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Why Is CRM Integration Crucial For Every Business?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is considered to be the heart of every growing business. The CRM software market is one of the largest and fastest-growing markets in the world.

Here’s something to ponder: The global CRM market is projected to grow from $58.04 billion in 2021 to $128.97 billion in 2028. (Fortune Business Insights 2020)

Today in the digital world, more and more businesses understand the need to use CRM for clients’ data curation to get a clearer picture of the user’s behavior, which is essential for providing a personalized experience.

The decision-makers of most organizations have realized that customer relationships must evolve, considering that the technology, economy, and purchasing habits of the users have changed. CRMs have become essential, and it looks like this is here to stay.

CRM Integration – Vital for Every Business

Here’s why!

Client Management

Most businesses collect large volumes of information from customers, which makes customer relationship management cital. In ancient times (a couple of years ago), organizations had to manage and track things manually, but that’s not the case anymore.

The age of files and spreadsheets is gone, and businesses are moving ahead without dealing with the stress of losing out on files and other information.

CRMs allow businesses to keep track of contact numbers, addresses as well as the pain points of the customers. CRM Integration helps companies to consolidate, synchronize and organize valuable data.

Moreover, even if someday, Mr. Robert from your company isn’t in office, anyone from your team can log into the CRM and access the customer file. Isn’t that amazing?

Profit Tracking

A CRM is undoubtedly an advantage for the sales and marketing team, but it also has the potential to ease up the workload of your organization’s finance department. A CRM is powered by an in-built bookkeeping system that allows you to pull out accurate financial reports in just a few clicks.

Now, what’s in it for your business? This reduces the dependencies on your accountants. They no longer have to spend hours tracking every penny coming in or going out. The CRM also automates a number of repetitive tasks like applying discounts and shipping charges.

Boosting Profits

Does your business have a weak or an average closing rate? Do you miss out on sending follow-ups with customers, which leads to a loss in sales? Or are you unaware of this data? In any of the cases aforementioned, A CRM will prove to be a gamechanger for your business.

One primary benefit that a CRM offers is that it allows you to track, trace and pull out reports which will help you identify the phase of the sales process where your customers are falling off.

This is vital to help you analyze what is and what isn’t working to introspect, re-strategize, and fill the gaps to convert more leads into paying customers.

A CRM can help in stopping potential customers from falling through the cracks. You can also set prompts for follow-ups or even automate follow-up/newsletters, for that matter. And be rest assured, No One needs to come to the office to hit the send button!

Strategizing Sales

Digital marketing and the online shopping system have ensured that a change is vital for any successful modern company. To adapt is the only way to thrive, and to innovate is the only way to boost your bottom line.

A CRM empowers businesses to stay on top of trends and readjust the sales strategy accordingly/as and when required. Businesses can further collect and analyze data of various types of customers.

How does this help? Let’s say you notice that majority of your customers are women aged between 25 – 30; you will be able to make better and more effective marketing campaigns.

Higher Productivity

For any business, regardless of its size and vertical, knowing what to focus on at the right time is essential for a successful business. CRM allows you to delve deeper into analytics, empowering you to prioritize the tasks and responsibilities of each team member.

According to a survey conducted by Salesforce, businesses that switched to CRMs witnessed an increase in sales by 29% and productivity by 34%.

A CRM system integration is excellent to identify leads that you need to nurture and even pull up customer contact information in seconds or, let’s just say – in a few clicks.

You can automate a number of tasks using a CRM, which allows your teams to focus on more important tasks – bringing in more sales.

Enhanced Customer Service

Did you know that more and more users are using social media to voice their opinions and comments about brands, and most people, especially generation Z expect brands to respond quickly?

Here’s something to ponder on:

According to a survey, about 90% of people expect brands to revert to DMs on social media channels within a day. About 44% of the users demand that brands address their DMs within an hour or less.

I’m sure these stats help you realize the importance of customer relationship management for your business. For businesses to thrive in this neck-slitting competition, you must endure that your team stays on top of all complaints and queries. A CRM helps you get a competitive edge by providing you with a detailed complaint analysis.

Using a CRM, it is easy to pull out reports and assess where and why you didn’t perform well, which empowers you to make informed decisions to facilitate a state-of-the-art customer support system.

Higher Customer Retention

A CRM in place gives businesses the support they require in order to give their customers adequate time. The chances of a paying customer coming back to you again are always higher than converting new customers.

But for that, you must target the right people using marketing channels like email and social media. A CRM offers many intelligent solutions that your marketing team can make the most to upsell and cross-sell products based on the customer’s purchase history.

Automated email campaigns are a great way to target your customers and have proven to help increase customer retention rates and your business’s bottom line.

Can Integrate With Other Software

To make the most of everything at your disposal, the flow of information and data from other software systems to CRM must be seamlessly integrated.

CRM is powered with easy one-click integration that allows businesses to update their CRM with the database of all customers via multiple tools like PM, sales, marketing, and account tools.

This completely eradicates the need to enter data from other software to the CRM manually, perhaps eliminating the chance of mistakes.

To put the cherry on the cake, CRM tools can now integrate customer data through social media platforms allowing the marketing team to segment, target, generate prospects, convert and finally add to the sales funnel.

CRM – A Game Changer

There are a number of tools out there to help you run your business smoothly. Tools for marketing, lead generation, and automation tools have been developed, and businesses are trying to leverage them.

To hit the 6 figure mark or dramatically increase sales, it is imperative to upgrade how your business operates. But without actually managing and keeping track of your customers, all your efforts will lead to oblivion. Adapting with time is the only way to thrive.

If you aren’t making the most of the resources available to you, all your efforts will lead to nothing but a waste of time and money. Investing in a CRM is a great way to boost sales, enhance productivity, save on the overheads and most importantly, increase your bottom line.

Conversational AI: Building a Less Artificial and More Intelligent CX

“A few years back, Artificial Intelligence for businesses was just like a fidget spinner for kids. They were playing with it because it seemed interesting. However, now businesses are utilizing it for real results.”
– Sachin Bhatia (CEO, Ameyo)

As the world becomes more technological and digital with the changing dynamics, Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) is enabling businesses to reduce communication friction between humans and computers. Consumer behavior has witnessed a vortex of change in the past decade, and technological developments have enabled all industries and businesses to embrace digital transformation at Scale.

Successfully scaling intelligent assistants has become necessary and requires selecting the best customer-facing processes and applying well-proven conversational design and strategy. As the report by IDC suggests, digital transformation investment is expected to approach $7 trillion by 2023 as companies build on existing strategy and investments, becoming digital-at-scale future enterprises.

Conversational AI is growing more extensively every day in almost every business. Delivering exceptional personalized experiences with Conversational AI is the need of an hour to offer and build more intelligent CX. Conversational AI is changing how we engage with customers – vastly improving reach, responsiveness, and personalization.

Understanding real-time natural language will transform how we interact with intelligent machines and applications. Most industries and departments leverage the technologies broadly and widely to get and offer a better customer experience.

What is Conversational AI and Why is it a Global Trend Today?

Conversational AI is the amalgamation of technologies behind all automated or pre-recorded messaging and speech-enabled apps that offer human-like interactions between people and computers. It enables bots to communicate like a human being by recognizing aspects such as text and speech, understanding context, decoding different languages, and responding in a way that imitates human conversation.

Applied Conversational AI requires science and art to create successful applications that incorporate context, personalization, and relevance in human beings to computer interaction. However, while chatbots have gained popularity, conversational AI solutions can be offered over both text and voice autoresponders.

