In todayโs hyper-competitive landscape, the agent’s job has also become more demanding compared to a few years ago. With ever-changing customer behavior, expanding channels and business applications, complex interactions, and an increasing workload, agents find it difficult to meet the heightened customer demands.
While agents are expected to do better, they are also left to navigate the complex web of disparate applications to fetch customer data. This makes them fall short of achieving their actual goals – which are addressing customer concerns promptly and driving more leads.
According to a Forrester Report, 84% of contact center leaders say their agents have between four to ten applications open during a customer interaction.
As agents jump in and out of applications, the call handling times, errors, and escalations go up. Agents spend a substantial amount of time navigating confusing manual workflows. This can cause customer frustration and impact the quality of customer engagement.
However, there is a solution to these challenges – integrating your contact center solutions, like an agent desktop, with third-party business applications like SAP CRM. With this integration, business efficiency and productivity can improve, and agents can excel in their core responsibilities.
Letโs understand how.
Whatโs the Need for Integration?
Many times, agents find themselves grappling with a number of issues:
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Data Fragmentation:
Customer data is often scattered across applications, systems, and databases. This happens because businesses usually gather data from multiple touchpoints. When customer profiles are incomplete and outdated, agents make less accurate decisions and cause delays in response time. Additionally, when agents are not given a unified customer view, they can miss opportunities to identify services and products that can boost revenue.
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Manual Workflows:
Agents are often required to dedicate their time to manual tasks such as data entry, information retrieval, and process management. A lack of automation causes them to perform tedious and repetitive tasks themselves. Such manual tasks are prone to errors, can cause delays in call handling, and shoot up operational costs. Apart from the added burden on agents, such manual workflows can also decrease agent satisfaction due to burnout and negatively impact customer retention.
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Application Overload:
This happens when contact center agents are required to use multiple applications and tools to perform their daily tasks. Simultaneously, opening a number of applications can clutter the agentโs workspace and make it difficult for the agent to navigate and locate the needed information. Agents also need to be trained on each of the applications. More number of applications increases the likelihood of errors, such as entering incorrect data or routing customers to the wrong information.
Businesses can address these challenges by integrating their contact center platforms and third-party applications.
๐ก Also Read | One solution for all your contact center problems |
Agent Desktops: Enabling Seamless Integration
Agent desktops act as a centralized hub for contact center agents, which provides them with a user-friendly interface to access customer data. They act as a vital integration link between your CRM, in this case, SAP CRM, and your contact center software. Agents are no longer required to navigate complex workflows and disconnected channels.
Agents can easily access comprehensive customer information and deliver personalized and informed support.
๐ก Also Read | Hidden Capabilities of an Agent Desktop |
What is SAP CRM?SAP CRM is a comprehensive software solution designed to streamline business operations and enhance efficiency. It is a platform for businesses to store and manage customer information, interactions, and transactions. It enables businesses to understand customer needs, preferences, and behaviors better as it has access to complete customer data. |
With increasing digitalization in todayโs world, this sort of integration positions businesses to stay agile and responsive and prepares them for the challenges and opportunities of the future.
๐ก Explore | SAP CRM integration with leading contact center platforms |
Benefits of SAP Integration
Letโs explore some of the benefits of integrating SAP CRM and agent desktop.
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Data Consistency:
The integration ensures that the customer data stored in the SAP CRM is synchronized with the agent desktop. This ensures that the data that reaches the agents is updated and consistent. Giving access to correct and up-to-date information in real-time allows agents to make informed decisions that are based on accurate data.
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Scalability:
As your business expands, SAP CRM integration also scales seamlessly with it. You can be a small business with a handful of agents or a large enterprise with a vast customer base, the integration can help you adapt to your changing needs without compromising on performance.
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Streamlined Workflows:
SAP CRM integration automates many processes that you might be handling manually at present, for example, order processing, case management, invoicing, etc. By reducing the manual efforts of the agents it helps minimize errors and speeds up response time, which results in improved efficiency.
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Improved Customer Insights:
By accessing SAP CRM data directly on your agent workspace, agents can get a deeper insight into customer behavior. A complete view of the customer allows agents to modify their interactions and recommendations accordingly. This can increase the likelihood of cross-selling and upselling.
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Rationalized Costs:
Integration can cut down your contact center costs. With reduced call handling time, minimized error rates, and optimized allocation of resources, integration contributes to a healthier bottom line. Your existing support team can handle a higher volume of calls without increasing the staff.
๐ก Explore | Modern Contact Center Solutions for Dynamic Customer Needs |
Wrap Up
Today, agents are expected to deliver exceptional customer experiences, but disconnected applications prevent them from doing so. Seamlessly integrating your contact center software and CRM systems can boost the business value of both systems and amplify contact center performance. The NovelVox Agent Accelerator is designed specifically to suit your business needs and unify with the CRM system seamlessly.
Tanu Choudhary
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