Rethinking the Customer Experience with CCaaS
In today’s on-demand world, customers expect organizations to exceed their rising expectations when it comes to the digital customer experience. Increasingly more tech-savvy, these same customers seek out business interactions that provide not only a high level of value but an experience that demonstrates the company’s commitment to knowing and meaningfully engaging with them. A key component of this expectation is a company’s ability to communicate using digital channels. Customers now expect to communicate with businesses in the way they prefer—often desiring to drive the conversation. Additionally, as the pandemic wears on, over 58% of customers say their expectations when interacting with a company are higher than they were a year ago. And 68% agree that a single poor customer service experience will negatively impact their desire to reengage a business in the future. So, with mounting expectations, how can businesses keep up? In a word: CCaaS.
What is CCaaS?
CCaaS, or contact center as a service, is a cloud-based customer experience solution that allows multi-site businesses to take advantage of omnichannel communication to their customers—call center not required. There are many benefits of CCaaS including:
- Increased reliability and uptime
- Ability to better meet the needs of the customer
- Improved reporting and analytics
- Ability to quickly scale based on demand
- Improved security
Beyond this, cloud contact center solutions provide the highest levels of availability, reliability, and disaster recovery.
What’s the Difference Between CCaaS and UCaaS?
Contact center as a service (CCaaS) is a software-enabled contact center in the cloud. It includes a robust set of features, including:
- Auto-attendants
- IVRs (Interactive Voice Response)
- Advanced analytics and reporting
- CRM integration
- Inbound and outbound communication
- Skills-based routing
- Whisper/Barge
- Workforce Optimization (WFO)
- Workforce Management (WFM)
Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is a cloud-enabled unified communications model that supports six communication functions:
- Enterprise telephony
- Meetings (audio, video, and web conferencing)
- Unified messaging
- Instant messaging and presence
- Mobility
- Communications-enabled business processes
Is CCaaS Right for My Organization?
While 80% of organizations feel that they have strong customer service, the reality is much less positive with 84% of customers reporting dissatisfaction with their contact center experiences.
If your organization prioritizes customer experience as a key competitive advantage, implementing a cloud contact center is a great way to improve customer engagement and satisfaction. With CCaaS functionality like intelligent routing and CRM sync, businesses can engage with customers transitioning them between departments without changing the mode of contact. Additionally, CCaaS provides employees the necessary access and insight to customer data—allowing them to make informed, real-time decisions as they interact with the customer.
Customers expect brand experiences to be effortless and seamless, and CCaaS provides the kind of interdepartmental access and cross-functional business continuity to deliver an optimal experience. No matter the location, time, or touchpoint, customers can receive a one-call resolution with minimal hold time. Employees have the ability to monitor and adjust queues on the fly, and businesses can record and review call scripts as well as review real-time analytics to provide coaching as needed.
CCaaS Provider Capabilities
When it comes to choosing a CCaaS partner, it’s important for organizations to consider the features and functionality required to optimize the customer experience. A few questions to consider:
- Does the CCaaS solution provide true omnichannel capabilities, such as universal routing, automatic call distribution (ACD), and interactive voice response (IVR)?
- Does the solution support self-service and assisted-service interactions and transactions?
- Does the solution offer proactive contact, including outbound dialing, SMS, and email notifications?
- Can it easily integrate with any existing or future software?
- Can it easily access customer data via web-based applications or CRM functionality?
- Does it support virtual operations, remote agents, and subject matter experts that reside outside the traditional contact center operation?
- Does the solution offer customer relationship tracking and operational support applications, such as reporting and analytics?
Choosing a CCaaS Partner
Digital evolution is all around us, and the need for rapid business transformation has never been greater. At Optus, we believe in meeting our customers wherever they are on their paths to change—partnering with them to create lasting value and support at every level. We do this by listening to your unique needs and bringing together best-in-class technologies combined with unparalleled expertise to deliver a seamless, reliable customer experience.
If you’re interested in learning more about why Optus is the ideal partner for improving your customer experience, get in touch with us today.