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

A 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 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.”

Organizations can address many of the challenges they expected to face by investing in their contact center. In particular, ice Contact Center allows organizations to address challenges, grow their operations, and thrive by using ice’s built-in features and available integrations. Read on to see how ice Contact Center addresses these top challenges:

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

   “Creating a Seamless Customer Journey Across Assisted and Self-Service Channels” 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’s ice Contact Center addresses this challenge through omnichannel capabilities and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integrations.

   Omnichannel Capabilities

   ComputerTalk knows that seamless customer journeys are an important component of achieving excellence in customer service That's why ice operates as an omnichannel contact center, seamlessly connecting all communication channels, managing interactions on a unified platform, and centralizing all context in one location. This setup allows interactions to be smoothly escalated between channels when needed.

   CRM Integrations

   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 provide identifying information or explain relevant contact history, every single time they reach out. This allows for faster service and seamless customer journeys.

2. “Improving Content and Knowledge Delivery to Customers and Employees”

   “Improving Content and Knowledge Delivery to Customers and Employees” was another of the top results of the study, with 74% of respondents identifying this as an important challenge.

   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 be delivered to employees to guide both short-term and long-term strategic decision-making.

   Additionally, ice Contact Center has features that allow information to be delivered efficiently to customers, helping to maintain customer satisfaction.

   Some of the ways that ice delivers knowledge to both customers and employees are through CRM integrations, automated outbound notifications, real-time dashboards, historical reports, and Power BI integrations.

   CRM Integrations

   Whether your organization uses Microsoft Dynamics 365, 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.

   Automated Outbound Notifications

   iceAlert, ComputerTalk’s outbound notification tool, improves knowledge delivery to customers by automating it. With iceAlert, customers receive consistent, accurate information every time; knowledge delivery no longer depends on employees having the time to manually make calls or remembering to mention every detail the customer needs to know.

   Real-Time Contact Center Dashboard

   iceMonitor is a dashboard that provides easy-to-use, color-coded, real-time statistics on your contact center’s 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.

   Historical Reports

   While iceMonitor helps with immediate knowledge delivery for short-term decision-making, iceReporting provides historical contact center information that can show trends, aiding in long-term decision-making. Contact center managers can easily access these reports in ice and customize them to gain the information that is most important to them.

   Additionally, iceReporting allows knowledge delivery to be automated, with reports being sent by email or by Teams channel on a regularly scheduled basis set by the manager. This means you never miss any important information.

   Power BI Integration

   With a Power BI integration, contact center data can be combined with other sources of data for enhanced reporting. Power BI also provides additional options for filtering and displaying desired information, with a wide variety of visuals that can be customized to suit individual needs.

3. “Making Better Use of Analytics and AI”

   “Making Better Use of Analytics and AI” 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, as mentioned above, ice Contact Center allows organizations to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) as well.

   Speech Analytics

   ComputerTalk offers an integration with Tethr: A Creovai Company. Tethr provides AI-powered speech analysis of contact center interactions, automatically analyzing customer sentiment, trends and more. The insights gained from this integration empower organizations to improve customer experiences, reduce costs, prevent churn, and more.

   Natural Language Bots

   ComputerTalk offers chat bots and voice bots. These bots use natural language understanding, meaning that customers can ask questions and receive answers in natural language, without needing to interact with a human agent.

   These bots may facilitate self-service tasks for customers and/or gather information to direct them to the best-suited human agent to handle their inquiry. This helps reduce agent workload and customer wait times.

   Bots can also extend hours of service by providing customers with self-service options outside of staffed hours.

   Transcription

   Contact center interaction can be instantly and automatically transcribed using ice Contact Center’s AI-powered transcription capabilities. This ensures that contact center users can access written records of conversations when needed without having to spend time on manual transcription.

   Summarization and Other Advanced Post-Contact Analysis

   In addition to complete transcripts, ice provides summaries of conversations. With this feature, users can obtain key information about a conversation at a glance without having to spend time reading through the entire transcript.

   In addition to providing summaries, ice’s latest AI features can perform other post-contact analysis, such as automatically extracting a reason for calling that can be easily displayed in records of the interaction.

   Text-to-Speech

   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.

   Speaker Verification

   AI can also be used in ice Contact Center for speaker verification, allowing customers to quickly verify their identity without answering a series of questions and receive service faster.

   Translation

   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.

Empowering Customer Service Excellence

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.