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What's Disrupting Your Multichannel Contact Center?

This article was published on August 3, 2021

Disruption is a hallmark of modern IT. It's a surprisingly rapid cycle that leaves your shiny new deployments seemingly outdated before that new-tech smell wears off — and your multichannel contact center isn't immune. That said, is it time to throw in the towel on this customer contact technology? What does the latest cycle of disruption mean for your contact center? Here are a few answers to put your mind at ease.

Scalability and Mobility: Enemies of the Multichannel Contact Center

So, first things first: What's disrupting your contact center technology? When you think about it, your multichannel setup gives you the flexibility to interact with customers via their preferred channel. Whether it's text, instant message, social media, or old-fashioned telephony, you can present the same prompt and effective customer service. What could possibly disrupt that?

As it turns out, disruption in this instance is more an evolution than a full-on transformation. While the flexibility provided to customers by your multichannel contact center are easy to appreciate, it's not without a few drawbacks; scalability and mobility immediately spring to mind.

Have more than one call center? Managing multiple channels across several remote locations can be a frustratingly inefficient experience. Building new locations as your client base grows can sometimes feel like walking on coals hoping nothing catches fire.

Mobility in a legacy multichannel environment is almost a foreign concept. After all, directing interactions through any number of mediums is tricky enough to manage on the desktop, let alone the myriad of mobile devices your users employ. In light of these challenges, looming disruption is a little easier to stomach.

So, what wonder-tech is on the way to disrupt and eventually scale these hurdles?

One of the quickest ways to sour a customer interaction is inconsistency. That said, trying to maintain consistency across channels and contact centers can be a never-ending cycle of hardware refreshes and software updates. At least one branch inevitably gets left behind.

Moving to a Virtual Contact Center

If manageability, scalability, and mobility are the limiting factors of your contact center, it only makes sense that the cloud would be the biggest source of disruption. Cloud technologies are de facto champions of all three categories, after all.

One of the quickest ways to sour a customer interaction is inconsistency. That said, trying to maintain consistency across channels and contact centers can be a never-ending cycle of hardware refreshes and software updates. At least one branch inevitably gets left behind.

Disrupting this exhausting cycle is the cloud-based virtual contact center. By abstracting hardware and network infrastructure — and the low-level management thereof — this technology gives you complete control and visibility over all aspects of your contact centers from a single dashboard. Seamlessly connecting and managing remote contact centers isn't the only benefit, either. With the ability to handle billions of customer interactions per year, those nightmares about performance and load balancing have become a thing of the past.

When it comes to flexibility, a little disruption from the cloud is more welcome than you might think. Given its virtual nature, organizations have been driving demand for cloud-based infrastructure for some time — this is hardly news. What is potentially enlightening is the way in which organizations are embracing disruption to be more receptive to it in the future.

Riding the Wave of Disruption

Consider the current disruption caused by artificial intelligence (AI). In the realm of contact centers, AI is being used to facilitate more natural chatbots that increase customer satisfaction by decreasing wait times and improving accuracy. Additionally, AI can be used in some cases to expedite identity validation through voice recognition.

Sounds pretty great. Now, imagine trying to massage this new tech into a legacy multichannel contact center. Got a headache yet? With a virtual contact center, these new disruptions can be seamlessly connected as new modules. In this way, riding the tech wave can actually make future disruptions more palatable.

Speaking of AI chatbots, many organizations are refashioning legacy systems and promoting these contemporary "agents" over existing low-level contact points. The result? A more effective and efficient contact center that leaves a much more satisfying experience for your customers. Which is really the heart of the issue. Disruption is inevitable; it's how you handle the ensuing changes that dictate its effect on your environment. Do you embrace the innovation or cling to what works?

While there's no universally correct answer, it doesn't have to be complicated, either. In the case of your contact center, what makes the disruption of a virtual contact center worth it to you? Scalability? Mobility? Manageability?

As you weigh these decisions, know that whatever stance you take, you probably won't burn everything to the ground. You may, however, find a far more efficient and powerful way to reach your customers.

Contact Vonage Business to learn more about how a virtual contact center can cause the right kind of disruption in your company.

Vonage Staff

Written by Vonage Staff

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