Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is the next-gen environment following a long standing PBX Call Center architecture we came to love. Now, integrating your CRM, Omnichannel, Analytics, Recording and more becomes much easier with everything in the cloud.
Which Contact Center Interface is right for your business but more importantly your agents? Some areas you should consider when selecting a Contact Center coming from a PBX environment:
- Contact Center Interface – You will want an easy GUI with minimal clicks and SSO to support your agents. If your team has to work with multiple screens, it can become cumbersome and prone to error. Most CCaaS have easy to integrate APIs so if need something from your CRM or Data Analytics tool there should be single pane of glass.
- Training – Every agent becomes helpful to your team and most importantly to the customer if their inputs, readouts etc. are second nature on a screen while they interact with the person online, phone or chat. If the interface takes weeks to master, you could be out of luck and out of agents with higher employee churn.
- Focus on what’s important. Every provider will have features that sound great but might not be applicable to your work stream. Customer Journeys are important, but if you need to divert and add services not useful why employ it?
Contact Center interface with Microsoft Teams
You can use 3rd party Contact Center vendors behind Microsoft Teams, wait what? Yes, that’s right, if your organization is familiar and prefers Teams, a CCaaS option can be under the hood offering features, dial plans and more. However, not all providers are the same so understanding and designing the right option for your agents is paramount. Here’s a look at an example of Microsoft Teams’ Contact Center interface with a 3rd party vendor.
8×8 CCaaS User Inteface
The 8×8 Agent Console configures the Control Panel tabs in response to the interaction type and task you are performing. For example, Chat interactions are processed using the Chat tab. Here’s a list direct from 8×8’s feature set
- Phone tab: allows agents to manage phone interactions. All call handling functions such as making calls, placing a caller on hold, conferencing and transferring calls are performed using the Phone tab.
- Chat tab: allows agents to manage chat interactions from customers or from other agents.
- Email tab: allows agents to accept and respond to emails.
- Status tab: displays agents, and queue information such as the number of calls waiting, calls in progress, and the status of logged in agents in your group.
- Notices tab: allows agents and supervisors to post and receive informational notices.
The Control Panel menu offers the following action items:
- Profile: allows agents to view or edit their 8×8 Agent Console account settings.
- My Recording: allows agents to record messages to be played to customers.
- Monitoring: allows agents to display the 8×8 Supervisor Console Queue and agent management tool in separate browser window.
- Report: allows agents to display the 8×8 Supervisor Console report selection and generation tool.
- External CRM: allows agents to initiate an integrated External CRM session.
- CRM: allows agents to access cases, customers, and tasks from the Local CRM.
- Co-browsing: If subscribed to Co-browsing feature, agents can assist customers via a co-browsing session. Agents must enter the session ID communicated to them by the customer in order to establish the session. For details, see Co-browsing for more details.
- Help: allows agents to provide access to FAQ questions, links to our user guides, and 8×8, Inc. Support. You can send your feedback directly; attach images or debug logs from the Help menu.
8×8 Control Panel Interface
Nextiva Contact Center Interface
In summary, there are many options for your Contact Center and it does not need to be complicated. Have one of our Solution Architects walk you through a demo and various interface options
Happy Contact Centering!