Are you struggling with high call volumes?
Is your customer support hurting due to a lack of customer data integration?
Maybe you are facing issues with tracking customer interactions across various digital touchpoints.
What if we told you there is a solution to all your worries about running a contact center. In fact, not only running a contact center but actively scaling it and simultaneously retaining more than 80% of your customers.
Yes, you heard that right.
And this is not another “10 tricks to make the most out of your contact center” either. No. This is real. A true tried and tested solution that is guaranteed to revolutionize customer service.
It is called a Unified Agent Desktop.
While the name of the tool can be pretty self explanatory as to the functionalities of a Unified Agent Desktop, there is a lot that we need to understand about this wonderful tool and its importance in a call center environment.
Let’s get into it:
What is a Unified Agent Desktop?
Before we start with the what and why, let’s give you some stat.
On an average, one fourth of an agents’ working hour is spent in searching and securing relevant information to lead a contextual call.
One of the most pressing concerns of a call center is the amount of time agents spend toggling through a myriad of applications. Instead of focusing on customer service, a large amount of time of agents goes into accessing different applications to find the right information.
A Contact Center Agent Desktop refers to a software that offers customer service representatives a single, consolidated screen to interact with all the channels, applications, and data sources in one place. This not only helps agents lead a more empathetic and contextual conversation with the customers but also improves efficiency and overall customer experience.
To better understand a Unified Agent Desktop, let us consider an example:
David is a world-class customer service representative. He is known to be extremely meticulous and a convergent thinker, which helps him with faster resolutions and improve average handling time.
Nevertheless, David is not always able to deliver efficient service to the customers. The contact center he works in utilizes a range of different applications and channels to streamline the customer service process. Ironically, the large number of applications and channels present a challenge to David. He often gets bogged down in toggling through applications to find the right customer information, which often leads to frustrated customers and disheartened David.
Enters: Unified Agent Desktop.
David now gets the information from all the channels and applications on a single 360-degree view screen. From the customer’s caller ID to their last interaction with the business as well as access to the knowledge-base and essential tools, David is now equipped with a holistic view of the customer journey and the issues they have been facing. Now, David can simply utilize his fastidiousness to solve the customer issues at the earliest instead of spending hours looking for the right information and managing a plethora of applications.
Importance of Streamlined and Consolidated User Interface
71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% of them get frustrated when it doesn’t happen.
Contact center is no longer about solving customer problems. It is about delivering a great experience and making the customers feel a sense of belonging.
When customers reach out to you, they are not calling you to chit chat. More often than not, they are frustrated and have time-sensitive concerns that need to be addressed as soon as possible.
Nevertheless, the approach to customer service should be faster as well as empathetic.
And this is difficult with data silos and inconsistent conversational continuity.
When a customer calls, an agent ought to know and have access to their entire details on a single screen. The details should include the basic information about the customer, their recent purchase, the issue they have been facing, who they talked to the last time, the status of the resolution among other things.
Unfortunately, to secure all this information, agents have to toggle through different screens and systems. This fragmented approach causes workflow interruption and unnecessarily adds to the agents’ workload.
So, the next time you are looking at your contact center report and are concerned about the declining CSAT score, ask yourself: Are your agents equipped with an efficient and frictionless system that allows them to focus on customer experience rather than toggling between screens?
Implementing a Call Center Agent Desktop empowers your agents and, in turn, leaves the customers satisfied and engaged.
Thus, the importance of a Unified Desktop Solution for a contact center can not be overstated.
Benefits of Implementing a Unified Agent Desktop
Exceptional customer experience is only possible when your agents are equipped with appropriate tools and relevant information.
A Unified Agent Desktop does exactly that and then some. Let’s take a look at the benefits of implementing a Contact Center Agent Desktop.
For the Customers – Enhanced Customer Services
First and foremost, a Unified Agent Desktop streamlines and enriches customer interactions, delivering an enhanced overall customer experience. According to research, a major portion of customer experience is influenced by contact center agents’ attitude, understanding, and the drive to resolve the issue at the earliest.
With a Unified Agent Desktop in place, an agent can deliver a faster, more personalized interaction, regardless of the channel.
