Revolutionizing Customer Engagement: The Power of UCaaS Contact Center Software
The term ‘UCaaS’ has been in the modern telephony lexicon for quite some time now. It’s the acronym for Unified Communications as a Service. Even though it’s a recent technological innovation, its origins can be traced back to the late 1880s, i.e. the days of the telegraph.
With the launch of the telephone, switchboards became the standard tools for routing calls. After that, came the traditional private branch exchange (PBX) system. Between the 1960s and 1990s, the invention of IP PBX, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, and voicemail system changed the way businesses used to communicate. That laid the foundation stone for UCaaS.
In recent years, the popularity of UCaaS increased by leaps and bounds and a wide range of reputed businesses adopted the innovative technology to provide omnichannel communication to their customers and enhance customer experience.
As per estimates by Mordor Intelligence, the global UCaaS market size is expected to increase from USD 35.56 billion in 2023 to USD 111.37 billion by 2033, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 14.7%.
In this blog post, we will understand UCaaS contact center software, its features, and its benefits in detail. Read on and thank us later.
Understanding UCaaS Contact Center Software
As the name suggests, UCaaS contact center software integrates various communication channels into a unified platform. To put it simply, it brings together voice calls, video calls, live chat, web chat, instant messaging, email, social media, and more.
By doing so, it enables agents to manage and handle customer communication across various platforms. It is the advanced version of traditional contact center software, i.e. extremely inefficient at managing multiple communication channels.
Key Features of UCaaS Contact Center Software
1. Multichannel Integration
The question may arise “Is multichannel integration necessary?” The answer is a resounding yes. We are living in a time when a majority of the population has a smartphone in their hands. Using it, they not only can make normal phone calls but a wide range of things. Some may want to chat as they browse a website. Some may want to connect over social media. Some may prefer sending emails, text messages, and instant messages. As per a renowned study, four out of every five customers prefer omnichannel communication because of the seamless communication experience. Due to this, contemporary customer-facing businesses, particularly contact centers, need to ensure that they have the right omnichannel strategies in place to cater to their customers’ needs and expectations. Omnichannel communication is no longer a luxury but a necessity. It’s like a hygiene factor. Its presence may or may not enhance a business’s financial performance. But its absence will adversely affect it. That’s where sophisticated UCaaS contact center software can be of immense use. Be it voice calls, video calls, text messages, instant messaging, web chat, email, social media, and more, UCaaS contact center software enables businesses to seamlessly integrate various communication channels all at once. This enables callers to select their favorite communication channel.2. Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System
In a contact center, it’s extremely critical to understand what a customer wants and what their purpose behind communicating is. That’s where sophisticated multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems become extremely useful. Before coming into contact with a live agent, customers get to interact with IVR systems. In that, they get several self-service and various other options. During that time, callers can select their preferred language, the department they want to speak to, and the nature of their queries. Based on their inputs, they get the desired results (which can range from performing specific tasks without speaking to an agent to getting connected with a particular department). Saying that IVR systems enhance efficiency many times over would be an understatement. 3. Multi-Lingual and Multi-Currency Support for Global Operations Some contact centers don’t give as much importance as they should to multi-lingual and multi-currency support in their contact center software. By doing so, they don’t take into account the opportunities and revenue they lose by excluding languages and currencies that are outside the domain in which they work. However, the good news is that a handful of UCaaS contact center software solutions come with multi-lingual and multi-currency support that enables contact centers to serve a large population outside their geographical location. But the bad news is, that the number of such software providers is just few in number. That’s why it’s extremely important to handpick the right UCaaS contact center software provider that provides multi-lingual and multi-currency support. At HoduSoft, our UCaaS contact center software is engineered with multi-lingual and multi-currency support features to eliminate all constraints associated with serving global clients.4. Enhanced Scalability
One of the major challenges that many contact centers face is scalability issues. Traditional contact center systems often struggle to adapt to changing business needs. The inability to scale up (or down) operations when it’s required creates a lot of problems such as poor latency, cost overruns, network congestion, and more. That’s where sophisticated UCaaS contact center software comes as a savior. Reliable and trustworthy UCaaS contact center software will enable you to do just that. UCaaS contact center software, being cloud-based, offers scalability that allows businesses to easily expand or scale down their operations based on demand. Handpicking the right UCaaS contact center software will enable you to add unlimited extensions and tenants at just a click of a button. The scalability can enable contemporary contact centers to easily scale up (or down) their operations.5. Real-Time Analytics
“If you can measure it, you can control it.” Contact centers live by the maxim. Measuring all performance metrics is extremely critical to every contact center. That’s where the right UCaaS contact center software can help in measuring all relevant analytics. Be it calculating the FCR rate, average hold time, call abandonment rate, cost per call, first response time, occupancy rate, call efficiency rate, the average time in queue, average speed of answer, call availability, call arrival rate, peak hour traffic, customer retention rate, agent utilization rate, conversion optimization rate, the average rate of incoming calls, percentage of calls blocked, and more.6. Real-Time Communication and Instant Response
