterprise and how they can help your business
A unified contact center enterprise is based on the principle of “business process integration,” meaning that all the business processes or activities that occur within the contact center can be performed in a single location. The centralized nature of a unified contact center enterprise makes it possible for all contact centers to share business processes and integrate functionalities from multiple sources, such as E-mails, websites, voice mail systems, transcription services and other applications. This helps companies to be more efficient and provides your business with greater flexibility.
Contact centers with a unified enterprise provide better service to the customer. The company can simply switch from one contact center to another without making any large-scale changes to the operation and customers are not aware of the transition. This also allows companies to track customer satisfaction and measure progress from sales, marketing or any other business process in one place using an enterprise resource planning system (ERP).
The advantages for your business are clear; however, it may seem difficult at first glance to develop a unified contact center enterprise. A unified contact center enterprise is based on a change in your business processes, which requires great effort and planning. Before making the decision to move forward with a unified contact center enterprise, it is important to understand that you will not be able to get started immediately after making the decision. The different features of a unified contact center enterprise and how they can help your business.