Customer service is transforming rapidly. Innovations in recent years have offered new pathways for organizations to provide unique ways of customer service. It has also changed the functionalities of contact centers and how they are perceived. While the majority of contact center tasks, up until a decade ago, relied heavily on manual human efforts. Modern contact centers have transformed into a hybrid model, and automation tools have taken up a lot of redundant and repetitive tasks. With technological inventions offering new opportunities regularly, companies need to adapt to stay ahead of competitors.
CRM offers a comprehensive insight of the customer to the customer agent. The information contains all the data an agent needs, from customer details to recent queries/complaints. CRM can easily store interaction logs and other information to give more advantage to the support agent to resolve the issue quickly.
A knowledge management system is not just a choice but a necessity for organizations in present times. All the top organizations have implemented a KM system to strengthen their customer service and ease the strain on human agents. Knowledge management for call centers offers incredible benefits, many of which we will discuss in-depth later.
A KM system works as a central knowledge repository, allowing companies to grow the business and expand their customer experience possibilities. Knowledge management systems empower support agents to find relevant information correctly and deliver faster and more accurate resolutions to customers.
CTI technology enables organizations to integrate their computers and telephone processes. Driving inbound calls through a CTI significantly improves productivity and efficiency. CTI also displays the caller's information to the agent on the screen after redirecting the call, saving crucial time obtaining basic information.
IVR is an automated phone-based technology that helps incoming callers obtain information without interacting with a live agent. The incoming data is recorded through the keypad or voice response. Modern IVR systems are capable of identifying multiple languages and dialects.
Call recording is now an industry standard when it comes to customer support. Companies record the interaction between consumers and agents to gain insights into quality, customer satisfaction, and agent's performance. New call recording technologies allow managers to "whisper" tips to an agent without letting the customer know. It helps in reporting and analyzing critical KPIs through real-time and past data.
A sturdy knowledge management system is the backbone and single source of truth for a successful customer service strategy from a successful knowledge base to a fast and efficient chatbot. KM systems can be the base around which you build your customer service. Let's take a look at some of the benefits of KM systems:
Omnichannel service is about remembering the history of every customer and offering them a personalized, unified, and context-based experience across any platform that they choose to interact with the company. A knowledge management system must deliver a consistent omnichannel experience across platforms.
Self-service platforms are the most appreciated customer service approach. It offers multiple benefits and significantly improves the customer experience (CX). It keeps the customer engaged with the brand for longer and may provide new insights into interests or demands. With robust self service knowledge management, calls at the contact center can be deflected to self-service platforms to encourage customers to find solutions to their problems themselves.
KM systems can build personalized learning modules for agents and fast-track the process of updating the knowledge base. With ticklers and notification bars, an intuitive knowledge management platform keeps the customer service teams updated and empowered with the most recent information at their fingertips.
AI intelligence has grown leaps and bounds in eliminating manual work hours on redundant tasks. AI could be implemented right from the knowledge base to chatbots and self-service platforms to increase the quality and efficiency of customer service in a modern contact center.
By diminishing the manual hours, using AI, and improving the overall process efficiency, a robust KM platform helps bring down support costs.
A good knowledge base for customers can seamlessly help you implement the new and upcoming technologies with your existing framework without much interference.
Chatbots are also new to the customer service landscape and destined to stay here for long. Greatly influenced by AI, chatbots witnessed several changes and were largely dependent on human agents until not long ago. However, when implemented together with solid knowledge management, chatbots could considerably improve customer service quality, speed, and overall operating efficiency.
We saw how organizations have little to no choice regarding the majority of leading technologies concerning customer service. However, the success or failure in implementing them lies in correctly identifying the needs and demands of your customers and offering them unique experiences to solve their complaints and questions.
