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Are You Getting the Full Value Out of Your CRM Platform?

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Getting the most out of your CRM requires that you integrate it with your Business Voice applications. Almost all of the popular CRM services on the market seamlessly integrate with TCI’s Mitel and RingCentral systems.

Using a customized CRM? Our experienced development team can bring your customer data, phone system, and call center together…

  • When your CRM is integrated with your phone system, the contact’s personal details can be set to pop up on your phone or computer screen. Imagine how much time will be saved when your people don’t need to search for important information like customer preferences and details of past transactions.
  • Enhanced call functionality like click-to-dial, automated call logging, intelligent dialing, and screen pops and transfer can all be enabled and integrated with your customer data.
  • Bringing CRM and Voice together makes every employee and contact center agent in your business significantly more productive while improving the customer experience.

    • Let’s talk about connecting your phone system and contact center with your CRM platform.
    Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

     

How to Improve Customer Service in Your Contact Center

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Until recently, most contact centers looked like a sea of low-walled cubicles with agents speaking into headsets – with all customer transactions occurring at a fixed office location. Today, contact center agents can work just about anywhere: at home, in hired office space, or even on the move from a mobile device. But that’s not the only benefit mobility has on customer service.

Here are five ways you can boost customer service levels using mobility and cloud-based services…

1. Manage resources to maintain service levels

Some ebb and flow in contact volumes are seasonal, while other times volume may be unexpected. Whatever the case, with cloud-based contact center software, additional seats can be ‘spun up’ in virtually no time at all. Staff at other locations can be redeployed to manage customer interactions during busy periods. Agency staff can be online and handling inquiries and home workers can be ready to go at a moment’s notice. When call volumes stabilize, you can return to normal staffing.

2. Improve access to specialist skills anywhere

In some environments, contact center staff may need in-the-moment access to specialists. Rather than put the customer on hold until finding someone available who can help, the agent can use presence to see if the specialist is online and then either dial that person directly or send him or her an instant message while staying on the phone with the customer. Of course, UC tools allow specialists to be contacted on the go too. If a customer has a question that an agent needs a specialist’s opinion on, the agent can quickly communicate with the expert via a mobile device.

3. Attract and retain staff

Traditionally, contact center staff had to be recruited from a specific geographic location to work in the local office. With virtual contact center technology, businesses can now access a much wider employment pool. That means that you can hire exceptional agents, whether they live near your business or not. This is particularly helpful for contact centers that require agents to have specialist skills, such as technical, medical or legal expertise. And once you find stellar employees, offering them the option to work remotely can help retain them.

4. Ensure your business is always available

Single-site contact centers that cope well during normal working hours may struggle to offer the same level of service at other times. It may be difficult for customers to access the right specialist after regular office hours, especially if the expert is required to work in a fixed office location. But mobility tools allow customers to get their problems solved at all hours of the day. Allowing contact center staff to work from home increases the likelihood you’ll find agents willing to work night or even split shifts, making it easier to offer coverage around the clock.

5. Ensure business continuity in the face of disaster

Cloud-based contact center systems offer resiliency and mobility, meaning you can continue to serve your customers with little interruption caused by power outages, public transit strikes, natural disasters and other situations that may leave you without a place for contact center agents to work. If your office gets knocked out, agents can work from another location or even from home. In addition, staff from other departments and in other locations can be drafted to handle contact center functions remotely.

Ready to improve customer service in your contact center? Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Better Collaboration… Integrate Microsoft Teams with Mitel-Powered Telephony, Contact Center & CRM

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Now you can improve the productivity of your Microsoft Teams users with Mitel’s advanced telephony, contact center and CRM integrations.

Check out the Video Overview

Give your users the calling features they need to be successful with Mitel’s end-to-end suite of communication tools. By pairing Mitel-powered service with Microsoft Teams, you can save time and improve your calling experience with integrated telephony, conferencing, and contact center.

Let Microsoft do what they do best and let TCI and Mitel do what we do best – delivering seamless connections. TCI has over 40 years of industry expertise and Mitel is a global leader in helping businesses connect, collaborate, and provide better experiences for their customers.

Get the Best of Mitel + Microsoft

  • Click-To-Call – Save time and reduce entry errors by simply clicking on any phone number to place a call.
  • Contact Center – Improve your customer experience with integrated options for simple or robust contact center capabilities.
  • CRM Integration – Increase agent efficiency with Mitel’s native CRM integrations including Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.
  • Outlook Integration – Easily schedule meetings and automate your presence and call routing as your schedule changes.
  • Single Sign-On – Eliminate multiple logins with our Active Directory integration for a single password across systems.
  • Advanced Telephony – Enhance your collaboration experience with call routing, hunt groups, presence, call history, call merging, and more.

