CRM and contact center software are often seen as competing products — Avengers in Civil War, fighting among each other. But in reality, they are the dynamic duo, working together in this Infinity war to eliminate fragmented customer experience, the Thanos of the digital economy.
CRM provides customer journey and profile data, while contact center routes the interaction to the best agent and effectively schedules and manages them.
When put together in one unified and efficient agent desktop, they are a powerful complementary core that help agents solve customer problems faster, better and easier.
Consider a use case where a customer wants to fix a broken printer and see the value adds of CRM and contact center duo.
Before agent interaction, you can:
- Optimize self-service with CRM data — The IVR menu can be customized so it is more relevant and personalized based on the products the customer owns. It need not be the lengthy, irrelevant list of options on all products the company has.
- Resolve better with better routing — Routing the interaction to the right agent is one of the most critical success factors. With CRM data, we can use profile information of the customer and route to the right profile of agents, e.g., maybe the high profile customers go to top-performing agents. This definitely improves the customer experience and the chances of resolution the very first time.
At the point of agent interaction, we can ensure:
- Faster, personalized experience — The biggest value of CRM and contact center is providing agents with customer 360 view showing everything about past interactions, profile information and other details right at the agent desktop — effortlessly and immediately. This ensures that the customer gets a faster and personalized service. How happy will you be when the agent can tell that you are likely calling about the printer issue rather than start the conversation by asking about the make and model of your printer?
- Service to sales moments — Every service interaction is a great moment of sale, provided your interaction ends up creating that exceptional experience and you know what the best product for upsell is for the customer, at that moment. In this example, given the interaction history, the agent possibly can see that the customer had purchased a cartridge three months back and is due for a replacement. When the agent fixes the problem, there is an opportunity to upsell the most relevant product, a cartridge in this case.
After agent interaction, you can provide:
- Enriched customer journey data and drive improved agent efficiencies — Built right, a CRM and contact center integration will auto-log the interaction in CRM making the customer journey current and up to date. Not just that, it eliminates the need for agents to swivel chair and record these transactions manually, which dramatically improves their utilization.
- Improved agent efficiency with integrated Workforce Optimization — In some of the market leading contact center and CRM integrations, the agent desktop is integrated with not just routing but also workforce management solutions. This enables agents to access schedule, receive coaching, and bid for shifts from the same unified desktop easily when they are not interacting with a customer.
Leading CRM and contact center software vendors have pre-built integrations to leverage the power of this combination.
Learn more and see the power of the duo in action by clicking here.