Here’s how a Call Center Agent Desktop can improve customer experience:
⦿ Seamless Customer Interaction Across Channels
A customer’s path to making a purchase is not linear. And neither is their path to reaching out to a brand for help. A customer might reach out through multiple channels and expect you to know about each interaction and stay up-to-date with their issues.
A Unified Agent Desktop sources, integrates, and analyzes customer data from multiple sources including your website, social media, CRM, chat, email, phone, survey and more, giving your agents a complete picture of the user interactions and other essential details. Unified access to such vital information leads to frictionless and seamless conversation across channels.
⦿ Faster Response Time and Reduced Customer Effort
Customer effort refers to the amount of effort customers have to put in in order to get their issue resolved. The larger the number, the more chances of the customers leaving a negative review or worse yet, leaving you for your competitors.
With access to the right information at the right time and in the right way, agents can radically reduce customer effort. A unified agent desktop also gives agents the ability to collaborate with other agents or supervisors. Not to mention, many Contact Center Agent Desktops come with integrated knowledge-base, allowing agents to quickly access a pool of resources according to their needs. All in all, a Unified Desktop Solution empowers agents to deliver faster resolution and reduce customer effort.
⦿ Personalized and Contextually Relevant Interactions
Customers love to be known and not having to repeat things over and over again. The Global Customer Engagement Report 2022 has only underlined the fact that customers are expecting businesses to do a better job at communicating. And a major part of that expectation is personalization.
Personalization essentially means making interactions more useful for the customers by catering to their interests, needs, and preferences.
When agents have access to customers’ detailed information including their buying preferences, their behavior, purchasing pattern, as well as the interaction history, a more personalized and contextual conversation is more likely to take place.
⦿ For the Agents – Improved Productivity and Efficiency
On an average 26% of the agents’ time is spent looking for the right information across different systems. Many of today’s contact centers use a range of complicated applications with the aim to streamline operations. Nevertheless, the large number of applications has agents hopping through different systems for at least one fourth of their day.
With a Unified Agent Desktop, you can say goodbye to these worries. Regardless of the number of applications, you get consolidated relevant information on a single glass pane, reducing input tasks, information sourcing efforts and after call work.
Here’s how Call Center Agent Desktop improves productivity and efficiency:
⦿ Consolidated View of Customer Data and History
If customer service agents are doctors, a Unified Agent Desktop is a consolidated and detailed medical report of the customers. Just as a doctor understands and is better equipped to help patients after looking at their detailed report, an agent is more likely to deliver exceptional customer service by understanding where the customer is coming from and what kind of issues they are facing.
A Unified Agent Desktop provides a consolidated view of customer data and history. This means agents can see how long the customer has been attached with the business, what they have purchased, and what specific issue they are facing, all in a single screen. This consolidated view of the customer information empowers agents to deliver faster, more efficient, and more personalized customer service.
⦿ Streamlined Workflows and Task Management
A Unified Agent Desktop effortlessly eliminates repetitive tasks and improves average handling time with the power of automation. Agents can simply automate workflows and bring efficiency to their task management skills with the help of a Unified Desktop Application.
A Unified Agent Desktop not only helps simplify and automate mundane tasks, it also streamlines task management and provides agents with an easy to understand and follow task management. Automated workflows and simplified task management process helps agents focus on what really matters i.e, faster and more efficient customer service.
⦿ Reduced Training Time and Improved Agent Experience
A Unified Agent Desktop allows you to integrate third-party applications, which means you can tailor the user interface as per the agents requirements. From knowledge base to Agent Scripting tools, you can integrate a range of applications with a Unified Agent Desktop to give your agents a holistic and functional experience.
With a centralized dashboard and access to all the information and resources on their fingertips, you can dramatically reduce training period and provide your agents with a simplified, easy to use dashboard.
For the Business – Better Business Insight and Decision Making
Great customer service comes down to four factors: strategy, operations, people, and technology. All of these factors are interdependent and can be strengthened with the use of a Unified Desktop Application.
With a third-party integration, you can access real-time reports and deep analytics using a Unified Agent Desktop. Along with access to relevant customer data a clear picture of the performance can help businesses research and make more informed decisions. A foolproof strategy after analyzing the report helps the agents in improving the operations.