Make the most of your collaboration tools without sacrificing enterprise telephony features… Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

How Contact Centers Help Drive Success in Small & Mid-Sized Businesses

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Some organizations, particularly smaller ones, may still have doubts about the real value of a contact center. From the customer perspective, however, the value of a contact center could not be more real.

For example, a small online retailer is just like a big retailer that makes their profit from repeat customers. If consumers are dissatisfied and share that feeling with others or rate the service poorly on an assessment, it could have a downstream effect that hurts your best efforts to get customers back to the cash register.

Providing an optimal customer experience is at the forefront of many planning discussions in every industry and business model. In a world that lives on posting the good, bad and ugly on social media, keeping an eye on customer satisfaction is an absolute must.

Retaining clients means more profit. By having a strong contact center solution, you can:

  • Measure and analyze customer behavior and prepare the right strategies to respond when you identify service gaps.
  • Prioritize calls more effectively by providing pop-up information on repeat callers. This allows your staff to be smarter in how they answer the phone and who they may place on hold – routing the call to the beginning of the queue versus later.
  • Leverage real-time analytics to see what’s really happening at the first point-of-contact, identify staff that require more training and determine if a customer had a negative experience – before they have a chance to leave a bad review.

A robust contact center solution can improve operational efficiency and deliver a better customer experience, while keeping you apprised of what’s really happening. Your response can drive better satisfaction surveys and online ratings.

Let’s discuss how to improve your customer experience by implementing a contact center to support your business. Contact TCI today (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

TCI’s Customized Cloud Voice… Deployed Anywhere, Any Time, on Any Device

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TCI specializes in industry-leading unified communication solutions for businesses of all sizes. And because we give you the option to run these powerful solutions on our hardware or on your servers through software, you can expand on your terms and your timing.

Select the best deployment model

Delivered from our VMware-enabled data center in Ashburn, VA, our TCI Advantage services offer the flexibility to deploy UC your way – Hosted, Premises, Hybrid, Virtualized, or as Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). When your needs change, we can change your deployment platform.

Enjoy unequaled scalability and selection

Work from the office, home or road. Handle calls from the desk or mobile device of your choice. TCI can provide your phones, or you can source your own.

Choose the level of support you need

TCI can manage everything end-to-end or you can manage your own changes and only call us when you need help. Either way, easy online management and reporting is included. Choose your service plan – from traditional break-fix to fully managed.

Customize to fit your business needs

  • Full integration with Salesforce, Outlook and other CRM applications
  • Deploy a world class Contact Center with agents working from anywhere
  • Seamless office unified communication on a desktop, laptop or mobile phone – or all at once!
  • And much more…

Mitel-powered… TCI-delivered

TCI’s business-class communication solutions can be deployed in any configuration, with tailored financing options to meet your budget requirements. TCI makes Voice easy – all for a budget-friendly monthly subscription.

Talk to our experts or schedule your demo. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Recapping Mitel’s Recent Road Show on Digital Transformation & Contact Center Innovations

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The emergence of the Digital Economy has led companies to transform their call centers into omni-channel customer experience centers. Increasingly, companies are finding that they need optimization solutions like Workforce Management, Interaction Recording, Quality Management and Speech Analytics to successfully operate an omni-channel customer experience center. They’re also looking at AI-powered Agent Assist technology to modernize the customer and agent experience.

Many companies struggle to make the transition seamlessly and are looking for partners to help them navigate through the maze of choices. TCI and Mitel can help.

On July 10 in Columbia, Maryland, the Mitel UC Contact Center Roadshow was in town, a platform for discussions and demonstrations of the latest innovations in contact center technologies and applications. Experts from Mitel, Google, ASC, TalkDesk, and others covered these topics:

  • How Google AI can power Contact Center Agents
  • How to Optimize the largest expense in a Contact Center
  • Benefits of hosting a Contact Center via the cloud
  • How to determine which Contact Center solutions best fit your company

We were delighted to see some of our valued TCI clients and guests, including…

  • Burke and Herbert Bank
  • American Physical Therapy Association
  • American Society of Civil Engineer
  • Intensive Care On-line Network

If you were unable to attend this event…

We have compiled a 75-page slide deck that provides a recap of the presentations. We offer it in the hope that it may stimulate ideas on the types of innovations available that you can bring into your contact center to improve the customer experience.

