The global COVID-19 pandemic wildly intensified the need for businesses to adjust their interactions with customers. For many organizations, the extended length of the global health crisis and the widespread recourse to remote work has driven the adoption of cloud-based technologies. However, as employees' homes became decentralized service centers, many companies concerned themselves with customer service first, and customer experience second. As we start to enter a post-pandemic world, one wherein customer expectations might have changed forever, you ought to ask yourself how to maintain effective customer service that delights your customers with the appropriate customer experience.
Unfortunately, we can't rely on face-to-face interactions with our clients anymore. However, many players have taken this to mean simpler solutions like email or chat are preferable to an actual human interaction. These are convenient tools, but they can't foster high-touch, human connections: in a world where everything is digital, human interaction matters more, not less! Enter phone-based interactions. If you have the right solution, you can make voice your primary communication channel with customers and integrate this component to your entire business flow.
This is where cloud-based solutions come in. With business environments and workplaces constantly shifting, having a cloud-based phone solution relieves you of time- and infrastructure-intensive processes to extend on-premise tools. What's more, your employees are likely used to working with cloud-based tools, such as Office 365 and Dropbox. You'll be better served by solutions that fit right in with those, especially given the shift to work from anywhere that demands flexibility and agility.
Therefore, deploying cloud-based voice tools within your company will pay dividends for your customer experience as well as your teams' efficiency. You can scale pretty much instantly and manage your customer experience by quickly organizing phone campaigns to target a subset of customers—all in service of those higher-touch customer moments that can help foster connections.
The bottom line is this: as companies increasingly rely on enabling conversations that provide immense value in both the short and long term—no matter how different those might be—they'll need fast, flexible contact center technology that can be integrated with their existing systems without adding overwhelming pressure to IT departments. These strategies and tools must be viable in today's business environment and able to adapt with the company as that environment shifts in the years to come.
Here are a few factors to consider when shaking up your CX strategy with a new contact center solution:
- Cloud-Based Flexibility. Most of the technology we use is cloud-based, even if we don't realize it. It's what powers remote work environments and enables employers to expand their talent pool and hire from anywhere. A cloud-based phone system releases pressure on IT teams that will be able to apply their energies elsewhere. It also allows sales and support teams to become more autonomous and take on a key role in customer experience themselves.
- Integrations. Whether it's for payments and billing, satisfaction surveys, or data and reporting tools, the solution you choose should include integrations to enhance operations for your business and customers. Being able to draw up the information you have on customers as you call them—or as they call you—is exactly the kind of boost that fosters human connections.
- Agility. The ability to adapt your capabilities and the way in which you reach customers quickly to get the maximum amount of value is the name of the game. The agility that cloud-based technology provides allows companies to change strategies, try new support campaigns, and recalibrate team priorities based on customer needs without lengthy processes or expensive overhead.
These are the benefits you can expect from a cloud-based contact center solution—or contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS). When virtual human connection should be at the forefront of every effective CX strategy, it's crucial that the right technology enables it.
Olivier Pailhes is co-founder and CEO of Aircall.