Here’s how a Unified Agent Desktop improves business insight and decision making:
⦿ Real-time Reporting and Analytics
A Unified Agent Desktop, with proper reporting application integration, gives the agent a comprehensive view of their performance in an easy to understand fashion. The reporting application pulls data from different resources and displays customized views of active, resolved, and escalated cases directly on the Contact Center Agent Desktop interface. It also informs the agents about their productivity status and helps them scale up their performance in terms of customer satisfaction, average handling time, and first call resolution.
Agents can see their real-time statistics directly on their desktop application by accessing the performance statistics reports displaying historical and current data, filtering by channel type and timeline.
⦿ Identification of Trends and Patterns
With real-time reports and analytics, you can identify customer behavior as well as recognize patterns. Data interpretation can help you understand who your customers are, what they like, and how they are interacting with your products and services. You must pay special attention to both upward and downward trends in order to holistically revamp your approach to customer service.
Once you have your data figured out, ask the right questions in order to come with a “what’s next” strategy.
⦿ Data-driven Improvements to Customer Service
Data-driven approach to customer service is the requisite for a staunch customer satisfaction and retention strategy. It is about making sound decisions based on solid intelligence sourced with the collected data. Businesses that are taking a data-driven approach to customer service are witnessing an 8-10% increase in profits and a 10% reduction in running costs.
Once you identify the trends and patterns and have relevant data by your side, you can crucially improve customer service and overall business performance.
Key Features of a Unified Agent Desktop
A Unified Agent Desktop comes equipped with a range of features, each of which is aimed to improve the agents’ experience and help them provide seamless customer service. Nevertheless, not all Unified Agent Desktops are made the same. If you are in the market for a complete Agent Desktop solution, you must ensure it has a few key features.
⦿ Customizability
A Unified Agent Desktop should be easy to set up as it should be easy to use. A good Unified Agent Desktop comes with an easily customizable interface. Not to mention, most modern Call Center Agent Desktop also offer preset templates to help you customize the interface as per the industry standards as well as your particular needs.
You can also add your company logo, fonts, and color schemes to a Unified Desktop Solution to go with your brand identity and guidelines.
⦿ Industry Optimization
A Unified Agent Desktop can be bespoken to suit specific industry needs. Right from the templates to automated workflows, you can have most of your Contact Center Agent Desktop designed and programmed core system integrations, business connect workflows and hundreds of industry specific services.
For instance, if you are in the healthcare industry, you would want integration with a range of medical record systems. A good Unified Agent Desktop allows you to seamlessly integrate third-party apps so you can get started with the customer service right away.
⦿ Contact Center Readiness
Contact center readiness refers to how soon you can get started with your day-to-day tasks after implementing a Unified Agent Desktop. A good Unified Desktop Solution should be easy to install, simple to set up, and compatible with most third-party applications. These attributes are essential for a ready-to-go Unified Agent Desktop with minimum to no installation and configuration fuss.
Integration of Multiple Communication Channels
Businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies see 91% higher year-over-year customer retention rates compared to businesses that don’t.
Omnichannel support is the norm now and without it any agent desktop or call center applications would be rendered obsolete. This is because customers don’t follow a linear path while making a purchase or contacting a customer service center. And it is absolutely necessary for contact center agents to be up-to-date with the customers’ issues regardless of how and where they reach out.
A Unified Agent Desktop brings every interaction from all the platforms to a single screen, allowing agents to stay in the know about the customers’ queries and behavioral patterns. Agents can reach out to customers on their preferred channel directly through the Unified Agent Desktop and resolve queries faster.
⦿ Phone Calls
A Unified Agent Desktop gives you the ability to make and receive calls and connect with your customers over the phone.
⦿ Email
Unified Agent Desktop brings email interaction to the agents screen, allowing seamless connection over all email platforms.
⦿ Chat and Messaging Platforms
Agent Desktops source information from chats and messaging platforms and bring to a single screen for easy response.
⦿ Social Media Platforms
Interactions over social media messages and comments are displayed right on the Agent Desktop for consistent interaction.
Customer Data and Interaction History Consolidation
A Unified Agent Desktop is linked to your CRM/ITMS or other third-party applications to bring relevant customer information and interaction history right to your screen. A Unified Agent Desktop also helps you customize how you want the information to be displayed on your screen. You can customize workflows as per the caller ID or other unique identifiers as per your preference.
