While most companies operate some type of call center or customer support center, it’s generally not their core business, and the learning curve tends to be steep. For other companies, providing customer support is their sole business, and these companies have less room for error: reliable, professional service is expected of them from the start. Without this, they are in danger of losing contracts to competitors.
For companies that provide outsourced contact center services, a reliable, flexible, all-in-one call center platform is critical. The types of inefficiencies that come from cobbled-together “Frankenstein” solutions are simply not acceptable to organizations paying for customer support services.
Nationwide call center services provider Ansafone Contact Centers recently announced that it has deployed an all-in-one IP communications software suite from Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. The suite, Customer Interaction Center, or CIC, has reportedly helped Ansafone improve customer service, increase agent productivity, and reduce costs, according to the company's president and CEO, Randy Harmat.
"CIC's all-in-one architecture has enabled us to route calls, emails, Web chats and social media interactions using a single queue so we can respond faster and more consistently to customers regardless of the communications medium they choose," Harmat said in a statement. "Because CIC uses a single platform to process multichannel interactions, we've also reduced costs associated with managing multiple systems."
Ansafone is a Santa Ana, CA-based company that employs more than 500 people in its headquarters and an office in Ocala, FL, plus a number of contact centers in the Midwest and East Coast. It also employs about 50 agents who work from their homes in various locations.
In its quest for a new contact center suite, Ansafone reviewed competitive solutions, but ultimately chose CIC for its ability to integrate with the company’s existing CRM software, its feature set, its affordability and its remote agent support capability. The latter ability is crucial for a company that relies on customer support for its core business, particularly in light of power outages or weather-related events.
"CIC gives us remote monitoring tools that enable us to manage work-at-home agents the same way we manage agents on-site," he said. "And we get the added benefit of business continuity by immediately making CIC accessible to any remote agent should we need to offload calls due to a system outage or natural disaster."
The deployment of CIC was accomplished with the help of Interactive Intelligence reseller, Integrated Access Solutions.