Let’s talk about how innovative technologies and applications can advance the effectiveness of your contact center. Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Using Contact Center Metrics to Boost Customer Experience in the Real World

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No surprise… Your customers want personalized service and consistent answers when they speak with multiple reps in your business. Further, they don’t want to wait on hold or repeat themselves when transferred. Here’s how three organizations are leveraging the Cloud today to benefit their customers…

  • A Medical Supply Company, which serves its market with 45 agents, gains actionable insight into call center operations. By monitoring system performance in real time, managers can identify heavy call-volume periods, so staff can be allocated in ways that keep wait times to a minimum. Historical reporting reveals patterns so managers can determine if they need additional staff at certain locations or during specific days or times.
  • A Non-Profit that provides temporary assistance to those struggling to pay their energy bills can now move representatives from one queue to another based on call volume. That reduces wait times for customers during peak hours. Call monitoring allows managers to review calls for quality and service levels, improving training and accountability. Call recording comes in handy when a customer and agent have different recollections of a conversation, allowing any miscommunication to be resolved quickly.
  • A Government Contractor implements a nationwide energy efficiency program with a new always-on cloud contact center, allowing 24/7 support to be offered to customers. While remote access had been an issue with the old system, now remote agents have seamless access from satellite offices. Improved call quality translates into fewer dropped calls, which makes customers happy. Real-time call handling metrics let managers analyze the level of service customers receive. Issues can be identified immediately and lay the foundation for future training sessions.

New technology is providing the tools and insight you need to turn your call center into a well-oiled machine.

Let’s talk about more practical ways a cloud contact center solution can help your business serve and support demanding customers… Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

The 5 Most Important Contact & Call Center Trends

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We’ve seen a lot of changes to the call center and Customer Experience landscape in recent years. Cloud communications and a distributed workforce have been on the minds of many our clients. The need to integrate social media channels is becoming more important than ever.

Here are 5 of the strategic trends shaping up to influence businesses and their call center operations…

1. Digital transformation

Businesses are turning to truly digital contact centers that redefine the Customer Experience from start to finish. Seamless integration of technologies across the business provides full customer context with each interaction and leverages system data to provide proactive service.

2. Two-way social media conversations

When customers interact with a business online via social media, they expect a personalized and immediate response. More importantly, the two-way conversation is public, so other customers will be watching to see how the business addressed the problem.

3. Omni-channel communications

While a customer journey may begin on one channel, valuable insight and feedback may be taking place on a completely different channel. Unifying customer communications across channels gives businesses better context for their customers, helps resolve issues faster, and assists agents in identifying better opportunities for future sales.

4. Better contact center analytics

Sophisticated analytics turn data – like call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages and more – into useful feedback for agents. Analytics programs are being used to build statistical dashboards so agents and managers can get real-time updates on customer experiences.

5. More remote call center agents

With constantly improving unified cloud communications, remote workers have become a permanent and beneficial part of the contact center environment. With collaboration tools, contact center agents can take their work mobile, with access to real-time analytics and customer context.

Need help figuring out how to apply these trends to your business? Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

5 Ways to Take Your Customer Experience to the Next Level in the Digital Age

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There’s a lot of pressure to provide a great experience each time customers interact with your brand. Businesses are responding by prioritizing the Customer Experience as a competitive differentiator.

Your business needs to consider the full range of your Customers’ Experience: not just the call they make to sales or support, but all the different departments and technologies that your customers interact with to make a sale or resolve an issue.

Here are five ways to deliver exceptional Customer Experience in the digital age:

  • Be holistic – Review your current Customer Experience; it doesn’t start and stop with one phone call. It’s important to take a 360-degree view, including chat, social media, direct messages and beyond.
  • Respond immediately – To avoid customer frustration with misdirected calls, a unified communications and collaboration system can allow your agents and staff to collaborate on customer issues without leaving the call.
  • Consider IoT – Implementing IoT automated responses to certain triggers can prevent problems before they take place. For example, a customer’s air conditioning unit can signal your business when the unit is not running properly so you can arrange a tech visit. The customer can respond within their own messaging app.
  • Go beyond voice – When you’re looking at your own contact center, make sure you’re not relying too heavily on voice call metrics; factor in responses and workflows via alternative media.
  • Push for high availability – Your Customer Experience doesn’t stop when there is a disaster or system malfunction. Push for high availability by keeping a physical or virtual replication of your main contact center server.

Let’s talk about using new technology to boost your Customer Experience. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.