So, all in all, a Unified Agent Desktop gives you a complete picture of the customer profile, their interaction history, and much more contextual information to help agents lead personalized and convincing interactions.
Omnichannel Routing and Prioritization
Omnichannel routing refers to the routing method that contact centers employ to assign work to agents as per their skill sets or any other configured rules, regardless of the communication channel.
A contact center that operates on various channels requires a routing system that ensures the escalations get assigned to the right agent. When a new message comes in, the omnichannel routing solution recognizes the intent behind it and makes sure that the message is directed to the relevant agent, no matter the channel of communication.
Omnichannel routing with Unified Desktop Application directs tickets from email, chat, social media, calls, and messaging to agents based on their availability and capacity.
| 💡 Also Read | 7 Powerful Omnichannel Contact Center Capabilities For Business Continuity |
Knowledge Management and Access to Relevant Information
As much as we want them to be, agents are not omniscient beings. Sometimes even the most skilled agents have a hard time answering certain questions. And this is where the knowledge base comes in. A contact center knowledge base is a collection of information in one place that offers agents quick access to the answers they need.
A knowledge base typically contains up-to-date information about the products, services, and processes related to customer service.
A Unified Agent Desktop with integrated knowledge base allows agents to be quick, efficient, and confident in every interaction.
Workflow Automation and Task Management
Workflow automation is when a sequence of recurring tasks that need completion in order to reach a specific goal is automated. Workflow automation makes the communication process as well as the proceedings before and after the interactions seamless.
Agents in most contact centers are required to update a few systems before and after resolving a customer query. This manual process eats a lot of agents’ time which they could be utilizing to solve more customer queries and build relationships.
| 💡 Download Whitepaper | Improve CX and Automate Workflow with an Enhanced Salesforce Implementation |
With workflow automation and task management in place, agents can significantly improve their productivity and overall contact center performance.
A Unified Agent Desktop allows integration with multiple applications, creating a cohesive workflow among disparate systems and streamlining repetitive tasks.
Real-time Reporting and Analytics
Real-time reporting and analytics is an essential component of a Contact Center Agent Desktop. Real-time reporting and analytics gives you a live status of the contact center performance.
With the right integration, a Unified Agent Desktop will display important data and analysis in real-time, giving you the insights to make strategic decisions for improved performance.
Real-time reporting and analytics not only helps in immediate decision making but it also provides you with a transparent picture of the status of the contact center and brings out important pointers that can help you improve long-term performance.
| 💡 Also Read | Top 10 Must have Wallboard Metrics for Accessing Critical Data Instantly |
⦾ The Need for Real-time Report
Overall performance analysis is no longer an efficient way to troubleshoot consistent issues and understand the areas of improvement. For a more granular approach to enhancing contact center performance, you must dissect individual calls.
With the help of real-time reporting and analysis, you can gain access to your call center’s daily operations, including your agents call performance, agents tonality, customers sentiments, and more diminutive aspects of the call. So, managers or supervisors can quickly jump-in and take proactive action to resolve customer issues and improve retention.
| 💡 Also Read | 6 Essential Contact Center Reports For Support Team Managers |
Best Practices for Implementing a Unified Agent Desktop
The idea of a Unified Agent Desktop has become an essential part of a contact center structure. However, not all Unified Desktop Solutions are made the same. As with any contact center application, you must be wary of your specific needs, understand your primary objectives with the solution, and have proper user adoption and change management strategies in place.
⦿ Clearly Define Objectives and Success Metrics
First and foremost, you must have a clear idea of what your primary objectives are with the implementation of a Unified Agent Desktop. Secondly, you must know what metrics will be the success of the implementation based on. These two variables are liable to change according to the industry as well as the specific goals of the company.
For instance, for some the need for Unified Agent Desktop implementation could come down to improving productivity and for others it might be the means to boosting sales and customer advocacy.
As long as you have your primary objectives clearly defined and your success metrics calibrated, you are more likely to make the most out of your Unified Agent Desktop.
⦿ Conduct Thorough Testing and Pilot Programs
Before going all in, you must evaluate the feasibility, time, cost, and operational efficiency of the Unified Agent Desktop. And that is where pilot testing comes in. Once you have chosen the right Contact Center Agent Desktop for your particular needs, you can run a pilot test for a few days to understand whether the implementation is serving you to its fullest potential. During the pilot testing, you can also figure out what’s working out for your contact center and what you can do without and make adjustments accordingly.
