Why Your Call Center Should Run on 3CX
Your phone system must be reliable and robust whether you're running an inbound or outbound call center. Your call center will engage in more phone activity than the rest of your business operations, and you need a system that can handle significant call volume with minimal downtime in a cost-efficient manner. However, today's consumers want to communicate with a business through text messaging, live chat, social media messaging platforms, corporate discussion forums, and more. So today's call centers must also support these forms of communication as well.
What You Need in a Call Center Phone System
Driven by this consumer demand, businesses have begun pursuing VOIP options that allow them to pursue multi-channel communications, as well as incorporate SIP to ensure hardware and software interoperability. Your system should also be compatible with your CRM system to ensure customer information is shared with key departments and staff across your business. Without these fundamentals, your call center will be limited in its capacity to communicate with customers and face compatibility issues that will drive down your performance.
Growing businesses also need a system they can scale to meet expanding call center operations and pare back during leaner times. VOIP systems allow you to scale more rapidly and effectively than traditional phone systems, helping you save money when you expand or right-size operations. VOIP systems also allow for other forms of data transmission besides voice, allowing you to communicate with users in their preferred medium.
Call Management
However, you need more than these basics to operate your call center effectively. You need a system that can manage calls and queues efficiently, allowing an agent to answer a call before it goes to voicemail. For sales operations, each missed call represents lost revenue. And current customers experiencing significant hold times or landing in voice mailboxes may tarnish your reputation on online review sites or social media. You simply can't afford for your customers to be exposed to your call center's inefficiencies.
In fact, your system should minimize the possibility of customer frustrations. You don't want a system routing a caller to three separate agents and the customer to have to repeat their request three separate times. Your ideal system would ensure that call center agents have relevant customer information at their fingertips as they answer the call. You also want an easy-to-use and manage Interactive Voice Response (IVR) that allows you to route specific calls to particular agents or teams based on the nature of the inquiry. Callers who cannot quickly access a knowledgeable agent can frustrate customers and consumers and cost you time and result in wasted effort.
Monitoring and Controls
Analytics, monitoring, and reporting features should also be at the top of your operational requirement list. You need the capability to monitor call center metrics and KPIs in real-time to manage your employees and make strategic and tactical adjustments as needed. Your system should allow you to easily run reports containing historical call center data that help you recognize trends in call times, volumes, and consumer/customer feedback. For example, with the right system, you can monitor call queues during a common break time and encourage people to get back to work if customers are on hold too long.
To manage your call center staff, you need a phone system with supervisor controls beyond basic recording. Your supervisors need to keep their fingers on the pulse of your operations at any point in time. So your phone system should allow supervisors to monitor call center calls covertly, provide feedback to agents while on calls, and even take over a call that is going radically off-script.
You also need a qualified telephone services provider to help you assess your operational requirements and help you identify the right solution. A good provider will help you obtain, deploy and test the solution while providing the necessary support to help address any bugs during the transition. An excellent provider will have deployed phone systems in call centers across industries and understand how to customize phone systems for each unique business.
3CX for Inbound and Outbound Call Center Operations
3CX is the best option for inbound and outbound call centers when you're looking for a phone system. 3CX uses Microsoft as its operating system but allows businesses to use a full range of headsets, handsets, and other devices, including Android and Apple-powered options. No matter what SIP you choose, 3CX can support it. And 3CX can easily be integrated with popular Internet browsers like Firefox and Chrome and Microsoft 365's various subscription services. The system's wide integration possibilities help call centers end tedious, time-consuming tasks and streamline call-taking to provide consumers the experience they deserve.
Letting consumers connect with you in their preferred method can help pave the path towards a sale or take some of the sting out of a customer complaint. 3CX allows you to add a live chat function to your website connecting consumers to your call center agents. You can also connect your Facebook page to 3CX and send business texts through the system.
To manage your call center, you can use functions like Listen in and Whisper to ensure your agents' performance is up to par, as well as Barge in when a call is going south. You can also easily monitor individual or collective performance with built-in reports and develop customized reports based on the KPIs important to your operation.
With cybercrime on the rise, your phone system also must be secure. 3CX comes with built-in security tools, like FQDN and SSL certificates, virus protection, and firewalls, which you can use to manage the system online to prevent your phone calls from being hacked. And 3CX helps you prevent any calls from being missed, as its platform allows secure onsite or remote call-taking.
Getting Started with 3CX
Upgrading your phone system may seem overwhelming. But Dallas businesses that partner with Velocity IT benefit from a 3CX Channel Partner that will work with you to make the transition as seamless, painless, and cost-efficient as possible. We at Velocity IT have deployed 3CX in a wide range of businesses and regularly provide Dallas businesses expert strategic guidance concerning the full range of their business IT needs. If you're ready to uplevel your current inbound or outbound call center, contact us today.