Conversational AI combines different technologies, including natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, deep learning, and contextual awareness. Conversational AI enables machines to process, understand, and respond naturally to text or voice inputs. When establishing a conversational AI application, it becomes important to integrate the personalization, context, and relevance in the interaction between humans and bots/computers to ensure better CX.

Conversational AI empowers two basic modes of communication, which are text and voice. A bot that entertains the customer interactions over texting (or chatting) is known as a conversational ai chatbot solution, while the one serving the voice responses is known as a voice bot solution.

Businesses can easily install conversational AI across all customer touchpoints to create a seamless customer experience right from mobile apps or websites to social media, voice-based assistants, and other messaging platforms. Businesses use automated conversations to connect with their customers and provide seamless experiences across the channel to cater to the entire user base—reasons why conversational AI has become a global trend nowadays.

Saves time – With conversational AI, businesses can quickly respond to customer queries, save them from going through the tedious process of connecting with several agents, and provide faster customer service.
Easy real-time access – Conversational AI enables customers to seamlessly connect with a chatbot and get real-time access, further reducing information discrepancy risk.
Increases efficiency – By Integrating it into the business, businesses can increase their operational and customer support efficiency.
Superior Customer experience: Businesses prefer conversational AI to provide an exceptional customer experience with decreased customer support complaints. Businesses can personalize the interactions and all touchpoints by identifying individual customers and their messaging profiles.

The scope of Conversational AI – Building a Less Artificial and More Intelligent CX

Conversational AI initially originated with chatbots built for specific tasks for ensuring better customer experience and user engagement within a limited domain to provide primary responses embedded in the interactive framework. Since then, it has expanded to offer various callouts and services customized to deliver an enriched, superior, and personalized user experience (UX) via voice and text commands.

Nowadays, with the changing dynamics and technological advancement, Customers are giving higher preference to the businesses, continuously enhancing their customer experience strategy and providing exceptional customer support. As per the research by PWC, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, indicating that Customer Experience (CX) will be the central focus in the coming days as more and more brands embrace digital transformation.

Superior Customer Experience is a Necessity

Conversational AI platform is upping the Customer experience standards for businesses. While adopting the latest AI technologies to improve customer relationships, it becomes vital for industries to keep an eye on the latest customer engagement trends. Here are a few reasons that explain why a top-notch customer experience is the need of the hour:

Enable a superior omnichannel experience
To improve brand loyalty & differentiation
Expanding new customer Base

What makes a Good Customer Experience?

Before understanding what makes a good customer experience, it is crucial to understand what CX means. CX is the aggregate of how the customer feels about your brand from the interaction point until after the interaction. Businesses engage with customers across several communication touchpoints. Every interaction provides an opportunity for businesses to build or ruin what the customer thinks about you.

So what really contributes to a good CX? Here are a few points to consider:

1) Know your Audience

One of the most crucial aspects to know while framing a CX strategy is knowing your audience. Customer behavior is dynamic. Businesses need to be aware of who their customers are, how they behave, what motivates or upsets them, and their choices. It is important to have an observation of how customers evolve and what your business can do to cater to their new needs.

2) Build with Empathy

Empathy plays an essential role in enhanced customer experience. But, it gets overlooked due to technologies such as AI, ML, NLU, NLP, Cloud. Businesses need to set up technology that syncs with customers and understands their emotions, as most high-tech products fail if they’re not built with empathy. Businesses have to empathize with their customers to create a CX that genuinely stands out.

3) Hyper-Personalized Approach

Gone are the days when marketers and businesses used to treat one location as an overall market. Technological advancement has enabled enterprises to create a solution to talk to their customers in their preferable manner. Customer experience increases when brands interact with their customers in the most personalized way.

The Evolving Role of Conversational AI: Improved CX Strategy

In the previous years, customers have become more tech-savvy and incorporated technology into their business. They have wholeheartedly accepted and welcomed digital companies. As the technologies continue to develop and grow, enterprises focus on redefining what CX means to them. As per the reports by IDC, at least 90% of new enterprises will add AI technology into their apps, processes, and products by 2025.

Conversational AI uses bots (both voice bots and chatbots) to communicate with customers via different modes and channels. Conversational AI allows businesses to provide rich customer insights, enhance processes, develop better products, provide enhanced services, and help marketers with personalized messaging and targeting.

Businesses across different verticals have adopted Conversational AI. CXOs are responsible for providing a best-in-class experience to customers and overseeing the entire customer lifecycle.

Let’s look at how Conversational AI improves CX strategy:

1) Cost Reduction

Conversational AI solutions have several aspects that help increase CX. Unlike standard AI assistants, a chatbot resolve queries quicker, more effectively, and efficiently; agents become 24*7 available to talk to the customers in their most preferred language of communication. A chatbot that is built to handle queries at scale leads to cost reduction and cost savings.

2) Employee & Customer Engagement

Employees and customers are the biggest assets of every company. Conversational AI solutions streamline inter- intradepartmental processes, enhance employee engagement, boost employee satisfaction, and positively affect CX. Conversational AI also assists employees in customer engagement programs that help create a meaningful relationship with your customers beyond a transaction.

3) Purchase Experience

CX cycle starts right from when you walk into an outlet and see if there is someone to assist you or when you go through the web to look for data. All of these are aspects of CX. Every one of these is a part of an awful CX. Conversational AI helps to assist the customers and prevent bad CX.

Conversational AI is not Rule-Based or Scripted

Traditional chatbots are based on a set of pre-defined rules and texts, just like traditional programming techniques. Chatbots were working on the concept of “If this, then that, else this.” With traditional chatbots, customers were getting answers based on the encrypted script and appropriate rules. Due to technological advancement, conversational AI chatbots and voice bots can determine the nuances of human speech, explain how customers are feeling and help to respond accordingly.

Meet Whatsapp Business’s Updates That Lift Your Customer Experience

In this day and age, around 42% of the Earth’s population owns at least a single smartphone, and out of these smartphone owners, around 87% use them for instant messaging. There is no denying the fact that convenient, conversational, and personalized messaging has become a decisive catalyst between companies and their customers.

Nowadays, customers want to experience the best in all your services, in their preferred mode of communication and in a manner conducive to their behavior. Customers want to interact with businesses on the same messaging channels they use in their personal lives, such as through live chat on their web and mobile apps.

Being one of only 68 Business Solution Providers across the globe for WhatsApp Business API with the ability to deploy and integrate WhatsApp Business platform on behalf of WhatsApp approved customers, Ameyo focuses on streamlined and hassle-free communication between customers and business partners.

WhatsApp is the most preferred channel by the millennials as it makes it easier for businesses to connect with their customers without delay. But, one challenge remained in providing a seamless interaction experience, i.e., the language barrier.

To maintain a high customer satisfaction rate and commendable customer service support, one needs to improve their way to carry out the business operations, resolve customer queries and make them feel unwanted, not abandoned.

Ameyo, in line with its customer-centric philosophy, has added two exciting new features to our existing Whatsapp for Business API with FusionCX offering to ensure the best experience for your customers while ensuring the utmost efficiency in business operations.

Exciting, right?

With our two new features, We are dedicated and committed to helping you deliver the best customer experience and support. The new feature updates in Whatsapp bring a lot to grab your attention; here it is!

Interact With the Customers in Their Preferred Language

Customer expectations have changed drastically due to the covid-19 surge. As physical interactions between businesses and their clients are exponentially declining and shifting to the digital world, having these interactions in the customer’s preferred language at each touchpoint has become more critical than ever.

By extending new customer support features and capabilities to WhatsApp, businesses using Ameyo can reach WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion users and provide fast and proactive support. It enables businesses to deliver rich conversational experiences and connect with their customers in any language, everywhere.

