Which Call Center Technologies Give CX The Biggest Boost?

There’s a lot of impressive tech available to beef up call center service. 

You might even have a hard time deciding where to invest – there are almost too many options.  

So let’s get back to basics and check out the call center technologies making the biggest impact on call center CX. 

#1 APIs are a great starting point

‘What are APIs?’

It still surprises me how often I’m asked this question. 

An API is an Application Program Interface. (I’ll keep the explanation tech-light for now – if you want more detail on API integration, read ‘How do APIs enhance contact center service?)

All you need to know is that APIs are universal translators for your systems. They allow data to move easily between systems and make it intelligible to each system. 

You could link up your core tools like IVR, ACD and Helpdesk. You could also link up cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud. 

Linking these systems effectively destroys data silos forever (a big priority for any call center technology.)  

APIs are a great starting point because integrating your systems has so many use cases. 

Use cases include:

• Update your customer records in every system by editing them in a single system
• Route intelligently based on customer data like Helpdesk tickets or CRM records 
• Create multi/omnichannel experiences with data passing automatically across channels
• Improve FCR with joined up data and the right call center solutions

#2 Automated SMS

SMS isn’t new and it isn’t high-tech. It’s better than that – SMS is dependable!

There are two main reasons to use SMS:

1. SMS messages can reach pretty much every customer in the world
2. This tech has been building customer trust for a quarter of a century

SMS messages have a staggering open rate of 98%! (Making email’s 20% open rate look pretty pathetic…) 

Outbound SMS messages are also very easy to trigger from any stage of a customer journey. That’s why most marketing teams already embrace SMS whole-heartedly – while customer service teams miss out. 

Use cases include:

• Sending survey links  
• Confirming orders or the outcomes of interactions
• Promotional offers and incentives

#3 An integrated auto dialer

If you’re doing any outbound or blended calling, you probably have an auto dialer already. 

But how well is it integrated with your other systems?

For some reason, a lot of call centers – even when they have a great integration strategy – don’t think about their auto dialer.

Here’s why you should integrate your dialer. 

The whole point of an auto dialer is to reduce manual work. (Mainly dialing, obviously.) But dialing isn’t the only laborious manual work involved in making calls. 

For example, how do you generate call lists? If it involves a lot of human intervention, you’ve found work that could be automated. 

All you need to do is integrate your dialer with your lead generation tools, as well as CRM and Helpdesk.

Whenever you need to schedule a customer call – whatever the trigger – that call is automatically added to your call list. 

(Most contact centers don’t automate as much as they could. Do you? Find out in ‘Could you automate these 4 core contact center tasks?’)

Use cases include:

• Responding to fresh leads more quickly (because 35-50% of sales go to the first vendor who responds) 
• Created a zero waiting inbound call center with automated callbacks for customers who don’t want to queue
• Pre-emptive contact center services – solving service issues before customers even call

#4 The Cloud!

Yep – it’s time to move basically everything to the cloud. You probably have people working on that as we speak. 

There are so many good reasons to adopt a cloud-based contact center model that we don’t have time to list them. 

Here’s the bottom line: get cheaper, get more reliable, reach for higher quality.

Crucially, cloud-based call center technologies bring flexibility into everything you do.

Forget the vendor lock-in and bloated legacy solutions which have plagued the industry for decades. Flexibility is the central benefit of cloud services and the key competitive differentiator for modern businesses. 

Use cases include:

• Anything
• Everything

#5 Beef up your IVR 

IVR is a veteran among call center technologies. 

But like SMS, just because tech is old doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant.

There is a problem though – IVR is often used poorly. 

Here are the problems you typically encounter in an IVR system:  

• They’re set up to avoid service rather than solve problems
• They asks pointless questions
• They know nothing about the customers
• They offer no route to a real agent or a different channel

...and plenty more besides.

Clearly, these are solvable problems. Some of them would take just a few days to rectify! 

You could go a long way with – you guessed it – API integration. With strong integration, customers can move easily between channels, and the information they provide goes with them. No more repeating what they told the IVR to the chatbot, and saying it all again for an agent! 

And, for the current generation of customers, the only answer will be conversational IVR services. ‘VoiceBot’ IVRs are already making drastic improvements to IVR self-service for businesses like Paypal, FedEx, Wells Fargo and Delta. 

(Delta saves $5 million thanks to the huge increase in self-service from better IVR...)

Use cases include:

• Self-service (increasingly sophisticated with conversational IVR)
• Customer surveys, especially post-call interaction
• Scheduling for appointments, visits, callbacks etc.

Some of this call center technologies are very simple. You can deploy something like SMS or IVR at any scale. In fact, it’s less about the tech than what you do with it.

Bring a little creativity to these resources – some integration, some automation – and practically anything is possible.

Ready to get started? Then download ‘Your (free) Guide to Automating SMS and IVR’ now.