The pilot test phase will also help your agents get used to the application and come with obstacles, if any.
⦿ Scalability and Flexibility to Accommodate Future Needs
Another important factor to consider before integrating a Unified Agent Desktop is whether the solution is flexible enough to compensate for your future needs. In the coming years, you might require more from your Unified Agent Desktop experience. For instance, you might want to integrate your Unified Agent Desktop with a help desk application to further improve agents’ productivity. In such a case, you should be able to complete the integration without having to modify the existing application.
⦿ Training and Support
It goes without saying that the Unified Agent Desktop you choose should be easy to use with a minimum learning curve. You must choose a solution that is user-friendly and intuitive enough for your agents to get used to the application in the least amount of time.
Choosing a Unified Agent Desktop with rigid user interface can be counterproductive and might lead to an extensive learning curve. In such a case, you might have to place carefully throughout adoption and change management strategies before onboarding your agents to the new dashboard. So, if you can afford a few months to go into training and development, you can choose to go with a complicated desktop. If you are short on time, we suggest you choose a solution that is easy to understand and follow.
⦿ Continuous Monitoring and Optimization
Last but not least, you must be constantly monitoring and optimizing your Unified Agent Desktop to identify any possible problems and ensure operation is streamlined.
Continuous monitoring also helps you enable rapid detection of compliance issues and security risks within the infrastructure. The goal of continuous monitoring is to come with near-immediate feedback and insights into the performance of the application and how its implementation is helping (or not) with the primary KPIs.
Case Studies and Examples
If you are still skeptical about a Unified Agent Desktop a few use cases should help you makeup your mind. Below, we have compiled two case studies on Agent Accelerator, a comprehensive Unified Agent Desktop by NovelVox to help you understand the implementation and benefits. Let’s take a look:
Bank AlJazira
The Challenge
Bank AlJazira was facing challenges with its growing customer expectations and the disoriented, unorganized data management systems only added to the predicament. The bank had separate systems for manually addressing customer queries, backend validation, and database management, which was a time consuming and error-prone process. Not to mention, Bank AlJazira’s manual process of handling customer queries caused unnecessary delays in addressing even the simplest, repetitive issues.
Lastly, a solution that catered to the agents’ need of native language interface was also one of the primary concerns for the bank, holding it back from divulging the options available in the market.
The Solution
The need of the hour for Bank AlJazira was a unified interface with a 360-degree view of customer information. Moreover, we also needed to solve for the bank’s manual processes and offer automated workflows, enabling agents to resolve queries on their own rather than depending on backend validation.
The answer was a Unified Agent Desktop. We implemented the Agent Accelerator to allow quick and easy access to relevant contact center data, in turn, improving response time and agent productivity.
With the implementation of Agent Accelerator, agents don’t need to jump through different applications (including core financial apps, CRMs, telephony systems, etc) as all the relevant information is unified and integrated into a single screen now.
We also implemented the following integrations to ensure a smooth workflow and optimized contact center experience:
⦿ iVision:
An intuitive wallboard for contact centers to monitor agents performance and keep track of the happenings on the floor.
⦿ Case Management:
A wall-to-wall case management system to further improve agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
⦿ Supervisor Desktop:
A dedicated agent performance monitoring system with actionable features for agent upskilling.
The Impact
Agent Accelerator brought a range of improvements to the Bank AlJazira’s contact center performance. Here are the key areas of improvement:
Improved Agent Productivity
With the implementation of Agent Accelerator, Bank AlJazira saw a significant improvement in overall agent performance. The Unified Agent Desktop keeps the agent informed and confident to lead a contextual and more personalized call. Not to mention, with quick access to relevant information, average handling time has also been reduced to an all time low.
Enhanced Team Management
The Agent Accelerator integrated with other applications from our suite enabled a more improved approach to team management at Bank AlJazira. With the integration of Supervisor Desktop and iVision, ensuring a smooth workflow and empowered agents.
Customer Satisfaction Improvement
Bank AlJazira also recorded a 37.2% improvement in CSAT scores. As agents got more informed and equipped to handle queries on their own, the customer engagement rate and satisfaction rate improved.