Ameyo is continuing to double down on new capabilities that help businesses boost productivity, increase revenue, low risk, reduce costs, and most of all, deliver real value to the customers.

1) Preferred Language in System Messages for All Chats

Many enterprises allow their customers to select their preferred language over the website or mobile application chats to ease the complexities of understanding the unknown or unpreferred language.

While customers could always converse with the chatbot or live agent in their preferred language, with the new feature, even system messages like “The agent has joined the chat, Please while we connect you to the next available agent” will also be displayed in the customer’s preferred language.

List of languages currently supported- English, Arabic, Thai, French, and Japanese, with more languages being added in upcoming versions.

2) Select Language of Whatsapp Templates

WhatsApp has recently (in v2.27.8) changed the way the language of the template message is selected. Whatsapp enables businesses to communicate with the customers in their preferred language to enhance customer experience. They do not automatically provide translations for templates but instead require translations from the businesses and then send the alternate version of the template based on the specified language.

Customer engagement preferences have rapidly changed over the past decade. They look for immediate responses to their service questions in the most understanding and preferred language.

Ameyo’s Whatsapp for Business API with Fusion CX supports multiple languages via API, allowing the enterprises to interact with customers in their regional language. Ameyo has enhanced the language capability to improve the usability and efficiency for better customer support & experiences at scale.

Ameyo can now specify the language in which the template needs to be triggered, with the following deterministic approach:

1) if the agent or rule engine configuration specifies a language, use that

2) else as per customer preference

3) else from hierarchy configuration

4) else the default language

Want to know more? Write to us at info@ameyo.com.

How Can Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Organizations Capitalize On Contact Centers?

The entire banking system is witnessing a transition, and the global pandemic has only amplified this transformation. And the same is the case with cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin’s price has grown by 66% in February 2021. – (Source: TechCrunch)
The confidence for cryptocurrency as of January 2021 is almost 100%. (Source: Binance Research)

Cryptocurrency has unquestionably started to resonate with society. People, businesses, and governments have realized that blockchain technology has the power to change the world.

Today, investors and retail bankers are expressing their inclination towards cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technology (blockchain) that underlies them.

Many businesses and investors are starting to make sustained involvement in the crypto-verse, believing that it could be the future of money.

Cryptocurrencies can exceed traditional investment commodities while offering higher efficiency, less bureaucracy, and increased transparency!

Having said all of that, there are a couple of common challenges cryptocurrency businesses come across.

Let’s look at some of them, shall we?

Contact Centers – The cryptocurrency industry is flourishing yet, customer care is still a significant challenge. The similarities between BFSI and the cryptocurrency industry are many and using the same contact centers is a possible and viable solution for the crypto-verse.

Regulatory Compliance – There are not enough regulatory compliances yet, but many countries around the globe have started to place regulations, most of which have a striking similarity to current BFSI regulations

Security – There are possibilities that a crypto wallet can be hacked. However, the chances of recovering the money are minimal. This makes security an important concern for any organisation that provides cryptocurrency or blockchain technology related solutions.

Other Challenges – Problems like not being able to withdraw money when you want. Moreover, many times, limit orders and market orders do not execute, causing losses to investors.

Other than this, a common problem is not being able to respond to high volumes of tickets due to lack of contact centers because of which of limit orders do not execute.

Can BFSI-Friendly Contact Centers Be Used By Cryptocurrency Exchanges?

The simple answer is – YES!

To understand the similarities between Cryptocurrencies and BFSI, it is necessary first to learn more about BFSI. The BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) industry at the moment is in for a drastic transformation.

Drastic transformation is essentially the transition from on-premise and extremely secluded solutions, to on-cloud solutions offering easy integration between systems, low overall costs and decentralized operations (WFH), while ensuring BFSI-grade security.

The trends in banking and finance have changed, and we are now looking at emerging markets leveraging the potential of AI and blockchain technology that has brought cryptocurrency investments at par with traditional banking investments.

Just like the banking sector has revolutionized over time giving its customers access to contact centers for easy and quick ticket resolutions, the cryptocurrency industry is yet to leverage the most of this.

The good news is that cryptocurrencies are very similar to BFSI in terms of contact center requirements. The contact center arrangement used for the banking industry can also be used by cryptocurrency exchanges to provide a great customer experience to their customers.

Anything that moves from paper-based to digital is called digitizing. This allows banks to explore various business processes/technologies like RPA, cybersecurity, and blockchain.

Digital Transformation In BFSI And Cryptocurrency

Blockchain technology is a notable driver of digital transformation in the BFSI industry. It is still an emerging technology, yet blockchain has the potential to change the BFSI sector.

Many regulatory bodies worldwide believe that blockchain can cause ripple effects in the fintech and the banking sectors.

Today, banks are not only joining hands with various fintech startups based on blockchain and other DLTs. Still, they are also encouraging collaboration between themselves because back-scratching is pivotal for the successful implementation of blockchain technology.

Similarities Between Cryptocurrencies And BFSI:

KYC Regulations – New regulations similar to the BFSI industry that are being implemented, ensuring safety and security and accountability essentially for fraud prevention and AML.
Customer Identification – Cryptocurrency exchanges and BFSI both need to ensure they identify the customer accurately, both for customer experience and as confidential information is involved
Regulations and Compliances Followed include – PCI-DSS, FSI, SOA (SOX) and AML.

Additional Challenges Of Cryptocurrencies Over BFSI:

Cryptocurrency wallets are anonymous, which means one person can hold on to multiple wallets. So then, identification of the owners of each wallet becomes difficult. Ameyo’s internal encrypted database could be the solution to this obstacle.

The transactions that are made from wallets to other wallets are not necessarily untraceable but what happens if you transfer to wrong wallet, there is no way to contact the person and ask them to return the money as wallets are anonymous, Moreover, no central body can control the wallet (freeze account, reverse transaction, etc)

If you forget your ATM pin, you can always regenerate it via your bank but in the crypto-verse, if you lose your private key, you essentially lose all your money.

Even though cryptocurrencies are significant and blockchain technology has the power and the potential to change the world, there are several concerns that need to be addressed. That is where Ameyo can help and give you a competitive edge over others.

Solutions

Ameyo is a one-stop solution for all the obstacles mentioned above. Ameyo provides various security features to ensure security and compliance, such as VAPT service pack, DMZ Proxy server, data masking and encryption, interaction archiving, etc.

This helps enable compliance with various regulations and organizational policies PCI-DSS, SOA (SOX), FSI, AML, etc.

Besides this, Ameyo can help you in many ways:

Mask, encrypt and maintain various wallet addresses in the backend (not visible to users) of multiple customers.

Initiate a call or chat function at the same time when there is trouble with a transaction failed to order, or there is an issue in any section. You can also create a ticket directly without having to navigate through multiple pages.

Cryptocurrencies are well known for having poor CX. Ameyo can help by ensuring SLAs, skill-based call routing, and customer feedback to enhance the CX experience.

Live interactions (chats and calls) – Ameyo can help by integrating chatbots and voice bots to enhance productivity.

Furthermore, Ameyo can assist you with setting up remote agents, allowing you to reduce costs while increasing productivity.

Ameyo can assist you with cloud infrastructure to help you reduce CapEx. The same function on-premise is also available.

Ameyo keeps records of all the calls, chats, and social media recordings to ensure compliance and proof.

Provide bank-like personalized CX to HNI DeFi customers with options like VRM and Video chat.

KYC Enables – To ensure everything is in order and there is no problem with the government and policies in the future.

