6 Advantages of Call Center Software for Your Ecommerce Business

Call center software is a tool that simplifies communication between a business and its customers.

17:53 27 January 2022

Most companies are single-mindedly bent on cutting costs and increasing agent efficiency. 

 

Today, the transformation could hardly be more pronounced. 

 

Contact center leaders are speeding up their digital transformation and cloud efforts to solve problems quickly while bringing costs down, yes.

 

More than that, though, businesses now recognize the value of meaningful customer service in shaping customer satisfaction and in gaining loyalty, and building trust in their brand. 

 

Which means they’re turning towards call center software solutions to keep up with large volumes of calls while still providing the human-to-human interactions - a free video call, anyone? - that have the potential to be a key differentiator and open the door to positive customer experiences.

 

What Is Call Center Software?

Call center software is a tool that simplifies communication between a business and its customers. This technology typically makes life a lot easier, relieving the burden of the workload on your call center staff by automating the process of receiving and solving customer inquiries on the phone.

 

In general, customers tend to be less satisfied with the service they receive from call centers when compared to their experiences in face-to-face brick-and-mortar situations. 

 

This can be attributed to a few reasons, from irritation and difficulties with technology, long waiting times, and even rude employees.

 

First developed as a customer relationship management tool, it seems, then, that call centers have traditionally struggled to live up to their origin story.

 

If you’re wondering how you can do better? 

 

This post lays out six advantages of call center software for your Ecommerce business.

 

Let’s dive in.

 

Consistent Customer Experience

 

 

While consumer experience is becoming a key predictor of business success, customers calling into call centers are all too familiar with frustratingly disjointed service that sometimes seems to drag on and on. 

 

If their issues or questions go unsolved at the first point of contact, it’s far from unheard of for customers to jump ship to more worthy competitors. 

 

With call center software solutions, your agents are better equipped to handle calls efficiently and deal with customer concerns smartly. 

 

And aside from resolving calls more quickly, you can address customer concerns in real-time - no matter the time since call center software solutions allow agents to be deployed remotely from any location. You turbo-charge your overall customer satisfaction when you’re available round the clock, anytime they need your help. 

 

Customers are more loyal when they perceive that they can count on consistent, personalized, five-star customer service every time they need to call. 

 

The right call center software solutions can help your call agents provide just that. 

 

In addition to enhancing customer experience on calls, advanced software solutions also allow you to introduce an appealing element of self-service into your customer-facing relations. For example, you can set up an automated knowledge base where customers can skip out speaking to an agent at all and find answers to common questions. 

 

 

 

1. Productivity

Modern call centers use software to drive productivity savings in two ways. 

 

First, the advanced capabilities of automated technology optimize agent schedules and free them up to provide the best customer experience by streamlining how calls are handled. Cloud-based features of software tools - such as IVR and call queue - help your business route calls to the right person immediately. And this ultimately leads to calls getting resolved faster and superior customer satisfaction. 

 

Second, customer relationship management CRM integrations empower agents with customer data to deliver highly-acclaimed customer personalization. Meanwhile, helpdesk software allows you to tag calls and make your workflows more efficient and productive.

 

Apart from agents being able to expedite calls, call center software gives you access to valuable data that helps you allocate agents to customers and calls based on their skills, known as skills-based routing. 

 

Suffice it to say that when agents get assigned to appropriate tasks, the more they feel that they’re using their full potential and the more confident they are in doing their job. 

 

1. Cost

In their efforts to save money and improve efficiency, more and more companies are turning to call center software. The most immediate saving you can make when you, for example, use a cloud-based solution is cutting down on IT overheads and maintenance costs. With cloud solutions, you can reduce the expense and time-suck of a raft of administrative tasks related to implementation, maintenance, and upgrades. You eliminate the need for your own IT team and thus make direct cost savings. 

 

Then you can automate call center tasks using interactive voice response (IVR) technology that realizes savings on labor expenses and frees up agents from manual tasks that impact their ability to address customer concerns. 

