Contact center software is changing
Do you remember your first contact center gig? I do. A small desk, a slow computer, a phone, and more problems to solve than people to solve them.
There never seemed to be enough people, let alone trained people.
I was tapped by my manager 3 months into my role to help train a new class of 5 agents; I thought to myself “wait, I’m trained!?!?!?!”. We could hit our goals as long as everyone did everything exactly right on day one. We tried to solve a 20-hand problem with 10-hands… the result?
High attrition, low goal attainment, unhappy customers, and unhappy employees.
Not good.
Think about the cost here – should we have just hired another 5 employees to balance the load a bit? Maybe… but then the load would have become more intense and the problem would multiply itself. We needed the ability to scale the sales, support, and retention operation.
Why does it have to be this way?
The problem is that people are often a cost center, so companies tend to stretch them out to make sure they are using them as efficiently as possible (yes, even the sales-guys are cost centers when you consider hourly rates, benefits, etc.).
On top of never having enough people to solve problems, the same people tend to be human (shocker…) and are subject to human error, learning curves, and mistakes. It could take an agent or rep at a contact center anywhere from 2-weeks to a year in order to ramp depending on the complexity of the product.
The more complex, the more likely there will be a problem from a newbie. The less complex, the less that the company can actually afford a contact center – – it’s a catch 22.
Solving the 20-hand problem
We needed a way to ramp people up to speed quickly- so we got handy with an excel spreadsheet with the basics, which quickly became a company wiki with information about almost everything from phone numbers, how to respond to advanced questions, and policy clarifications.
It worked! Our Contact Center Agents were ramped nearly completely on day one, but the style left something to be desired. Wait times went up across the board because agents were spending time going through a tool to make sure they were giving the correct answers.
I remember clearly listening to one rep say all of the right words, but the 2-minute conversation took 10-minutes and while everything was correct, the customer was still a bit displeased with the experience of holding.
There wasn’t a call center software solution to do what we needed to do, which was to give the agents real-time call intelligence. We needed a way for our reps to see contact center-style scripting of how to handle specific situations without having to search the Wiki.
I ended up leaving the company in pursuit of higher education, unfortunately for me (and them), Abstrakt wasn’t around then.
Amplify your Call Center Bottom Line
The good news? Contact center software is changing. Abstrakt was built to solve just this problem plus a little bit more.
By enabling reps and agents to see information in real-time, it lets them ramp much more quickly and get the correct information out to customers in what seems like a natural conversation, even if they are brand new.
Sales, Customer Service, Technical Support, and Collections: Your customer-facing people face several challenges when they are first hired and beyond. Until recently there has not been a contact center software to help solve the challenges.
- How to run a call: Seriously, where do they even start? What questions should they be asking? I’m sure you know the answer if you could be there with them all of the time, but you can’t… so how do you get them the information? ABSTRAKT provides real-time call guides that track what the rep or agent is saying to help them successfully navigate the call. Depending on the type of call/person running the call, this can give a very clear picture of what the call map should look like and keep them driving towards a resolution or next steps.
- Objections and hot words: How to overcome objections is a tricky challenge, but it’s even trickier if you are a new rep or agent. Maybe there is a slam-dunk objection in the making, but the rep/agent squanders the opportunity. ABSTRAKT allows for keywords said by prospects to prompt cue cards with the information they should bring up to make it easy to nail the response. This makes every response in every vertical impactful, drives consistency, and ultimately drives results.
- Call Transcripts: It’s minutes after the call, your reps need to send the prospect a number of items for follow-up, but maybe they can’t remember every detail. Or perhaps your agents need to detail document the conversation in a hurry before the next call comes in. They may also struggle to get those details into your CRM where you can actually take action on it. ABSTRAKT transcribes the call instantly so that the rep/agent has no challenges getting notes in and getting that response out. Instead of summarizing the call, the transcript provides exactly what happened and helps alleviate any future disputes.
What is the best contact center solution to make your contact center scripts come to life?
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Reach out and we’ll show you the tech that is driving results and boosting the bottom line.