Designed to manage the flow of incoming calls and outgoing interactions, modern call center systems integrate an ACD & CRM in a single solution.
What benefits do customers want from inbound call centers? If you said they want highly personalized service, you’d be right. They want to contact you how they want and when they want. They want issues resolved quickly and efficiently—preferably on the first call. And they want to deal with knowledgeable agents who know their call history. In short, they want you to deliver a high-value customer experience. If they don’t get it, they’ll bolt—without hesitation.
To stay competitive, you’ll need to work hard to earn your customers’ respect, trust, and loyalty.
Unfortunately, your call routing system could be a stumbling block to providing experiences that matter.
But new technology can help you get back on the right track.
Skills-Based Routing At Fault
If your inbound call center is like the typical inbound call center, you use skilled-based routing (SBR) to handle incoming calls. It routes calls to agents with the appropriate skills to address the customer’s needs.
SBR is better than a first-come/first-served routing system. And in its day, it served its purpose. But it’s not the best way of handling customer interactions—at least not in this day and age.
That’s because SBR doesn’t provide personalized service. And that’s what you need today. So SBR isn’t the future. But there’s one routing approach that is: adaptive real-time routing (ART).
Designed to manage the flow of incoming calls and outgoing interactions, ART integrates a customer relationship management (CRM) system and an automatic call distributor (ACD) in a single solution.
This union creates a routing system that adds context to every caller interaction. And because it does, it lets agents provide customers with differentiated, one-on-one customer service—exactly what customers want
A Game Changer – ACD + CRM
Make no mistake. ART is a game-changer. That’s why a growing number of SMBs are switching to it. This new technology promises to greatly boost customer service and customer loyalty.
Put another way, adaptive real-time routing delivers key benefits that SBR and other routing approaches don’t provide. Five benefits of adaptive real-time routing are:
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Improved response quality
- Reduced customer complaints
- Increased customer loyalty
- Simplified customer journeys
ART call routing delivers these benefits while streamlining the operating environment, increasing agent productivity, and reducing call centers costs.
A Simple Idea – ACD + CRM
The idea behind adaptive real-time routing is simple. Each customer interaction is initially assessed then routed to the ideal resource for handling it. This resource may be a customized, self-service IVR script or a team of special agents designed to handle high-value customers.
Adaptive real-time has been talked about for years. Call center managers loved the idea—and value—of delivering personalized service. But building an application that integrated a CRM system and an automatic call distributor (ACD) is costly for most organizations
Meanwhile, there was no off-the-shelf way to unite Automatic call distributor (ACD) and CRM—until now, for example, many cloud-based ACD applications feature native out-of-the-box integration with Salesforce.com’s open architecture and partner ecosystem.
Integrating your Automatic call distributor (ACD) and your CRM as a routing strategy is coming into its own. This combination eliminates the need for custom integration, saves money, and makes ART the perfect routing option for today’s customers.
Conclusion
Today’s customers are demanding a lot. They want what they want when they want it. If you don’t give it to them, they’ll bolt. To satisfy their demands and keep their loyalty, call centers must provide customers with personalized service.
If your call center isn’t doing the job, one stumbling block could be your call center routing system. Skills-based routing, for example, isn’t designed to let agents provide one-on-one customer service.
Adaptive call routing, on the other hand, is—thanks in large part to new technological advances that let you integrate ACD and CRM.
This powerful combination can help you provide the kind of routing system that boosts customer satisfaction and loyalty. And that’s what every company needs to survive today’s business environment.
Let us put our proven experience in providing outsourced Linux server support for small and medium-sized companies to work for you. Request a quote from our sales team.
