The Role of Call Center Apps in Contact Center Solution Offering

• Mobile apps are redefining how customers interact with a business 
• 72% of contact center users would replace traditional channels with apps if they get the same customer service features.
• 84% of customers prefer to use a feature-rich mobile app to get their queries resolved than calling their service providers.
• 72% of customers carry a positive sentiment towards a company that offers mobile apps.

But when did this shift first surface? And does it mean that it is time for businesses to move their contact center service offerings to mobile apps? Let’s get you the answers.

The payoff of higher customer retention and loyalty for businesses that have added their contact center services on mobile apps started with the inception of the millennial customer base. It all started when the techno-savvy, opinionated Generation Y entered the business landscape by becoming the forefront demographics.

These Gen Y users and consumers favored the idea of instantaneousness in customer service and the convenience that they draw from multi-tasking while being mobile. The generations before Gen Y preferred a telephonic call with the customer service of businesses, instead of connecting on any other channel and doing multiple works at once.  

Soon, even the most traditional of the industries like Healthcare and Education started looking into ways to expand their business model on mobile. They realized that in order to gain the attention and likability of the new user group they would have to come on the device that their users were hooked too, 24*7 - Smartphones.

Here’s a Peek Inside the Ways Mobile-Powered Call Center Apps are Altering the Customer-Centric Industry:

 

The fast and convenient customer service that mobile devices promise allows for the establishment of a number of avenues: Web Chat, Email Marketing, Text messaging, Voice Calls, Social Media, etc. In fact, these are only a tip of the range of avenues that mobile offers to the customers to reach businesses.

When utilized properly, these avenues help keep businesses relevant while keeping the communication channels open and number of inbound calls reduced.

Mobile has brought along a spur in usage of video chat as the new customer service channel. The ease of access that smartphones offer to utilize video functionality, rises its rank in the list of popular client service option.

At a time when majority of businesses are still making use of an interactive voice response system, video chats are a refreshing new way for brands to connect inherently with their user base. In the hope of success through video functionality, a number of companies like Target, Bank of America, E-Trade, and Hertz etc are planning to roll out a one-click access to help their customers through video chat.

Millennials are not a fan of restrictions. So when you bound them with only one platform to contact your business, more often than not, they will choose not to. Today’s customers want to access your service or product through a variety of channels - website, social media, call, online messaging platform, etc. This uncertainty of which channel the prospective customer will prefer to choose, is what makes it important for businesses to be everywhere.

Now, at the center of this omnichannel contact center approach lies smartphones. 90% of all the different ways a customer can contact your business have a probability of happening through their hand-held device.

So, when you give them an application that in itself give them access to all the source of communication, you become an instant hit in their book.

Mobile technology allows contact center employees to work from anywhere. The global accessibility that the mobile devices come with, frees up an employee from being in the office and increasing the infrastructure cost.

In addition to keeping their morale up by offering them the perks of working remotely, call center apps when integrated with chat-bots, save their time from doing repetitive jobs that can easily be automated.

Above all, the social feed and web visit tracking access that businesses get by being on users’ device, give them an additional advertisement avenue.

Now that we have looked into the role of mobile apps in shaping the present and future of contact center solutions, it is time to throw some light on the backend factors that make it all possible. The factor that will decide whether or not your call center app will be able to fulfill the intent that it was conceived with - Features.

1. Call logging, Monitoring, Recording, and Scripting
2. Escalation Management
3. IVR/Voice Recognition
4. Queue Management
5. Reporting/Analytics
6. Inbound and Outbound Call Campaign Options
7. Take and Manage Feedback
8. Live Chat
9. Manual, Predictive, and Progressive Dialers
10. Video View and Upload Option
11. In-built CRM System
12. Push Notifications

With the help of these features, your business will be able to be on top of the game when it comes to offering customers everything that they require from your agency. We will discuss more of these features in our next blog. Now while the section where we talked about the role of call center apps, answers why it’s necessary for businesses to invest in them, there is one last question that remains unanswered.

Should you develop the mobile app in-house or use a ready-made solution? The answer is neither.

Developing an app in-house can turn out to be a very time taking and high-cost-generating task while making use of a ready-made solution will come with minimal guarantee of it operating as one made for your specific business need.

What we suggest is getting in touch with a contact center solution provider that specializes in the development of call center solution apps. What happens is that these enterprise-level companies already have a ready-made wire-frame of call center apps that have to be loaded with your choice of functionalities. So, with only minimal cost and time investment, you get an application that is devised according to your business requirement and does not call for your engineers’ time and effort.

This way, you focus on what matters on the business front while the agency formulates your expansion on the mobile apps.