Exploring Call and Contact Centres Offerings for Resellers and MSPs
New innovations and technologies have reshaped the call and contact centre space, bringing many new opportunities for organisations of all shapes and sizes. The pace of technology change has become faster than ever before and change like this can be very overwhelming for all of us, with a million and one questions around how this may impact resellers and MSPs lets explore some key questions that you may all be curious about.
How can resellers and MSPs develop compelling call and contact centre offerings?
Compelling solutions need to match a customer’s need. Larger corporates are likely to want more complex omni-channel solutions that come at a high price, whereas SMEs will benefit from more straight-forward, less expensive in-skin solutions that work within a provider’s existing UCaaS service.
The in-skin approach comes with many advantages for the channel. Providers don’t need to add a separate and disjointed UCaaS platform to their current service. They can also enhance their existing UCaaS platform with additional and compelling services that improve call flows, enable better communication and integrate with back-office services.
This type of in-skin call centre capability is also easier to implement and will build a reseller’s confidence since they only need to worry about their own platform and its capabilities. This simpler configuration results in less support, less training, less risk, and security is not increased since it is rolled out and applied to the existing infrastructure.
All these benefits are also applicable to end users. They can use their current service from their existing provider but now have call management and intelligence on top.
What innovations are happening in the call and contact centre space?
Innovations in customer service are on the horizon due to the fact there is still very little joined up communication. This will require technology to embrace and leverage CRM systems so that information can be pushed to an agent as well as an agent being able to access a customer’s interaction history, customer sentiment from previous calls and even the ability to playback recordings of previous calls. This level of intelligence will enable an agent to deliver a far more personalised experience to every customer.
However, this level of personalisation is difficult for most SMEs to achieve, unless they opt for an in-skin call centre experience via their existing comms provider.
What broader trends in the contact centre space should channel companies be paying attention to?
Improving customer service, and experience, is still the major priority. Organisations need to deal with their customers quickly, and if they can’t, they need the intelligence to deal with the enquiry efficiently afterwards.
This is driving the need for good call back management, accurate scheduling, and effective resource management to ensure agents are available when needed, regardless of location. Accurate customer journey information also enables an organisation to service more customers.
What should resellers and MSPs consider when choosing vendors to bring into their portfolios?
The key is to understand your market, look at your customers and focus on what the majority of them will need. This will allow you to make informed decisions on what vendor you choose.
Channel providers working with small to medium enterprises should look for vendors that can delivers an in-skin call centre solution. This will meet the need of most SME customers who want to ensure calls are delivered to the right person, have call back capabilities and can access a level of intelligence around the calls.
In-skin services ensure calls remain within a provider’s UCaaS platform so it doesn’t require additional support, and providers can maintain control of their customer and sell further wraparound services.
What large-scale opportunities does call and contact technology offer resellers and MSPs?
The informal call centre space is still a huge untapped opportunity. This massive market is not only an opportunity to sell call centre licences but also analytics across a total UCaaS deployment.
For the SME, call and contact centre tools need to be simple to deploy with a provisioning journey that is seamless. A user can become a call centre agent by simply clicking a button and it offers intelligent ways to connect customers with the right members of staff without it being a complex process.
Businesses then need the ability to design and measure the outcomes and KPIs that are important to them, and all delivered in a simple way that leverages the power of the UCaaS platform.