Explore Ameyo’s Contact Center Solutions BFSI

Wrapping Up

Ameyo is a one-stop solution for all your customer experience needs by helping you connect with your customers to serve them better. Cryptocurrency is the elephant in the room, and let’s be honest, we all are intrigued by it.

Regulatory compliance and security are the most important and common concerns revolving around the crypto-verse.

Ameyo ensures that everything is in order in that vertical and ensures targeted workflows for issue categories and customer priority segments.

Looking to know more about us and how we can help you? Get in touch with us today!

BPMN vs. CMMN: What’s The Difference?

Businesses and organizations across the world are invariably thriving to enhance and increase their productivity while eliminating errors. But how? To do this, it is vital to introspect, analyze, and continuously improve the working methods.

This could include structured workflows for predictable situations or protocols to respond to dynamic situations where a fixed and a prescribed process is impracticable.

Let’s talk a little bit more about CMMN and BPMN.

What Is CMMN?

Case Management Model & Notation (CMMN) is essentially a graphical notation primarily used to apprehend methods of working that revolve around the handling of cases, requiring various activities to be performed to facilitate completely unpredictable solutions.

CMMN has the power to expand its boundaries using the concept of case files and following an event-centered approach. When coupled with BPMN, it enables the users to cover a broader spectrum of work methods.

Why Do Businesses Need CMMN?

CMMN works wonders when coupled with BPMN. It empowers the users to cover a broader spectrum of various working methods. Here’s why we need CMMN:

To reach an understanding speedily using unambiguous models.
Encourage and intensify the participation of the stakeholders using graphical notations.
CMMN is vital to create a library of processes along with case definitions and business policies to train and educate new employees within the company

What Is BPMN?

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is primarily a method used to map various business processes. BPMN empowers businesses to form a visual depiction of complex business processes/practice flow.

BPMN model helps major stakeholders understand better by facilitating more clarity and perspective, empowering them to make the right decisions. It’s almost like how maps help you figure out the best possible way to your destination.

Why Do Businesses Need BPMN?

Business process modeling renders significant advantages to businesses and organizations such as the ones listed below.

Align Operations with Business Strategy

It is vital to make changes in the operations and workforce to implement a new business model or strategy.

The only way to do this is by operationalizing the business transitions to actual business processes, business rules, and business decisions made on an everyday basis by the decision-making authorities of the organization.

Improve Process Communication

BPMN model allows the communication and documentation of business processes. These are ideal for training new employees, enabling a quick knowledge transfer.

BPMN facilitates an easy to comprehend and detailed documented process allowing new joiners to train and understand what to do in which situation.

Increase Control and Operational Efficiencies

Executing processes consistently is better than relying on individuals and expecting them to remember to do the exact thing. BPMN also formalized the already existing processes that may or may not be well documented or updated with time,

Furthermore, with BPMN, you can increase the productivity substantially of the resources and staff, allowing you to do more for less.

BPMN VS CMMN

Modeling and automating well-structured and routine processes has been an area of focus in recent times. BPMN model is best used for well-structured, consistent work that is typically predictable where the workforce simply needs to execute tasks.

CMMN model covers the somewhat less predictable processes where the knowledge workers are actively involved in making decisions and plan during the run time.

Case Management was introduced as a tool meant for knowledge workers back in 2005, and later in 2014, OMG came out with a standard for case management now dubbed as CMMN. The primary focus of CMMN is to support unpredicted, data-intensive, and poorly structured processes.

Case management is a class of business process tech, but it does not typically use ‘control flow’ to illustrate the process.

Case management is about empowering the workforce by facilitating all the required information about the case – giving them the power and control of the case evolution.

Case management is less about the process and more about the workers. Unlike the classic processes, providing goals and possibilities is much more essential than the technique used to achieve the goal.

Here listed the differences between BPMN and CMMN:

Declarative Notation does not strive to shape the flow of a query; they bring about the desired outcomes i.e., blueprinting what they want to happen but not how it should happen.

Did you know that SQL is declarative programming because it does not command the course of a program, and it only affirms how it would like to surface but not how it is done?

On the other hand, the imperative notion certainly tries to model the flow of a problem. Programming languages such as c++ and Javascript essentially give out commands letting the compiler know how the code should run.

Wrapping Up

Although BPMN and CMMN are great and can be used independently, they were carefully crafted to complement each other.

A lot of businesses and organizations across the globe require a combination of processes to enhance their workflow. Case models are preferred for their reactive actions, and decision models are more accepted for intricate and multicriteria business rules.

The combination of the two together benefits businesses based on the appropriateness of each type of activity modeling.

This is why BPMN and CMMN remarkably constitute the “double crown” of the process Growth norms.

A Complete Guide on Contact Center workflow

What is Workflow?

A workflow is a sequence of recurring tasks, comprising interdependent business processes needing completion to reach a specific goal. It is predictive in nature and consists of various steps executed by numerous systems, people, and departments to reach the common goal.

Workflow is the simplest way to manage recurring processes in your helpdesk ticketing system

The call center or contact center workflow automates the entire process to minimize the processing time and increase all departments’ task execution and performance. Workflows empower the work starting from the start to end and enable a better-coordinated effort to smoothen processes and work simultaneously.

Businesses often try to optimize workflows by automating them where possible and adding features like alerts to draw attention to steps in the workflow that are out of compliance.

What do Workflows mean for a Contact Center?

A contact center helps make customer interactions smoother across various channels, including messaging, email, voice, video, web chat, social media, and more. It enables businesses to connect with customers or vice versa via multiple modes of communication. Using contact center software, organizations can personalize interactions to go beyond the usual inbound and outbound calls and help businesses to serve customers better.

To make the communication process seamless and more effective, one thing is required in the contact centers: WORKFLOW. With workflow integration, contact centers can provide a unified experience, automate the entire process, reduce processing time, and ensure that tasks are completed on time without any delays.

Contact Center workflow management means managing the workflow to ensure that the execution of tasks is efficient, on time, and accurate. It involves numerous employees working from various departments performing their tasks with the required skills at the right time.

The workflow looks at contact centers as a professional workplace where staff members in different departments (such as operations, finance, administration, etc.) are executing their processes to achieve overall customer engagement goals.

At the same time, it understands that the different nature of businesses (such as banking, logistics, edtech, etc.) has different processes. In simpler words, every contact center is a unique business that relies on processes unique to it. Workflow helps you streamline and automate all of those processes.

At a contact center, workflow integration ensures that customer issues are being resolved without delays and proper team functioning is taking place at the right time. Previously, contact centers were used to connect the agents to the customer with Automatic Call Distributor hardware. At the same time, the workflow is operated on software, automates, and makes the entire process much simpler, time and cost-effective.

Workflow at contact centers empowers the agents to segregate their time effectively and focus on essential tasks. It increases employee’s productivity and the customer’s experience.

Need of Contact Center Workflow?

In Contact centers, siloed interactions with no cross-department integrations and clear accountability is resulting in lost revenue and high labor costs. Contact center workflow integration presents an opportunity to reduce these costs and make tasks less labor-intensive.

In addition, automating human tasks with workflow will allow agents to address other important tasks and eliminate the double-entry that agents sometimes need to do to keep multiple systems up-to-date. Workflow automation increases accuracy, alerts managers about the problems, saves time that is spent on monitoring stats.

Reasons why contact centers need workflows:

Loss of time in repetitive tasks and processes resulting in high operational costs.
Lack of visibility as the number of customer service requests increases.
High volume, low priority customer service & support requests often miss the SLAs and get ignored.
Lack of accountability – owing to multi-department involvement.
Inefficient reporting & monitoring of processes increase processing time and lost revenue.

