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How to adopt a best-of-breed approach to a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution
The voice-to-digital convergence
July 22, 2024 • 5 minutes
In today’s fast-paced, digitally-driven world, customer expectations are higher than ever before. Gone are the days when a single channel of communication sufficed; now, customers demand seamless, connected experiences across every touchpoint, from phone calls to messaging and beyond. They expect brands to know them, understand their preferences, and deliver personalized customer engagement and support that feels effortless and intuitive.
In fact, LivePerson’s State of Customer Conversations 2024 report reveals that 8 out of 10 consumers are more likely to purchase from businesses that connect their interactions across phone and messaging platforms. Additionally, 76% of consumers want the option to seamlessly switch between calling and messaging depending on their preference at the moment.
Given these customer expectations, it’s crucial for businesses to integrate voice capabilities into their contact centers’ digital ecosystem. A modern Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution should seamlessly blend voice and digital channels to provide a truly omnichannel experience. This is where adopting a best-of-breed approach becomes essential.
What does it mean for Contact Center as a Service?
Investing in the right tools for your contact center operations is a long-term commitment. However, the rapid pace of technological advancements and changing customer expectations can make it challenging to keep up. According to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of SuccessKPI, The Frustrating Journey to Cloud Contact Center Success, in March 2023, more than half of respondents (contact center decision-makers) think that CCaaS solutions have 75% or less of the functionality, features, and usability of on-premises solutions. This unfortunate reality means that companies looking to accelerate their digital transformation are often left wasting time, training, and investment with all-in-one CCaaS solutions.
The key to success lies in adopting a best-of-breed approach to building your contact center as a service (CCaaS) solution. This involves implementing flexible technology that can seamlessly integrate with your current and future tech stack. Bring voice and messaging conversations together to create digital-first CCaaS solutions consisting of best-of-breed integrations and omnichannel analytics to create a connected agent and customer experience. By doing so, you accelerate your digital transformation goals while enhancing your contact center capabilities without completely overhauling the underlying technology. Let’s take a look at what this looks like for brands looking to build a best-of-breed omnichannel contact center.
In this approach, voice capabilities are seamlessly integrated into the digital ecosystem for unified communications. This technical integration forms the foundation of truly omnichannel CCaaS solutions, allowing for fluid interactions across all customer touchpoints. By breaking down the silos between voice and digital communication channels, brands can leverage the strengths of each medium while maintaining a cohesive customer journey.
Propelling your contact center forward through the Conversational Flywheel™
At the heart of this approach is the Conversational Flywheel, a framework that emphasizes the importance of continuously improving the conversational journey to deliver exceptional customer experiences. The Conversational Flywheel is comprised of four stages: Understand, Connect, Assist, and Automate. The flywheel is cyclical for a reason: brands can enter at any stage and leverage different aspects to propel their digital transformation forward.
Applying the flywheel to a CCaaS solution
Understand: This stage is about analyzing conversation data to better understand your most common customer intents. Conversation data contains valuable contact center analytics and insights that can help you determine where customer self-service can be implemented, unlock operational improvements, and find opportunities to increase revenue.
- Example: Use conversation intelligence to analyze both voice transcripts and messaging data, helping determine which conversations are better served on each channel.
Connect: This stage focuses on connecting with your customers on the right channel, at the right time, using the right tools and systems.
- Example: Go beyond interactive voice response (IVR) to provide the option for customers to seamlessly switch between voice and messaging customer support (conversation shifting).
Assist: This stage focuses on agent efficiency. When you provide your contact center agents with the tools they need to be successful during customer interactions, their productivity increases and attrition decreases.
- Example: An omnichannel agent workspace makes it easy for agents to provide customers with fast, effective, and personalized customer care.
Automate: Take your conversations to the next level by automating customer interactions with AI agents. Both voice and messaging AI agents can help reduce wait times and free up human agents to focus on more customized support.
- Example: Omnichannel AI and automation can help to answer FAQs.
The modern CCaaS: Connecting the best of voice and digital
As we consider the best-of-breed approach to contact center as a service, it’s important to emphasize the role of voice in this modern framework. By integrating voice capabilities with digital messaging and AI-powered solutions, businesses can create a unified experience that meets customers where they are, regardless of their preferred communication method. This integration allows for seamless transitions between communication channels, ensuring context is maintained and customer satisfaction is maximized.
As enterprise brands continue to evolve their tech stacks, agility and standardization are critical for keeping up with advancements in technology and customer expectations. On-prem voice solutions shouldn’t hold businesses back as they look to enhance their contact center. Adopting a best-of-breed approach to CCaaS ensures that both voice and digital capabilities meet modern customer expectations and continue to drive business success — without the need to rip and replace legacy systems. By leveraging the Conversational Flywheel framework and integrating best-in-class solutions, brands can create a truly omnichannel experience that enhances both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Ready to integrate voice into your digital ecosystem?
Download our comprehensive eBook, “Bringing Voice into the Digital Fold: A Modern, Best-of-Breed Approach to CCaaS,” to discover how you can transform your contact center for the digital age with omnichannel customer engagement.
