Eight Useful Contact Center Apps
Call centers have evolved way beyond a bunch of people fielding customer calls. Indeed, today's “call center” customers are just as likely to reach out to your business via your website or Facebook page or Twitter account as via a traditional telephone – which is why call centers are now often referred to as “contact centers.”
Moreover, in an increasingly virtual (or online) world, call centers are often the main (or only) point of contact customers have with a business. So it is crucial that the customer experience be a memorable one.
To that end, here are eight contact center tools (listed in alphabetical order, with a link to the company website) that can help contact center agents provide a positive experience for customers.
BoldChat. BoldChat is a live chat solution that allows contact center agents to quickly and effectively engage visitors on company websites, providing instant customer service and support. BoldChat is offered in different editions and includes features such as click-to-call, email management, SMS management and co-browsing.
CallCopy. CallCopy’s cc: Voice enables clients to record their customer service conversations and play them back, helping to train contact center staff. Easily configured, cc: Voice is compatible with various system configurations – including VoIP, TDM and blended environments – and comes with priority-based scheduling and archiving, synchronized screen capture and an advanced search feature. In addition, it is PCI compliant.
Fonality HUD. Fonality HUD (Heads Up Display) is a cloud-based business phone system and unified communications solution that provides conference bridges, unified messaging, chat, voicemail and email, presence management, contact center applications, and integration with products such as Microsoft Outlook, Google and Salesforce. “We use [Fonality HUD] in our call center, [and it] has been extremely useful,” said Carrie Van Brunt- Wiley, director of Marketing, HomeInsurance.com. “Fonality HUD allows all of our agents (125-plus) on the sales floor to communicate more efficiently than they’ve ever been able to before.”
Lionbridge. For companies with a multinational clientele who may not speak English, Lionbridge, a translation and localization solution provider, offers Help Desk Outsourcing. Staffed with native speakers, Lionbridge provides organizations with real-time translation technology, reducing the need for and expense of specialized regional call centers. Lionbridge also offers multilingual e-learning and documentation services with its call center services.
LivePerson. LivePerson, Inc. offers a cloud-based platform that enables businesses to proactively connect in real-time with their customers for chat, voice and content delivery via their websites, social media and mobile devices. Using LivePerson’s LP Chat and LP Voice, contact center agents can handle multiple customers at once. LivePerson software also links all correspondence related to a customer or issue, tracking issue status and scheduling follow-up action items to ensure satisfaction and ease of use by contact center agents. In addition, after a chat is concluded, LP Chat provides customers with re-connect links so they can chat with the same agent at a later time.
NICE. NICE Systems, whose call center applications are distributed by Jenne Inc., a value-added distributor of business telephony, data, audio and video conferencing solutions in the United States and Canada, allows organizations of all sizes to measure call center rep performance and make sure the call center is in compliance with regulations. NICE Recording eXpress (NRX) captures, manages and processes calls in standalone offices and branches, while NICE Quality eXpress (NQX) is designed to help call centers understand customer intent and gain insights into the performance of call center agents.
VContactCenter. VContactCenter is a cloud-based solution that enables contact centers to automate business processes, improve customer support with self-help portals and offer social media monitoring and response from directly within the application. The software allows contact centers that support multiple customers to create separate BPM (business process management) workflows, portals and entitlement paths. It also supports multichannel operations, streamlining responses to customer queries from phone, web, email or social media channels. In addition, VContactCenter includes reporting features that provide contact center managers with insights into which agents are producing the best sales and which products are selling (and which ones are not).
Virtual PBX Complete with VoIP Anywhere. Virtual PBX Complete with VoIP Anywhere is a virtual call center solution that allows employees to take and make business calls from anywhere in the world as long as they have a 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi connection. The application allows smaller businesses, that may employ just a few agents who work from home, to provide the same level of customer service as larger companies.
Use a contact center tool that we didn’t cover? Let us know the name of the application and why it’s helpful in the Comments.
Jennifer Lonoff Schiff is a regular contributor to EnterpriseAppsToday.com and runs a marketing communications firm focused on helping organizations better interact with their customers and partners.