Features of Workflow

1) Tasks and Forms

Workflows use predetermined sequences of steps and tasks to route the information among various users. It enables the teams to collect data through forms, analyze the tasks, and view the information to automate existing business processes.

The Tasks reporting allows users to see how many tasks are in the completion process, have been performed, or need to be performed while forms are used to collect information and present it to the users. Forms enable the users to assist quickly and access information that is relevant to your day-to-day operations.

2) Workflow-specific Reports and Dashboards

Helpdesk ticketing Workflow automation highlights the critical information and transforms it into actionable insights through data visualization. The workflow status report shows the complete status of all workflows that are occurring in the system.

A fully customizable workflow dashboard lets users see all assigned workflows in a unified window and maintain compelling workflow reports. The ability to view everything in the dashboard and detailed reports help optimize organizational procedures in a streamlined manner for efficient operation.

3) Workflow Designer

With an intuitive user interface, the workflow designer feature simplifies the steps involved in creating a new workflow and eases the tedious process. It helps the users quickly design, visualize the working process and activate the business workflow to improve working efficiency.

Automated workflows can be planned and designed visually to add, arrange, improve and stimulate the tasks using a drag and drop interface.

Benefits of Contact Center Workflow

1) Improved Efficiency

Automated workflow boosts productivity and improves the efficiency of the agents and managers to accomplish tasks more accurately in less time. It reduces the workload or re-data entry and ensures smooth communication between different business channels. It reduces the overall time by automating repetitive tasks, identifying and addressing the bottlenecks.

2) Reduced Processing Time

Automated workflows at contact centers automate the overall process time and optimize task performance. The agents need to submit the information after completing the call and before picking up another, but this process is time-consuming. Helpdesk ticketing Workflow automation increases productivity by reducing the processing time.

3) Simplifying Delegation of Tasks

Most delegated tasks take some time, planning, and effort to complete properly. Workflow automation enables the superiors to assign the tasks to their subordinates by ensuring effective delegation and making the workload more manageable.

4) Greater Visibility

Helpdesk ticketing workflow automation provides complete transparency to all of the users. They can see all of the features, processes, interdependencies, AHT, the status of requests, time taken for collecting the proofs, and decisions related to manpower under one roof. It also shows the possibilities behind the slowing down of the process and how many change requests have passed through the system.

5) Establish Accountability

The supervisor can assign the tasks to the agents based on the skills and requirements, such as which agent will be accountable for which work and track their performances using SLAs. It enables various stakeholders to measure the agent’s productivity to establish accountability. Automated workflow streamlines the process of routing the invoice from one employee to another for action to be taken based on the business rules.

6) Provide Unified Experience

Automating tasks such as follow-ups or project updates ensures that agents need not remember to send reports to the rest of the team. Workflow automation automatically integrates the departments and enables end-to-end orchestration of work for better collaboration.

Inbound Vs Outbound Call Center: Do you Know the Difference?

In the age of chats and social media, the call center is still a key to manage customer queries. It’s the closest experience towards face-to-face customer engagement. Call centers handle large volumes of calls, both inbound and outbound. Understanding the differences between inbound and outbound call centers will help you determine the best option for your business. We have some facts to help understand why and how call centers play an essential role in customer engagement.

Nowadays, many contact centers use an omnichannel strategy for customer service with the hope of reaching the greatest possible audience. When executed right, it can be an excellent approach to meet customer demand and brand marketing. However, the increased popularity of social media and chats has not diminished the value of the traditional customer service channel, i.e., voice.

In addition, a recent poll survey by Ameyo found that around 72% of people prefer voice calls over text, video, or social media for handling most of the interactions at the contact centers.

At present, Call centers are the core part of customer service for organizations. Call centers come in the picture in two ways; first, whenever a customer calls for support on the mobile phone. Second, when businesses call prospects to make sales or conduct a survey. Nonetheless, not all call centers are created equal; what kind of call center they need to operate on depends on the nature of the business.

As per Strategyr, the cloud call center is predicted to reach $424.11 billion at 25% CAGR by 2033.

In this article, we’ll understand about types of call centers and the essential difference between inbound and outbound call centers. It is necessary to understand what differentiates the two of them to decide for your business.

What is an Inbound call center?

Inbound call center software enables customers to seek quick customer support like answering queries, issue resolution, or any customer service-related issues and allows businesses to manage all incoming calls efficiently. Given the nature of the calls, they are more customer service-based and focus on resolving customers’ concerns regarding a product or a service that the businesses offer.

Few organizations use an inbound call center as the primary method of customer interaction. It is critical to provide exceptional customer service across all channels as one bad customer service experience can lead to the loss of a loyal customer.

The most fundamental feature of an inbound call center is that the agent waits for customers to call them instead of actively making calls and reaching out to them. The critical role is to improve the overall customer experience by providing meaningful help – assisting with customers’ issues and resolving all sorts of obstacles.

Having a quality and technically updated inbound call center is critical for all sizes of businesses. Around 89 % of companies expect to compete with their concurrence primarily based on customer experience. Consequently, the inbound call center model is more customer service-oriented than outbound and covers several platforms to connect with the customers, such as phone calls, emails, SMS, social media, or still more and more popular Live Chat.

How Inbound Call Center Works?

User/customer dials the business number.
Inbound call centers answer the incoming calls of the business.
Machine or human at the inbound call center understands the need of incoming calls and routes it to the concerned agent/department.
The agent entertains the caller and ends it with a call disposition.

What is Outbound Call Center?

In contrast to Inbound call centers, outbound call centers tend to make more calls to the customers and prospects than they receive. Most of the outbound call centers are sales-focused. Their primary focus is to reach out to customers and potential customers, making sales, and publicizing the business.

Typically, agents in outbound call centers work on the customers’ data stored in the software, leading them to make sales and cold calls and spend time helping customers upgrade their services.

Usually, they utilize customer relationship management (CRM) software to track and manage their interactions with the customers for analytics purposes and make future interactions smoother. Agents aim to reach out to customers to educate or tell them about companies’ products/new offerings and inspire them to buy upgraded services.

Outbound call centers utilize a series of different calling techniques to make sales than inbound ones. Agents have a completely different focus as they are not the ones who are receiving the calls, waiting to answer questions, and provide support. Instead, they are the ones to make cold calls, have targets to achieve, and actively contact potential customers to meet them.

How Outbound Call Center Works?

Agent or machine dials an outgoing call from the available database.
The outgoing calls may face a busy line, wrong number, customer unavailability, voicemail, or answer by the customer.
In machine-based dialing, the agent connects to the call only when a human answers it. The agent has to spend the time until they figure out if the customer has responded to the call.
The agent explains the requirements to the customer and ends it with call disposition.

Difference between Inbound and Outbound Call Center

When planning call centers’ infrastructure for your business, it is vital to understand the type of interactions you might have with your customers. The primary differentiator between both call centers is how most of the interactions start in the first place.

Understanding the type of call center you want to be is vital for planning and executing protocols in your call centers. For example, if you are an inbound call center, you will not require technology such as a dialer. While, if you’re an outbound call center, you will need features such as call monitoring and some more, depending on the requirements.

To get a more clear picture, here are the differences between inbound and outbound call center services:

1) Based on the type of services they provide

Both inbound and outbound call centers provide different types of call services to their customers.

Inbound call center

Customer Service: The customer service team relies on inbound calls to assist prospects and customers. It can be in the form of product or technical support.

Inbound Sales: As stated earlier, inbound leads find your product or reach out to you by doing their research. Your inbound sales team relies on the influx of calls made by them to close deals.

