How ice Contact Center is Addressing Businesses’ Top 3 Customer Service Challenges - Part 1

A 2022 Gartner publication identified some of the top customer service challenges that organizations expect to face. Learn how ice Contact Center can help organizations address these challenges.

The world of customer service and support is constantly changing. As technology and society continue to develop, businesses face new customer service and support challenges every day. Gartner, a leading information technology research and advisory company, has identified some of these challenges. In their research, they asked respondents, “Thinking of your organization, how important is it to address each of the following challenges in the next 12 to 18 months?” The results were published in their 2022 article, Equip Your Customer Service Reps to Support Seamless Customer Journeys. The article identified 11 challenges and ranked them according to percentages of respondents who stated that the challenges were either “Important” or “Very Important.”

Many important challenges that organizations expected to face can be addressed by investing in their contact center. In particular, ice Contact Center allows organizations to address challenges, grow, and thrive by using ice’s built-in features and available integrations. Read on to see how ice Contact Center addresses these top challenges:

“Creating a Seamless Customer Journey Across Assisted and Self-Service Channels”

This was the #1 challenge identified in Gartner’s research, with 74% of respondents saying it was important to address in the next 12-18 months. ComputerTalk knows that seamless customer journeys are an important component of achieving excellence in customer service. That’s why ice is an omnichannel contact center, with all channels connected, all interactions handled on the same platform, and all context available in one place. Interactions can easily be escalated from one channel to another where appropriate.

CRM integrations allow relevant information, such as contact history, to be screen popped onto the agent’s screen as soon as an interaction comes in. This saves customers from having to repeat information, such as identifying themselves and their reason for contacting, every single time they reach out. This allows for faster service and seamless customer journeys.

“Improving Content and Knowledge Delivery to Customers and Employees”

This was another of the top results of the study, with 74% of respondents identifying this as an important challenge. There are many ways that ice delivers knowledge to both customers and employees. One of these ways is through a CRM integration. Whether your organization uses Dynamics, Salesforce, or some other CRM, ice Contact Center can integrate with it! These integrations deliver information about customers to agents instantly through screen pops when a customer reaches out. A CRM integration also improves knowledge collection and delivery by auto-inserting activity records of every interaction, ensuring consistent record-keeping and that an abundance of information is available and easily accessible to agents in the future.

iceAlert improves knowledge delivery to customers by automating it. This ensures that customers receive consistent, accurate information every time, without having to worry that someone will forget to tell them something important. This also saves employees’ time, meaning that information sent to customers is not dependent on an employee having the time to do it.

iceMonitor, iceReporting, and Power BI integrations all improve knowledge delivery to employees as well. Data is being collected by your contact center constantly – how many customers are waiting in queue, the duration of calls, and so much more. ice Contact Center turns this data into usable information that can guide both short-term and long-term strategic decision-making. iceMonitor is a dashboard that provides easy-to-use, color-coded, real-time statistics on contact center activities. With this dashboard, managers can see when warning thresholds are being met, so they can step in to solve any problems as soon as they arise. This knowledge delivery is made even more convenient with the option to set up alerts. These alerts ensure that important information about warning thresholds is delivered to managers even when they aren’t actively watching the dashboard.

While iceMonitor helps with immediate knowledge delivery for short-term decision-making, iceReporting provides historical contact center information that can show trends and more, aiding in long-term decision-making. This knowledge delivery can be automated, with reports being sent by email or Teams channel on a regular basis set by the manager. This means you never miss any important information.

For enhanced reporting abilities, ice Contact Center can integrate with Power BI. This allows for more customized reports that can be built from contact center data combined with other sources of data. This makes knowledge delivery to employees even more convenient.

“Making Better Use of Analytics and AI”

This was identified as the third most important challenge by respondents in Gartner’s study. 72% of respondents considered this challenge to be important over the next 12-18 months. Beyond the analytics provided by ice’s reporting tools and Power BI integration, ice Contact Center allows organizations to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) as well.

Customers can receive instant service in natural language, even when the contact center is unstaffed, with chatbots and voice bots. Cloud text-to-speech can be used to add and change IVR messages. This allows for natural-sounding prompts in a consistent voice across your whole IVR, without having to worry about hiring the same voice talent every time. This use of AI makes IVR updates faster and more convenient. AI can also be used for speaker verification, allowing customers to quickly verify their identity without answering a series of questions and receive service faster. AI can provide translation services, allowing customers to receive service via chatbot in their preferred language, even if the organization does not have any agents that speak the same language.

With the many tools and integrations available in ice Contact Center, it’s no wonder that it empowers organizations to address and overcome the biggest customer service challenges that they’re facing now and expect to face in the future. To learn more about how ice Contact Center can help your organization to improve customer service, check out our blogs on Gartner’s Four Pillars of Customer Service: Getting Connected, Process Orchestration, Knowledge and Insights, and Resource Management.