In the not-so-distant past, a delay of a few minutes during telephony conversations wouldn’t raise many eyebrows. A majority of callers would expect a time lag of not just a few seconds but even a couple of minutes. That’s a thing of the past now. Present-day customers don’t have the time and patience to wait for that long. Let alone minutes, they aren’t willing to wait for even a second. Instant communication is extremely necessary in today’s time. It’s not surprising to know that a delay of just a few seconds can cost businesses dearly. That’s where UCaaS contact center software helps businesses7. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Natural disasters, system failure, security breaches, data theft, or several other unexpected disruptions are not uncommon in today’s age. Let’s take the example of the last three years. A worldwide pandemic, series of lockdowns, two devastating wars, earthquakes in several Asian countries, anomalies due to climate change, and whatnot! In the last three years, the world has witnessed a lot of events that it hadn’t in the prior three decades. In such a time, doing business without taking eventualities into account is imprudent and myopic. Equipped with robust disaster recovery features, UCaaS contact center software can ensure business continuity and uninterrupted customer service in the worst crises.8. Remote Accessibility
Before the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, remote working was an exception to the norm. But post that, it became the new normal. Virtual contact centers, which were few and far between, suddenly started to boom and are in vogue now. Without UCaaS contact center software, operating and maintaining virtual contact centers would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible. However, contact centers that already used UCaaS contact center software were easily able to support this shift. UCaaS contact center software, especially those hosted in the cloud, offers geographic flexibility. With a steady and stable internet connection, agents can log in to their respective computer systems from anywhere in the world without being required to be tied up in a particular place or a desktop system. Businesses can easily deploy and manage contact centers across different locations without the need for extensive physical infrastructure.9. Easier Compliance Management
When it comes to data security, the right to privacy, and Do Not Disturb guidelines, different countries have different rules and regulations. As a majority of contact centers operate globally, they need to take all the rules and regulations in the countries they are operating into account. Apart from that, compliance management is a must-have in industries with strict regulatory requirements. UCaaS contact center software often includes features that help businesses comply with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. This built-in compliance management ensures that customer data is handled securely and that the business remains in line with industry-specific regulations.10. Automatic Call Distribution
As the name suggests, Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) routes all incoming calls to the right agents and departments as per the inputs entered in the IVR system. The UCaaS software also considers many things such as agent availability, experience and skills, and customer priority. This feature is extremely beneficial for contact centers that want to enhance their First Call Resolution (FCR) rate. That’s because when more incoming calls get routed to the right agents, more and more calls are likely to get resolved in the very first instance itself.The Benefits of UCaaS Contact Center Software
If we go on listing the benefits of UCaaS contact center software, then it would be as voluminous as a booklet. Even if we didn’t cover every point here, the below-mentioned benefits make a compelling statement as to why contemporary contact centers should invest in sophisticated contact centers.
1. Enhanced Customer Experience
It’s no surprise that UCaaS contact center software can enhance customer experience by leaps and bounds. You see, UCaaS contact center software is platform agnostic. They don’t care about the platform you use.
By unifying communication channels, UCaaS contact center software enables businesses to provide a consistent and personalized experience to customers.
2. Increased Efficiency and Productivity
Before we discuss this point, let’s look at some astounding stats. As per a reliable source, unified communication-enabled contact centers witness over 50% increase in agent productivity.
The same source asserts that unified communication-enabled contact centers also see an 80% decrease in customer complaints and a 2.9 times improvement in average handle time on a y-o-y basis. That’s not all, as per McKinsey, well-connected teams report a productivity increase of 20–25%.
3. Cost Savings
One of the biggest benefits of UCaaS contact center software is it can help you save a lot of money. After all, it just requires some quality time to handpick reliable and high-quality UCaaS contact center software and a nominal investment in it and a contact center is set for life.
Let’s discuss how UCaaS contact center software can save you time and money. When it comes to time, a recent report found that Unified Communications can save as much as 115 minutes a day per employee. In the context of money, that means a yearly savings of USD 920,000 for a business with 100 employees.
4. Flexibility and Adaptability
UCaaS contact center software offers the flexibility to scale operations up or down based on business needs. Let’s take a look at this interesting stat. As per recent data, four out of every five organizations that deployed integrated cloud communications platforms (which means Unified Communications and contact center software) said that the integration has enhanced their flexibility and agility by leaps and bounds.
UCaaS contact center software not only can help companies enhance their flexibility but also bring down their issues with their tech stack and communication systems.
All in All,
UCaaS contact center software is the epitome of ultimate advancement in the contemporary telecommunications sector. Not only does it unify a wide range of telephony systems but it presents a broad array of benefits by doing so.
At HoduSoft, we take pride in engineering UCaaS contact center software that revolutionized the way many contact centers and customer-facing businesses used to communicate. If you are looking for a communication that can help you gain a competitive edge, then we have the right solutions for you. Contact us today to book a free demo.