Product/Service Inquiry: Prospects may inquire regarding any new offerings or existing products/services. On the other hand, existing customers may complain about issues they are facing or experienced in the past few days or months. They may also be calling in to provide feedback on their user experience.

Outbound call center

Market/Customer Research: Another function of outbound calls is collecting data by doing customer or market research. Businesses usually use this type of call center to launch new products or add a new feature to the existing one.

Customer Success and Outbound Sales Call: In outbound call centers, agents make proactive calls to the customers to collect their feedback on the offerings and focus on helping them achieve their goals. Outbound call centers use predictive dialers to automate the calling process by using advanced algorithms to cut manual dialing time and increase agents’ efficiency.

2) Software Features/ Technology

Both inbound and outbound call centers work on a different set of technology and software features.

Inbound call center

IVR: IVR is an automatic system that allows callers and businesses to interact via voice and keypad. Many call centers use the IVR system to handle incoming calls quickly and manage companies’ processes via the phone. It enables businesses to interact with customers and streamline the communication process without wasting time. Callers receive an automated voice message with instructions that can be used for caller identification, lead distribution, and call distribution.

Call Tracking: In the call tracking process, inbound calls are attributed to the marketing campaigns that led the callers to your businesses. With this feature, enterprises get insights that help to perform better in the marketing campaign.

Automatic Call Distribution: Automatic Call Distributor, commonly known as ACD, is a wireless software that receives and routes the incoming calls to the best available agent or department based on the predefined routing rules. ACD system helps manage call traffic and distribute calls using a pre-defined rule-based routing strategy that defines how inbound calls will be handled and helps call centers avoid common mistakes and be more productive.

Outbound call center

Automatic Dialer: Autodialer software automatically dials telephone numbers pulled from a list and connects to a live agent or a prerecorded message. It smoothens the process by eliminating the tedious task of manually dialing individual phone numbers, enabling agents to focus on delivering the right message and increasing productivity. Businesses uses auto dialers in various settings and industries, including sales, health care, education, and hospitality.

Predictive Dialer: A Predictive Dialer uses a machine-learning algorithm to increase agents’ efficiency in a call center campaign by dialing numbers ahead of time and screens out all unanswered calls. It enables businesses to increase efficiency and the number of calls they make. Predictive dialer ensures to make more customer calls in a shorter time. Predictive dialer maximizes agent productivity and minimizes worries of idle time, answering machines, and time zone navigation.

3) Purpose

Outbound and inbound call facilities’ goals are to make and receive calls to resolve customer’s queries and fulfill their demands. However, To accomplish this goal, both of the call centers use different techniques and methods. At the inbound call centers, customers or prospects call the agents with questions or requests they want to resolve. Agents then interact with the customers, provide the required information, and resolve the problem at the earliest opportunity. One of the main characteristics that can not be overlooked in the entire process is customer satisfaction.

Contrarily, in an outbound call center, the agents call the existing customers or the prospects for sales and marketing purposes. The calls might be intended to make an offer for payment or a monthly update, informing them about a new or a renewal of existing offerings.

4) Agent Training

Agent training plays a crucial role in both inbound and outbound call centers. In inbound call centers, agents deal with customers with different moods and requests, so the interaction needs to be more personalized. It calls in for specialized training sessions that encourage agents to be polite, proactive, and patient. Conversely, In outbound call centers, the primary objective of the agents is to turn prospects into customers, so it requires agents to be more sales-oriented and have great determination to keep a person engaged. Inbound call centers emphasize more on persuasive approach while outbound call centers follow an aggressive approach.

Wrapping Up

It’s unfair to say which call center is better than the other quickly. Each type of call center is designed with a particular purpose and meant to work for a different set of audiences. Whether your business needs inbound or outbound call center services depends on what your business requires. Either way, if your business is growing and your team overextends themselves every time, call center services can be a great help for you.

Ameyo provides both inbound and outbound call center software. We help businesses to generate higher sales through a steady customer acquisition process, prioritize them through the post-sales process, and effectively implement required customer services and support.

Understanding the What and How of Video KYC

Know Your Customer” or KYC refers to the process of authenticating the identity of the customers and clients either before or during the start of the business relationship. KYC came into existence in 2002 in India. According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) notification, it has made it mandatory for all banks to carry out KYC of customers since 2004. In terms of the provisions of the Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2002 as notified by the Government of India, Regulated Entities (REs) are required to follow certain customer identification procedures while undertaking a transaction either by establishing an account-based relationship or otherwise and monitoring their transactions.

Though the banking and financial sectors (BFSI) were the first-responders to the mandate, the need for conducting KYC is widespread now and covers other industries such as mutual funds, NBFCs, lending companies, e-wallets, to name a few.

How to Get KYC Done – Steps to Get Started

Taking a look at different ways of getting your KYC verification completed

Online KYC Process

Visit any KRA’s website (KYC Registration Agency)

Enter your details as per your Aadhaar card

Enter OTP sent to your mobile number linked to Aadhar for verification

Submit application

Post verification by UIDAI, KRA approves your KYC

Offline KYC Process

Download and fill the KYC form

Enter your Aadhaar/PAN details

Visit a KRA office and submit your application

Attach the proof of identity and proof of address along with the application

Submit biometrics, if required

Track status using the given application number

The New Way of Customer Authentication – Video KYC

How is Video KYC different from Usual KYC?

There are various methods that people can use to complete their KYC for financial transactions and other such activities. As already mentioned, Know your Customer or the KYC process is to authenticate the user as per the guidelines of RBI, PMLS by the Government of India, SEBI, IRDA, and other regulatory bodies.

How Does Video KYC Work?

Just like one can choose to go for an offline KYC registration or an online KYC verification process, the RBI has recently approved using a Video-based Customer Identification Process (V-CIP) as a means to achieve paperless KYC. Similarly, Pension Fund Regulator PFRDA has also provided their approval for the paperless KYC for the NPS account opening. With this, Video KYC has come into the picture. Video-based KYC means that users can complete remote KYC from anywhere via a video call. The verifier authenticates the documents, does a liveliness check along with establishing the location of the person – everything is done on a video call, unlike the traditional ways.

What are the Regulatory Requirements for Video KYC?

Regulatory Guidelines
Video recording; Capturing live photo of customer
Offline Aadhaar Verification; XML file not older than 3 days
Capture clear image of Customer’s PAN card
PAN card verification from database
Geo-tagging to ensure customer is in India
Photograph of customer to be matched with the one on IDs
Match details on ID cards with that on form
Randomization of sequence/type of questions
Concurrent Audit
Identification and liveness of customer beyond doubt
Video triggered from RE domain
Video to be saved securely with date/time stamp
Use of latest AI and Face recognition technology
Redact Aadhaar Number as per Sec 16

Video KYC – Compliant & Approved ID Verification Solution

KYC is an integral part of the customer onboarding process for all the banks, mutual fund platforms, NBFC, and other financial institutions and organizations under the purview of RBI, SEBI, or IRDA. Video KYC refers to using the video call as a channel to conduct the KYC verification process.

How to Do Video KYC?

Step 1: Visit the bank’s website and schedule a video call

Step 2: Automated confirmation on SMS or email with joining link

Step 3: Get on a video call with the bank official

Step 4: OSV Checks of Officially Valid Documents

Step 5: Liveliness check with random body movements, real-time image capture, etc

Step 6: Address Verification by the Customer with geo-tagging and Google maps

Step 7: Face Match with Documents & Validation

Step 8: Verifier passes or rejects the KYC Application after verification

Step 9: The auditor reviews the details and processes the application

Step 10: Customer notified when KYC is successful or failed

Benefits of Video KYC Solution in the Contactless World

Customers and prospects look for convenience. And since the world is going digital and millennials and Generation Y redefining the customer service expectations, it’s time for the financial sector to lead from the front. Digitize your KYC verification process by using the best Video KYC software solution to deliver an effortless customer experience while ensuring quicker KYC completion at a lower cost and higher customer satisfaction.

