Device Type: desktop
Skip to Main Content Skip to Main Content

Your Contact Center Now Doubles as Your Control Center

This article was published on August 2, 2021

You leave a voicemail for your daughter about a “family call at 8.” Instead, she’s excited to “take Grammy to the mall and skate.” Now imagine the same communications gap between your customers and sales and service groups. Welcome to the modern game of telephone.

image that represents Vonage Contact Center integration with Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Dynamics

Contact Centers Are the Center of It All

In many ways, a contact center is similar to a family call. That’s because every family member—or in this case, your valued customers—can be heard. The contact center may be the first interaction you have with new customers. So it’s an important chance to make a first impression.

But let’s not forget your current customers. Your contact center agents should have the customer details they need to quickly engage and nurture this group. Your agents should access screen pops with order and call history to preemptively address areas of concern. And based on the conversation, the agents can then forward the customer to the sales team for cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Unfortunately, things aren’t always this smooth.

Can We Talk?

According to the Gartner report "The Future of the Contact Center,” traditional contact centers “support the largest number of customer service environments today, and, in reality, many could continue to operate as such. Often described as system-of-record solutions in pace layering, these kinds of centers handle large volumes of voice interactions with some support for email and chat. There may be a focus on providing connected customer journeys across channels, but, largely, they are still quite disconnected in terms of technology.”

This, of course, assumes that sales and service teams operate on the same platform. This is often not the case. And in the high-tech version of the telephone game, the need to repeat information, correct details, or remain on hold create far-reaching inefficiency. It starts with unhappy customers who share their frustrations on social media. The poor goodwill directly impacts current and future business—and the margin of error is slim. Even if customers love a brand, a third will leave after a single bad experience. Make that two or more forgettable events, and abandonment jumps to 92 percent.

Then you have internal strife, where finger-pointing lowers morale and hinders collaboration. Together, the inability to work cohesively reflects heavily on the bottom line.

RAPPORT MONDIAL SUR L'ENGAGEMENT CLIENT
Découvrez (et éliminez) les principaux obstacles à la communication
Nous avons demandé à 5 000 consommateurs à travers le monde de nous faire part de leurs plus grandes frustrations (et préférences) en termes de communication. Objectif : découvrir comment les entreprises peuvent interagir efficacement avec leurs clients, en éliminant tous les obstacles en chemin.

Sales + Service = Heart

The thought of merging sales and service efforts can be daunting. Thankfully, there are software solutions to simplify the task. For example, the Vonage Contact Center seamlessly integrates with your CRM platform of choice to deliver a host of benefits, including:

  • Access to tools, metrics, and data to improve agent productivity, solve customer issues faster, and identify complementary business opportunities
  • Less staff turnover and higher morale
  • Faster and more meaningful ROI from existing CRM services
  • A 360-degree view of data to turn customer insights into actionable items
  • Fewer apps to help streamline workflows

Customers Need to Speak and Be Heard

Customers love choices, especially when it comes to speaking their mind. Surprisingly, their preference is one that lets them speak loudest—their voice. Given the noisy world, there’s something basic and refreshing about an old school conversation … and contact centers agree.

According to GetVoIP, contact center agents find it essential to build an emotional connection with the customer. This establishes trust and confirms to the customer that they are valued. The inability to create a rapport leads to poor service and lost customers:

  • 95.7 percent of contact center professionals view customer satisfaction as the most important metric
  • 67 percent of customers will pay more for a great customer experience
  • 58 percent of customers say that customer service affects the brands they choose
  • 86 percent of customers will continue to deal with a customer service agent that they are emotionally connected to
"Even if customers love a brand, a third will leave after a single bad experience. Make that two or more forgettable events, and abandonment jumps to 92 percent."

Revenue-Generating Flywheel

The power of the voice—when linked across channels—is huge. Now an organization can better capture first-hand feedback synced across sales and service to clarify the 360-degree customer view. These insights can help produce the revenue-generating flywheel. That is, increased sales may require greater service, which enhances engagement and retention. And service agents can access past and present sales to nurture future activity.

Industry Recognition

With such a huge undertaking, you want to carefully select a recognized solution. And Vonage has been recognized by industry leaders, including:

  • 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, North America and 2019 Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, Western Europe
  • 2019 CRM Excellence Award
  • 2019 ContactCenterWorld Award
  • 2019 Cloud Computing Magazine Product of the Year
  • 2019 Internet Telephony Product of the Year
  • 2019 Customer Magazine Product of the Year

Room to Grow

In addition to working with your CRM platform of choice, Vonage Contact Center offers connectivity in over 60 countries. With such ease of implementation and reach, it’s no wonder that over 700 contact center customers turn to Vonage as the control center to enhance their CX.

And the modern game of telephone has never been clearer.

Resources

Vonage Contact Center

Vonage Contact Center for Salesforce

Vonage Contact Center for ServiceNow

Vonage Contact Center for Microsoft Dynamics 365

Gartner “The Future of the Contact Center,” Simon Harrison, Steve Blood, 25 April 2019

Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, North America,” Drew Kraus, et al, 15 October 2019

Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, Western Europe,” Simon Harrison, et al, 15 October 2019

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

By Ryan Yee B2B Marketing Copywriter

Ryan Yee is a long-time copywriter with B2C and B2B experience across agriculture, biotech, finance, healthcare, technology, and more. He still fondly remembers (?) the papercuts from proofing film and sleep deprivation from late-night press checks. He’s a San Francisco native with love for his nieces and nephews, hometown Giants, and anything even remotely associated with food (utensils optional).

Deskphone with Vonage logo

Parlez avec un expert.