 

Furthermore, you can use the call analytics that comes with call center software tools to increase your agility in scaling your call center to meet seasonal upticks and fluctuating sales trends. 

 

Pro tip: Enable call waiting and never miss a customer’s call again!

 

 

1. Security

Security is top of mind for companies, given the growing problem of cybercrime. More and more businesses are moving their call centers to the cloud or using hosted software solutions due to the difficulty and technical resources required to keep their call center operations secure while minimizing downtime. 

 

Call center software includes security features that enhance security protocols - such as taking payments from customers without agents being able to identify payment information - and keeping customer information secure. 

 

With the right software from a reliable provider, businesses can rest assured agents have the tools to guard against malicious activities that could otherwise leave your customers vulnerable to data breaches and tarnish your reputation. 

 

Automated workflows also allow businesses to efficiently and painlessly generate the appropriate T&Cs for particular products and send it straight to a customer’s mobile device for consent. It’s an effective way of keeping agents compliant while avoiding the need to read out tedious scripts. 

 

In short, when you transform customer expectations around digital security, your Ecommerce business will only thrive.

 

1. Multi-Channel Experience

Impressive advances in technology have meant that customers are now dictating the terms of how they engage with brands. Indeed, research shows that companies who provide omnichannel experience see a dramatic decrease in customer churn, as against businesses who don’t. 

 

While omnichannel contact centers differ from those which serve customers on many channels in the continuity of experience for the customer and seamless customer journey, their popularity is a compelling indication of the general desire among customers to reach out to businesses from anywhere, on any channel, at any time. 

 

From the introvert's mild aversion to having a conversation over the phone to the convenience of communicating with you across a wide array of channels, customers enjoy and expect access to your support across multiple platforms. 

 

They want you to meet them where they are. And when you deliver consistent and convenient solutions, you show that you understand them and value their time. 

 

Fortunately, the best center software solutions allow you to leverage emails, chat, SMS, and social media in a single application. 

 

The more uninterrupted their access to a multi-channel experience, the happier customers will be and the more inclined to buy again. 

 

1. Measure Performance

Tracking your customer service performance has never been easier now that call center solutions allow companies to measure key metrics and evaluate trends and call flows. 

 

And the best part is that some phone systems even provide real-time insights that can help you make better-informed decisions in managing your resources. You can also take advantage of features that allow you to listen in on calls. With these, you can analyze performance and identify regular training opportunities, and set goals for improvement.

 

Software solutions increasingly come with automation capabilities, meaning customer satisfaction surveys can be sent out as a matter of course. These valuable, actionable feedback and insights are crucial in your quest to deliver a brilliant customer experience and build your brand.

 

The only way to improve the customer experience is through continuously upgrading your call center practices. The only way you can achieve this is by investing in analytical tools. For example, voice of the customer helps managers track common topics that come up on your voice-to-voice encounters in real-time. 

 

If you want to stay on top of call sentiment and keep a pulse on performance - and who doesn’t? - exciting new call center software is the way to go.

 

 

Answer the Call

If you had to sum up the advantages of using call center software for your ecommerce business, you could do worse than distill it down to one trend: the shift from an emphasis on cutting costs toward a focus on customer value. 

 

As brands continue to provide more and more of their customer support online, customer-facing call center agents need to have the right tools on hand to serve customers efficiently while undertaking many different tasks at the same time. 

 

Luckily, brands can use tools to optimize their ecommerce order management and integrate data and insights from each touchpoint in the customer journey. 

 

Customer satisfaction in call centers no longer needs to be an elusive phenomenon.

 

Yet to get a head start in their industry, brands need to go further than banishing customer hang-ups. They need to create relevant experiences in mediated service encounters that resonate and hit the right note.

 

The six benefits outlined above capture the range of ways modern technology and tools can be a platform for proactively delivering a smart customer service experience. 

 

Those enterprises that answer the call can seize on an invaluable source of competitive advantage: a better understanding of what customers want and need. 

Bio:

Grace Lau - Director of Growth Content, Dialpad

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform and cold calling software for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.