VoIP Call Center

VoIP Call Centers Proving to be Critical

By Jamie Epstein TMCnet Web Editor

Call centers can essentially make or break a company. As customer satisfaction is extremely important to both keeping current customers and attracting prospects, streamlined call centers are key to helping organizations measure up to demands now and in the future. When leveraging VoIP (voice over Internet protocol), these centers are able to cut costs while delivering a feature-rich experience for their wide client base.

VoIP allows for mobility, something that is becoming increasingly vital to workforces all over the world as they can now complete business-related tasks no matter where they are physically located or the time on the clock.

"Mobile is increasing," Mitch Lieber, principal consultant at Lieber & Associates, said in a statement. "It's used in all arenas, and the call center is no exception."

He added, “One thing that's important if you're interested in providing good customer service is to get the phone number of the person calling. If someone is on a cell phone talking with you and gets disconnected, it can be incredibly frustrating."

Receiving incoming calls in a timely manner is vital yet being able to communicate with customers via whatever channel they feel most comfortable with is also essential. Some of these communications channels include e-mail, SMS text messaging and social media.

According to findings from Nielsen Media, last year nearly half of all U.S. cell phones are now actually smartphones, a number that increased by 38 percent from the previous year. Even more interesting, a Google (News - Alert) study claims that 26 percent of U.S. smartphone owners would rather give up their computer than their phone. Hence, as people are continuing to leverage their mobile gadgets for everything under the sun, this trend will transcend to the contact center space as well as users will continue to expect intuitive and user-friendly interfaces at their disposal.

One way mobile gadgets are already infiltrating VoIP call centers is through managers coaching agents while utilizing tablets in order to view materials without having to physically stay at their desks. Not only does this increase efficiency, but employees can quickly see the areas they need to improve upon which ultimately will drive the customer experience overall.

“As witnessed in just the past few days by Facebook (News - Alert) adding VoIP as part of Messenger for U.S. users and BT making a VoIP app available to its smartphone subscribers, VoIP is rapidly becoming the communications vehicle of choice for not just customers with triple-play services at home, but also for when they are using their mobile devices both in-house and when they are on-the-go. This means that for call centers to be able to provide enhanced customer service any time and all the time, the support of VoIP is quickly emerging as a ‘must have’,” Peter Bernstein, senior editor, TMCnet concluded.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.

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