From human agents to AI chatbots, contact centres are a customer lifeline. They’re the first port of call for feedback, complaints, information and assistance. But with the number of customer interactions at an all-time high, something has got to give. Contact centres are drowning in data, and they need effective ways to handle it.
Pioneering data management solutions are stepping in to keep things afloat, enabling businesses to provide top-class customer experiences whilst deriving meaningful insights from every encounter.
Multi-channel solutions
Forget the phone-first mentality of old. According to a report by Verint, companies are now engaging with customers on at least four channels.
This has been the biggest shift for contact centres over the last few years. Phones are far from finished, but digital channels are taking over in a big way. To keep pace, contact centres need to give their customers the option of engaging in a way that works for them – and that includes catering to those who choose to swap channels partway through an interaction.
The trend for channel-switching poses a whole new set of challenges.
- Where once an entire interaction would be conducted by phone, by a single agent, information now comes at contact centres from a multitude of different directions.
- It can be hard to keep track of a customer’s complete interaction history when their data is in so many different places.
- Without full visibility, it’s impossible for businesses to gain a full understanding of customer journeys – and this, in turn, makes it very difficult to uncover actionable insights about customer behaviour.
To leverage this data in a truly meaningful way, it’s vital for businesses to get the full picture.
Enter interaction recording. This technology is the ideal solution to disparate data, with a unique ability to unify channels and capture encounters across every channel. Interaction recording platforms, like that of Liquid Voice’s, can be seamlessly integrated into operational systems, enabling businesses to not only record customer conversations, but also obtain key information from them. From transaction data to body-cam geo-tags, interaction recording captures it all – leading to valuable insights that can be used to enhance operations, boost brand loyalty, and optimise customer service.
Smart data storage
Consumer expectations are growing all the time – and with that, the number of contact centre queries. It’s no surprise that managing an increasing volume of interactions is cited as one of the top three business challenges when it comes to customer engagement.
Communication can span a number of years, across many different channels, and interaction history is often retained to meet regulatory requirements or conform to best practices. In the digital age, obtaining this data is no hardship. But with so much information to process and preserve, the challenge is storing it in a way that makes it useful and easily accessible across the company. Verint’s report suggests that larger companies are three times more likely to store their data in multiple siloes, with data retained across call recordings, SMS transcripts, instant messages, and video.
To deliver the highest quality service, human agents and AI tools both need access to this historic customer data, which provides vital context to help inform subsequent encounters and ensure that no background information is lost along the way. However, regulatory changes such as GDPR often throw historical data compliance into question, and legacy formats reach the point where supporting them is no longer viable. To ensure that this information is not lost or compromised, companies need to take action.
Universal information access
Legacy interaction management offers the option of a central information hub that unifies all customer data, making it usable and accessible to multiple teams. Using process automation and smart analytics, this technology accesses legacy call and interaction recordings across every platform. It then creates a consolidated information library by linking elements of data across multiple transactions and encounters. This consolidated library is the single source of truth, which is key for contact centres gathering evidence for compliance reasons or alternatively trying to piece together the full picture of a customer’s interactions over time. With a single source of truth consolidating omnichannel interactions, compliance boxes can be ticked, intelligence can be unlocked, and CX personalisation can be realised.
By distilling the data and storing it in a single place, legacy call recording enables a simplified search and recall function that makes information universally accessible across the business. And, by standardising the format of all recordings, unstructured data can be transcribed to unlock valuable insights.
Problem prevention
Data trends are not exclusive to the customer experience.
Contact centre agents are often operating in high-stress, high-volume environments, and it’s important for businesses to make sure they’re adequately supported. Analysing interaction trends helps to identify common problems and prevent them before they become ingrained, ensuring that interactions are running smoothly from both ends. This helps to minimise recurrent issues and equip agents with the means to provide optimal customer service.
To that end, call recording assurance is a vital tool in the contact centre environment. By using high-availability platforms to continually monitor customer engagement channels, interactions can be screened and reviewed to not only ensure the availability and the quality of recordings, but to better support staff if problematic interaction patterns emerge.
This technology also leverages automation to reduce the burden on supervisors, using smart features to monitor interactions and proactively identify and present persistent trends. Ultimately, management can react effectively to problems without needing to undertake huge levels of manual monitoring, streamlining the process and optimising the value of all interactions.