Remote Customer Onboarding: Complete KYC by digitizing OVD collection and face verification

Faster KYC Completions: Start to finish KYC verification process in less than 3 minutes

Dropoff Reduction: 20% reduction in drop-offs with frequent customer follow-ups using dialers and outbound calling tools

Cost Optimization: Up to 40% savings on KYC completion cost with fewer staff and infrastructure requirements

Customer Convenience: Customer easily completes KYC from the comfort of their home even at low internet bandwidth

How Video KYC Solution Works for Different Business Verticals?

Understanding how different sectors can use the provision of video KYC to their advantage while having a look at who is eligible to opt for video-based KYC.

Video KYC for Banks and Insurance Providers

You might have encountered a KYC form or the bank official asking you to complete your KYC for account opening or SMS alerts or to avail other banking services. These formalities are a mandatory compliance requirement for the banks to prevent money laundering and identity theft. A video KYC solution not only allows the bank customers to do their KYC from their homes but also makes the job of the bank official a lot easier too while saving their time.

Read more »

Video KYC for Mutual Funds

Capture details of the customer electronically to verify their identity and allow them to open a Demat account and deal in the stock market. The mutual fund companies can significantly increase their customer outreach and fasten the customer onboarding process with a Video-based KYC solution which makes it easy and productive for mutual funds platforms to complete customer KYC.
Read more »

Video KYC for Digital Payments

Rather than investing in field agents and going door-to-door for collecting address proof and identity proof, now your officials can do all that from a single location. At the same time, with video KYC for the e-wallets and digital payments players you get to increase your customer base and penetrate tier 2 and tier 3 cities without incurring a huge cost while ensuring customers’ convenience faster KYC process.

Read more »

Video KYC for NBFCs

With a video-based customer identification process, make presence-less and paperless banking a reality for the fintech and small financial banks and lenders. Enable the regulated entities to do the remote onboarding while reducing the KYC process to minutes rather than days. Additionally, the neo-banks, lending fintech, and prepaid wallet players can reduce their costs further by eliminating the need to go out to them and thus, making small ticket accounts profitable.

Read more »

4 Key Pieces your Contact Center is Missing & You Don’t Even Know

Contact centers make the spine of your customer experience. Any piece that you miss in the contact center eventually disturbs the experience for the customer. Over the last few years, AI and digital transformation have evolved some new trends, and contact centers fall under that transitioning verticals. As a result, customer expectations are growing/evolving and becoming more demanding in the context of customer services.

There was a time when contact centers were only rooms jammed with workstations and agents on headsets. Todays’ contact centers are not just the interaction center point of the enterprises, but also the revenue driver. At the same time, they have become a compelling resource for finding out what customers think of the companies and capture sentiments, feedback, and required intels. They have evolved into advanced communication hubs where agents can interact with customers for all three customer experience needs: sales, support, and service.

A Forrester report says, 23% of B2B CMOs see improving the customer experience as a top three objective.

Nowadays, businesses are evolving at a relatively faster pace due to AI and business analytics technologies. They have enabled contact centers to lead incredible innovations and tremendous achievements, allowing them to do things with user data that people only manifested about years ago. Contact centers now focus on customer satisfaction, improved experience, and refined service while enhancing organization sales.

There is no denying the fact that consistent, incredible, and satisfactory consumer experience has a significant positive impact on the business results. In consequence, enhancing the customer service experience has become a top priority for businesses.

The global contact center market size amounted to 339.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 and is expected to grow and reach a value of 496 billion U.S. dollars by 2027.

Data Source–Statista

Looking ahead, it’s time to assess the future of call centers and key pieces your contact center is missing. What new trends will allow enterprises to gain an advantage over competitors?

1. Workflow

A workflow is a sequence of tasks, comprises the interdependent business processes that need to be completed in one go to reach a certain goal. It makes work more efficient while keeping everyone on the same page.

Workflows at contact centers automate these processes to optimize task performance and reduce the processing time by integrating all departments. Workflow enables end-to-end orchestration of work and better collaboration to provide greater visibility of processes and establishes clear accountability.

The purpose of contact centers systems is simple – to route and monitor interactions for seamless customer engagements. And to accomplish this purpose, a wide range of processes are in place. These processes may involve different agents, departments, and stakeholders within an organization.

Workflows at contact centers automate these processes to optimize task performance and reduce processing time. Workflows integrate with other department’s systems like finance, logistics, admin, etc. to enable end-to-end orchestration of work and better collaboration. It gives greater visibility of processes and establishes clear accountability.

Benefits:

Improved efficiency
Simplifying delegation of tasks
Reduced processing time
Greater visibility
Integration with other department systems

Contact centers are gradually becoming increasingly sophisticated with automating workflow tasks. Workflow automation acts as an opportunity to the contact centers by reducing labor costs and making tasks less labor-concentrated. In addition, automating mundane workflow tasks increases work efficiency as it provides agents more time to address other pending tasks.

2) Experience as a Service

The customer experience isn’t all or only about customer service; it is much more than that, and customer service is not just about a department or one department’s job. Servicing customers, listening to their pain points, resolving them, and offering them what they need is a step towards better end-to-end customer experiences. Contact centers always put their best foot forward, ensure customers are well served, and resolve their queries.

Ensuring that the customer is satisfied at the end of the call is no easy task; it requires making the experience smooth as butter. To deliver exceptional customer experiences, businesses must manage customers’ journeys starting from the first point of interaction. Prerecorded or actionable data act as a catalyst to solve the customer’s problems and let the agents know and understand them better. AI tools enable the agents to create real-time insights that allow them to personalize interactions at the right time based on the circumstances.

While there are no sure shot algorithms that make sure delivering the best customer experience, there are methods that make sure that the interaction is a positive one, both for the customer as well as the agents.

Three key points to remember:

Utilize omnichannel contact center approach to assist customers on the platform they prefer
Minimum on hold call time to save the critical time of the customer
Efficient ticket management to ensure customers issues are resolved as per the priority
Proper integration with contact center CRMs and other critical tools
Adopt industry-specific contact center solutions to deliver relevant and customized customer experience

Explore More: Customized Contact Center Solution for your Industry

3) Precision in Predictions

Prediction is a classic win-win scenario that enables managers to closely align demand and supply, resulting in optimal cost and profit performance. Forecasting for the contact center is arduous, but contact centers can deliver precise predictions based on the recorded intel into their systems.

A precise prediction means you have the right agents available with the right skills at the right time. Prediction accuracy is crucial to a contact center as it consistently meets customer needs, while inaccuracy can result in long wait times for customers and leave agents frustrated and even unmotivated. Nevertheless, if the situation is predicted precisely, it improves the experience for both employees and customers while effectively managing budgets. Contact center managers can create an accurate forecast, assuming business as usual, every single time with the right metrics and data.

We have curated the top three metrics contact center managers should use to ensure a precise prediction:

Query volume: A critical piece of the predicting puzzle is how many calls, chats, emails, social mentions, and other forms of queries the contact center receives daily.
Agent Handle time: How long does it take for the agents to resolve an inquiry or the handling time. These two factors can give an idea of agent availability to answer new requests.
Daily contact arrival pattern: It shows the peak hours of a day, i.e., busiest and slowest times of the day. It helps to determine the number of agents required to manage daily peaks and valleys.

