Customer support agents are an indispensable element of any contact center. Even when automated channels are part of the operational framework, human agents continue to play a vital role in handling complex customer interactions and contributing to the overall customer experience.
Along the way, they are required to use multiple applications, both to access relevant information and to manage customer interactions. As the number of these applications increases, their workflow becomes more complicated, which hampers their ability to resolve customers’ issues quickly. And since they often have to jump from screen to screen to do their job, it robs them of time, due to which both service quality and timeliness suffer. A Unified Agent Desktop with a clean, consolidated view and simple integrations to 3rd-party applications is an effective solution to these challenges. The NovelVox range is specifically designed to ensure that contact center agents can quickly access the required information cues and prompts to help them anticipate customer needs, make better decisions, and deliver enhanced experiences with each interaction.
The Obvious – and Hidden – Costs of Multi-application Agent Desktops
Too many applications mean agents are constantly alt-tabbing their way around multiple screens and information sources. It doesn’t matter whether this is part of an effort to serve customers better or an unfortunate side effect of legacy applications’ continuing use. What does matter is that many such applications are often complicated and only loosely linked, requiring constant switching between applications to access relevant information? In addition to making navigation difficult, multi-application desktops also cause system instability, higher call handling times, long queues, and long wait times. Together, all these challenges impact the quality of interactions and hamper customer experiences. And this is true even for skilled and experienced agents.
When agents cannot do their job properly, they cannot meet their goals and KPIs. Even as their pressure intensifies, they fail to manage the various tasks associated with multiple applications successfully. As a result, contact center turnover increases, and recruitment and training costs go up. Ultimately, inefficiencies and escalations rise, while performance, FCR, and CSAT fall. In the long run, many contact centers also miss critical opportunities for cross-selling, up-selling, and revenue-generation.
Unified Agent Desktops: Improving Agent Productivity and Contact Center Profitability
For modern, omnichannel contact centers, agent productivity, and lower costs are both critical business imperatives. But to achieve these goals, agents need a tool that simplifies their customer interaction journey, all the way from the initial touchpoint to issue resolution. They also need a means to quickly access relevant customer information and get a 360° view of the customer lifecycle to make fast decisions that benefit the customer. A Unified Agent Desktop empowers agents with all these capabilities and enables them to deliver prompt and effective customer service. It also allows the contact center to effectively meet – and even surpass – customers’ rising expectations for personalized, meaningful experiences.
With a unified agent desktop, agents no longer have to spend a large portion of their time looking for information or dealing with angry customers. Since they have easy and near-instant access to all the information and context they need, they can focus on customers as “people” rather than as “cases”. As a result, they can nurture and develop relationships with them and deliver uniquely tailored support every time they call in. The desktop also simplifies workflows and reduces training times, allowing new agents to learn the ropes faster and get to work earlier. Errors are reduced and more issues are resolved faster and often in the first call itself. This leads to lower AHT and higher FCR, which result in more motivated, more engaged, and happier agents. These factors have a direct bearing on operational costs and the quality of customer service delivered by the contact center.
For example, consider the Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop for UCCE, UCCX, and PCCE from NovelVox. This IVT-certified agent desktop brings together information from multiple third-party applications – from CRM, ticketing, and EMR/EHR, to legacy systems and internal organizational databases – and makes it all instantly available in a single, consolidated view. With pre-built gadgets for ticketing, customer management, scripting, and call disposition, agents can fully focus on the customer, engage with them in meaningful ways, and deliver personalized service and quick resolutions.
Empower Your Agents with a Powerful yet Intuitive Unified Agent Desktop
In a world where customer experience trumps every other factor for organizational success, modern contact centers cannot afford to cleave to old-fashioned customer service methods. One such method – implementing disparate, loosely-integrated applications – now causes more harm than good. Angry customers, stressed agents, rising costs, and increasing staff turnover – all these issues can be addressed by the range of Unified Agent Desktops from NovelVox. These solutions for Cisco, Avaya, Amazon Connect, Five9, Dialpad and Genesys contact centers empower agents to focus on what really matters – serving customers and delivering the experiences they demand and expect.
With over 150 deployments in 16+ countries and half a dozen industries, every Unified Agent Desktop from NovelVox can be optimized to adapt to a contact center’s specific business needs. To book a free demo, get in touch.