Reliance JIO
The Challenge
Reliance Jio, India worked with 12 disjointed external business applications, due to which the average handling time was high and customer satisfaction was low. Moreover, with separate applications and consequently extensive amount of time in client co-ordination, Jio was having a hard time retaining and bringing in new customers.
The Solution
NovelVox implemented Agent Accelerator, a Unified Agent Desktop solution for Cisco Finesse. The Unified Agent Desktop provided the agent with a single pane of glass customer information, saving them from toggling through 12 application windows to secure relevant information. Not to mention, we also streamlined and simplified the agent desktop interface, ensuring easy-to-understand and user-friendly interactions. The simplicity and convenient UI helped agents become more efficient and accurate, in turn, improving customer experience.
The Impact
The implementation of a Unified Agent Desktop dramatically improved cost saving by a whopping $2 million per year while reducing the change rollout TAT.
The user-friendly and intuitive agent desktop now allows agents to handle 300+ operations along with highly optimized 170 service calls.
Future Trends and Developments
According to TechTarget, Customer sentiment ratings increased 57.3% among companies using AI in their customer experience initiatives. The future of the contact center has A.I at the center of it and it is going to transform how you interact with your team as well as the applications. Not to mention, contact centers are no longer about having a group of operators to answer phone calls and resolve queries.
Contact Centers are gradually transforming into a much more refined site for customer management i.e, experience centers. And experience centers make use of omnichannel to deliver satisfactory services. All in all, contact centers are becoming more personal and more empathetic and the same needs to be reflected across all the facets.
| 💡 Also Read | Contact Center Trends: What’s Next? |
⦿ AI and Machine Learning Advancements in Unified Agent Desktop
Most AI developments have simplification and automation as the end goal. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning use data to understand patterns and help create a streamlined task flow. The use case of AI in Unified Agent Desktop is only going to improve task management and integration output even further.
⦿ Integration with Emerging Technologies (Chatbots, Virtual Agents, etc.)
Another important development coming in the recent years is integration capabilities. In the near future, a Unified Agent Desktop would be integrated with applications like Chatbots, virtual agents, agent performance analytics, and more. A Unified Agent Desktop gets more powerful and competent when integrated with relevant and constructive integrations. The coming years, focused on improving agent and customer experience, will be more integration-ready.
⦿ Personalization and Customization of User Interface
With the rapid pace of software development, another important factor that has come up as the need of the hour is a more simplified user interface. Business operations are expected to be conducted faster and with the least amount of friction across all functions. And a personalized and user interface is one of the primary propellent for such expeditions.
| 💡 Also Read | Why Personalization is the Key CX Parameter |
Wrapping Up
There you have it: a simple guide on everything you need to know about a Unified Agent Desktop. We hope this piece of information helps you get a better understanding of what a Contact Center Agent Desktop is, how it works, and how it can elevate your contact center performance.
Here’s a TLDR of the same:
A Quick Recap of What We Discussed So Far
A Unified Agent Desktop can be extremely beneficial for your business, contact center operations, and your customers.
For the customers, a Unified Agent Desktop brings personalized contextual interactions, faster response time, and seamless conversation across channels, helping improve brand loyalty and advocacy.
For the agents, a Unified Desktop Solution helps improve productivity with a consolidated view of customer data and history, streamlined workflows, and an intuitive dashboard that requires little to no training time.
Lastly, for the business, a Unified Agent Desktop provides real-time reporting and analytics, helps identify patterns, and drives data-driven decisions for elevated customer service experience.
The Time is Now
Investing in a unified agent desktop for your contact center is not just a wise choice; it’s a strategic imperative in today’s fast-paced business landscape. The benefits are crystal clear: enhanced agent productivity, streamlined customer interactions, improved data accessibility, and, most importantly, elevated customer satisfaction.
With a unified agent desktop, you empower your agents to deliver a seamless and personalized experience to every customer, ultimately boosting loyalty and revenue. So, if you’re looking to stay ahead in the fiercely competitive world of customer service, it’s time to take the leap and invest in a unified agent desktop. Your customers, your agents, and your bottom line will thank you for it. Don’t wait; get one today and unlock the full potential of your contact center.
Ready to go Unified?
Ready to talk business? Visit NovelVox.com or write to us at marketing@novelvox.com to discuss a suitable Unified Agent Desktop solution for your particular needs.
