As we look towards new and improved ways of delivering customer experience, we’re seeing major swings in the way companies operate and how they manage their contact centers. These forward-thinking companies that are shifting their operating model such that they are offering more value to customers through their contact centers are seeing greater returns on investment than originally expected.
Forward-thinking customer service and channel managers can create an immediate impact and a long-term advantage.
How? By choosing the best multimedia cloud contact center provider and selecting a solution that simplifies the way that they engage with their customers. As traditional contact centers leave the customer service landscape, companies are removing barriers to success and opening the doors to improved contact center performance.
However, making a big transition in operations is never an easy task. It can be a convoluted project that takes months and companies can easily miss out on valuable time. That’s why it’s important to have a plan and stick to it.
So, let’s take a deeper look into the selection process and highlight recommended best practices companies should adhere to when selecting a multimedia cloud contact center provider that will best fit their needs.
Existing Contract Considerations
Many often miss this important step: You must first consider the terms of a current contract you are already in with another service provider.
It’s important to coordinate when one contract ends so that you can begin another, keeping in mind that it may take you months to select your new provider. So, when you’re out choosing new multimedia contact center technology, it’s important to ensure flexibility for both you and your new service provider.
Challenge Identification
Most traditional on-premise contact centers face similar challenges prior to upgrading a multimedia contact center solution, however, it is important to gather feedback from all team managers to understand exactly what each group’s challenges truly are. From there, key stakeholders can come together and review the unique feedback and prioritize accordingly. It is then that decision makers can identify the major bottlenecks that are impeding performance.
Provider Selection
So once you’re ready and you know that you’ll be migrating to a multimedia cloud contact center in the near future, and you understand your existing challenges that need to be addressed, it’s time to research your vendor options.
This part is always a difficult and somewhat tedious process. Most vendors will throw a lot of information at you, tell you their solution is the best, give you the run down of features and functionality and pressure you into a decision. It’s not necessarily a fun process, and most vendors don’t make it any easier on buyers. That’s why it’s important for you to do your due diligence and take a proactive role in the buying process.
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Provider Qualification & Comparison
So, once you’ve narrowed down your short list and you believe that any one of them can offer you the best multimedia contact center solution, it’s time to vet your vendors.
Vetting vendors should NOT be a complicated process, and if it is, that vendor is not right for you.
Your top 3 vendors should be going out of their way to make the decision process easy for you. It’s their responsibility to equip you with the knowledge you need to determine not only which multimedia contact center technology will serve the purpose you need it to, but which vendor will be a true partner long-term.
Feature and Functionality Requirements
As for features and functionality, you must ensure that your multimedia cloud contact center can offer omnipresent technology that will ultimately lead to improved ways that you interact with your customers. Achieving the ultimate customer experience is the goal, right? Well, this migration should be one giant leap into a modern customer service strategy that improves customer retention, acquisition and overall satisfaction.
Looking beyond price and driving into a constructive, dialogue-driven buyer-vendor relationship will ensure you acquire the features you need to be successful.
Conclusion
Migrating to a multimedia cloud contact center is a proactive way to add value, reduce costs and support an analytics-enabled interactive contact center model that builds customer loyalty. You’ll be proactively offering service upgrades and anticipating/resolving customer issues before they even occur, and because of this, you’ll be gaining the competitive edge your company needs to win at customer experience.
