Now, at a time when many other stores are in lockdown and people are working from home, contact centers can still do the sales and customer service issues that retain the market and bring in revenue. It reduces overhead costs and streamlines the processes to deliver optimal service to the waiting clients, at the other end of the line.

On the other side of the business, a contact center management software that organizes the work being done by human agents can help maintain their morale. For example, according to the same Technavio report mentioned above, about 19% of the remote workforce, including call center agents, feel a bout of depression if they feel isolated for a long time. Apps and interfaces in the software can reduce this by maintaining a line of ongoing non-intrusive communication between management and the struggling agent.

There are certain strategies to leverage your contact center management software for the improvement of your business through customer service. Whether you’re using call center systems right now or are thinking of investing in them in the future, take a look at the following tips:

At the end of the day, the contact center management software is a platform that tries to tap into the full potential of your human agents through tech and a series of tools. Think of it as a call management software that traffics the calls to your perpetually busy agent, while enabling him to give an effective response. If the agent properly responds to the needs of the customer, the issue is resolved, leaving both parties satisfied. More important to the company, the customer might even be more motivated to stay because the agent made him feel valued.

The best contact center management software brings out the professionalism of your agent. The easy-to-use interface prevents disruptions and allows a clear line of communication between him and his client. The smooth flow of the conversation can boost his confidence. Complimenting this is automated but flexible scripts that the software shows him, which he can modify according to his customer’s needs.

Programmed correctly, a contact center management software can empower the team leader—which means you—to monitor and supervise your workforce efficiently. Keeping tabs and seeing to it that everyone is on the same page is difficult enough in the traditional brick-and-mortar office. Imagine dozens of contact center agents who may not have the time to interact with you because they are always glued to their seats, taking customer calls. The situation can even become more complex when the call center agents are assigned to work from home indefinitely.

The contact center management software has an operations management feature that enables you to interact with your groups and teams, regardless of where they are based. It updates you on their profiles, performance, and deliverables. This web-based tool can give you an overview of who of your team members is adjusting to the challenges of the current climate, and who is not. You can also augment this feature by checking the best remote work tools from FinancesOnline.

Contact center management software is also resorting to intelligent voice response solutions (IVR) to reach out to and respond to their customers.  Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a huge part in this. The recorded voice, sounding like a gentle but efficient human being and programmed to say the right response can put your customer’s problems to rest. It also filters out the background noise that some work-at-home human agents sometimes cannot suppress, like a barking dog in the background. AI is one resort if your resources are thin, you can’t afford to hire more agents, but you do need to keep your contact center systems running.

Automation can also be applied to your social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Some brands have opened their social media accounts to customers who want to voice a concern or a complaint. Automation can alert you immediately if one such remark or comment appears on your social media feed. You have the option to answer them through your human agent or an AI chatbot. If you would like to incorporate more of these features into your contact center management software, be sure to check out if they are included in the call center software pricing of the vendor you are dealing with.

The contact center management software relieves you of a lot of your work by creating templates and automatic processes both for your inbound and outbound calls. Scripts for both agents and AI can be written, stored, brought out when they are needed for use, and tweaked should the situation demand it. The accessibility of inbound scripts can also be scheduled according to the requirements of certain teams who report on various schedules.

Outbound calls should be managed efficiently, especially during campaign seasons. The contact center management software gives you and your team leaders a road map to follow.  The schedule of calls can be planned to correspond to certain campaigns; for example, promoting this cellphone service to this particular city should happen during the next two weeks. The software keeps track of your progress in this road map, and notes which areas are responsive to your campaigns and the efforts of your agents and their calls. All that information will assist you in recreating your campaigns to become more effective to their target markets.

The contact center management software can also help you check the quality of your inbound and outbound calls and improve on them. All calls are recorded and can be made accessible to you for your review. The tone of voice, its emotional stream, the vocabulary used by the agent, any deviation from the script — all of that can be made available and subjected to quality control.

This feature is also helpful during performance reviews. Just bring up a dozen recordings of your contact center agent during one specific period of time, and listen to all of them. You can immediately get a solid idea if he is still engaged and giving the job his best, or if he is just phoning in his performance, literally.

The same is true for the calls of your customers. During cases of complaints or unresolved issues, you can bring up the recording of a conversation between your agent and the customer. Its content will help you determine the reasons behind that communication breakdown. At the same time, you can come up with solutions that can rectify the situation, e.g. crafting the apology that will win your customer back.

Your contact center management software can be a useful platform, especially during these economically challenging times. It can be a performance booster for your human agents, as well as a way to do market research on your customers. Maximize its use to keep the connection between human agent and customer strong, and business just might continue.