4) Enthusiasm

Contact centers are usually the last place to find enthusiasm, energy, and excitement in the company. There are some genuine reasons for that, such as most of the agent’s tasks are mundane, they often interact with annoyed customers, and contact center jobs are not considered to be the most respected ones in most societies. That lack of empathy among the agents can transmit to the customers as well and can hurt your business. You can take the AI-way to infuse the energy and excitement in your contact centers.

AI is the subject of a lot of buzz and speculation about whether it will take over mundane tasks or not. While it is believed that AI technologies will never replace humans in customer service and contact center roles completely, they are ready to take on the monotonous work and support humans in carrying out their functions more effectively and efficiently.

Delivering better customer experiences requires agents to understand the customers and show empathy towards them. You need to plan out the ways to transform your agents into solution consultants, subject matter experts, and make their roles exciting. To accomplish this, technology can provide context and insights into the whole customer journey.

Here is how it works in a contact center:

AI tools, such as sentiment analysis help in determining the tone and choice of words by the customer. Leveraging such insights, you can train agents to deliver more empathetic conversations.
With the targets for agents, introduce the gamification to give them motivation and fun with work.
Introduce AI-enabled bots to take care of repeated tasks to save the effort of agents and let them focus on more humane and interesting/challenging tasks.

Final Thoughts

The future of cloud call centers will be more data-driven and predictive. New technological advancements are likely to impact the ecosystem of contact center operations and communication. To stay ahead of the competitors and to have a competitive advantage, contact centers must rely upon the latest buzz and trends.

Why is Cloud Call Center Better than On-Premise?

The customer engagement landscape is changing, and so are contact center dynamics. That makes cloud call center solutions more critical than ever with the growing consumer expectations and time. Technology empowers businesses and agents to provide omnichannel customer service and enables customers to handle most queries through self-service. Achieving high omnichannel engagement requires streamlining communication across voice, email, and other digital channels.

According to the Digital Journal, 90% of enterprises will be incorporating cloud technology by 2021 – and call center businesses are no exception. As the COVID-19 emergency continues, cloud call centers are becoming the essential tools to ensure business continuity and resilience by integrating agents and customers into the cloud world.

According to Statista, Cloud telephony will be one of the significant growth segments in the market, with forecast growth of 8.9 percent in 2020 and 17.8 percent in 2021. Moving forward in this article, we will discuss call centers and the advantages of cloud call centers over on-premise call centers.

What is an On-premise Call Center?

An on-premise call center is a traditional setup for call center infrastructure. Also known as an on-site call center, it uses physical equipment, including desk phones and servers stored at the company’s location. Though, an increasing number of businesses are moving away from on-premise call centers due to the complexity of setup, process, maintenance cost, and efforts.

In on-premise call centers, the local IT team of the business is responsible for the installation and maintenance of the software. Everything from exchange servers to wires/cables to software support is controlled internally.

On-premise call centers are traditional and hardware-based that often require upgrades every few years, which makes them a costly choice. With an on-premise call center, your communication hardware, software, and infrastructure remain on-site at your organization with dedicated communication servers. Thus, your IT team is responsible for installing, maintaining, and to upkeep everything from servers to headsets to integration support.

What is a Cloud Call Center?

A cloud call center is a comprehensive suite of voice communication tools and applications that can be accessed over the internet without requiring a local setup. It enables brands to access state-of-the-art capabilities and connect agents with customers across geographies.

Over cloud-based call centers, users can manage call centers and their inbound and outbound call center operations from anywhere over secure access. Integrating it with a contact center solution, you even manage other channels of communication, such as email, social media, live chat, WhatsApp, and Google’s Business Messages among others.

The cloud call center is hosted over internet-based servers to engage customers, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and faster deployment of omnichannel customer engagement.

With cloud-based provide, agents can communicate with customers virtually using any internet-connected device. Cloud call centers enable to reduce costs, optimize agent efficiency and improve ROI by delivering better customer experiences and employee empowerment.

Cloud Vs. On-Premise

Here are some of the key differentiators between the two technologies that can empower your call center.

Differentiators	On-premise Call Center	Cloud Call Center
Features	On-premise call centers have traditional features, including transferring the calls and holding them, Call logging, music while waiting for the agent, and conferences.	Cloud call centers have similar features to on-premise call centers, but they are capable of adopting advancing technologies and feature features faster. Moreover, these features can be accessed remotely over the cloud.
Setup and Cost	Implementing an on-premise call center can take several months to purchase licenses and hardware, set up the infrastructure, and find the most compatible software. On-premise call centers require upfront costs for equipment, licenses, and housing servers on-site.	Setting up cloud-based call centers involves installing an app on a computer that functions out of the box without any hardware setup. Conversely, cloud call centers do not need large upfront hardware or infrastructure cost as long as the organization has a strong internet connection and sufficient bandwidth.
Agent Productivity	On-premise call center solutions are usually less compatible with remote operations. In current circumstances where agents need to work from home over mobile devices, an on-premise call center can struggle with agent productivity.	Cloud call center solutions are easily compatible with remote operations. They can use AI to increase the agent’s productivity with advanced features such as a predictive dialer, voice bot, and more. It helps to reduce the AHT and increases agent productivity.
Scalability	On-premise setup lacks scalability, as it is restricted to have agents at specific locations to work and resolve customer’s queries. One of the most challenging parts of on-premise centers is scaling up the hardware during high- demands/seasonal businesses.	Cloud call center solutions enable employees to work seamlessly throughout the organization and interact with customers despite their physical location. Cloud-based solutions are comparatively more elastic than on-premises solutions.
Reliability	On-premise call centers rely on local servers, leading to the central point of failure and increasing the risk of downtime. They are also vulnerable to hardware and infrastructure-related issues.	Cloud-based call centers have a robust and reliable internet connection that leads to high call quality. Cloud call center solutions have greater resiliency and reliability at a lower cost than many company-specific on-premises solutions.

Benefits of Cloud Call Centers

Cloud-based call centers require no capital investment upfront and deploy in a matter of hours. They empower businesses to address customer calls with a better adaption for changing needs while providing metrics that improve agent performance.

The top benefits of a cloud call center include:

Increased flexibility includes adding/contracting user counts, more accessible access to new functionality, and ease of adding users in recent locations. It also has the ability to try new applications.
Accelerated deployment: Implementing an on-premise call center often takes between 6 to 12 or more months to complete while, cloud call center deployments are generally completed in weeks as it doesn’t require hardware installation.
Integration with CRM to provide omnichannel experience: Cloud-based call centers enable seam CTI integration with leading CRMs to leverage data for enhanced customer service and impeccable customer experience.
Lowered costs: A Cloud-based call center enables you to deploy state-of-the-art technology with the minimal upfront capital expense. This capability is a key reason why many firms switched to the cloud over the past few years.
Provide better reporting and analytics: Another benefit of cloud call centers is that they provide managers with better reporting and analysis capabilities by providing in-depth data about the agent-customer conversation. Cloud call centers provide analytics dashboards with advanced speech analytics to monitor the agent’s performance.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Investing in call center technology is a big decision, so make it right considering the future dynamics. There are numerous differences between on-premise and cloud call centers that give a clear vision and outweigh the cloud-based call centers.

The reduced reliance on IT and the pay-as-you-go model makes cloud call center solutions cost-effective, more scalable, and reliable, especially in uncertain times where it is impossible to work from a workplace and employees are working remotely. We can see with some certainty that remote working is going nowhere anytime soon, and investing in cloud contact centers can help businesses generate more ROI.