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4 Ways to Show Your Customers You Value and Appreciate Them with Contact Center Tools

There are dozens of creative ways to express customer appreciation, and a full-featured call center software suite can help get your message across with minimal fuss.

Small business owners and their teams can handle customer calls efficiently while indulging their VIPs with something extra — all without missing a beat.

Here are four ways to show your customers that you care…

1. Make Your Customer’s Experience the Center of Your World.

Everyone wants to feel valued. When a customer calls in, you must give them your undivided attention. If your team is worried about finding contact records or scripts, they’re not paying attention, leaving your customers feeling overlooked.

Keep the focus on the customer – not shuffling application windows – with screen prompts and automated workflows that flow seamlessly from your CRM to your contact center solution. An integrated contact center solution can empower CRM-based workflows with in-call screen pops and recommendations to help your team stay engaged with customers.

2. Anticipate What Your Customers Need with The Right Call Center Software.

Do you know your customers well enough to finish their sentences? Knowing what your customers need, even before they do, can help them feel like you truly “get” them — the basis of a fruitful relationship. Look at your data and reporting to understand customer pain points, past purchases, and other behavior.

Consider reaching out to selected customers on “quiet” days to ensure a problem was resolved to their satisfaction or simply to thank them for their business. And if you’re experiencing a service issue, contact them proactively and let them know you’re working to resolve it.

3. Customize Offer Recommendations.

Tailoring your interactions with your customers builds stronger relationships and a better customer experience. Take advantage of the capabilities of an integrated, multi-channel customer experience solution to create user profiles and make custom offer recommendations based on what your customers like. As always, meet your customers where they expect to find you, whether through email or web-based chat.

4. Partner for Pampering Experiences.

Today’s shoppers are spending more on experiences for themselves and others.If your business is rooted in products rather than experiences, consider partnering with others for a joint offer. Have these offers ready so any team member can easily share and give a great experience recommendation when they connect with a customer. Take that offer to the next level by delivering it in the method the customer prefers, email or chat, with a multi-channel call center solution.

With the right contact center solution and complementary partner, you’ll spend less time managing your phone system and more time providing customers with an exceptional experience.

When it comes to improving your customer experience and contact center solutions, TCI experts can customize, deploy, and support your technology. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

Winning the Race – 3 Reasons You Can’t Let Your Communications System Fall Behind

Like winning athletes, high-performance companies are always looking for new capabilities to help them beat the competition.

We’ve all watched high-performance athletes lose a race by mere fractions of a second. It’s heartbreaking because whatever the margin, it meant the difference between winning and losing.

The business world isn’t much different. Competition is extremely tight in almost every industry. It’s too easy to be left behind by competitors who are faster to market, work more efficiently, and do more to keep their customers happy.

Your business systems are crucial to increasing your competitive edge and winning the race, no matter what industries or markets you serve. Every system you rely on must reliably operate at peak performance levels — especially your business communications system.

You can’t afford to let your communications systems fall behind for many reasons, but here are three important ones.

1. Seamless Communications Accelerates Time to Market

It takes unconstrained teamwork across every area of your organization to get new offerings to market faster. Every member of every team needs the ability to quickly and easily connect, collaborate, and share information from anywhere, at any time.

If your communications system isn’t up-to-date, your teams can’t leverage the latest features and functions available in the web, mobile, and desktop applications they rely on to stay connected. Like high-performance athletes, your teams need every advantage they can get. No matter how seemingly small that advantage is, it makes a difference – especially if you multiply the effects across your organization.

Keeping your communications system up to date means your teams always have the most recent voice, messaging, video conferencing, screen sharing, and file sharing capabilities at their fingertips.

2. Lost Productivity is More Costly than You Think

A Grammarly Business survey of over 1,600 business leaders and knowledge workers found that 72% of the workweek is spent on communication and collaboration. When you add up the lost time, those inefficiencies cost more than $1.2 trillion, or $12,000 per employee annually.

But productivity losses aren’t only measured in dollars. Almost half of the survey respondents also said that inefficient communication and collaboration had created friction with co-workers and other departments. While those losses are more challenging to quantify, no business can afford them.

Communication technologies and systems that provide more features and functionality are crucial to making communications and collaboration more efficient. The capabilities that were cutting-edge just a short while ago are no longer at the forefront of what’s available.

3. A Great Customer Experience Depends on Great Communications

Customers’ communications with your organization are central to their experience, increasing revenue. The key is to ensure your customers have a great experience at every touchpoint across your organization. To do this, you need to look beyond your contact center technology and the service your contact center agents provide and take a holistic approach to the customer journey.

Every single person in a company plays a direct or indirect role in determining whether it provides consistently good or consistently bad human or digital interactions. Your business communications system plays a significant role in those human and digital interactions.

When evaluating the current state of your current communications system, think about how customers interact with your sales team and employees located at remote sites. Also consider how your internal teams connect and collaborate to deliver on customer requirements, especially when customized solutions are required, delivery dates change or supply chain issues slow down processes.

If your communications system doesn’t provide the capabilities needed to ensure customers have the best possible experience, they can become disillusioned. Worse, they may stop calling.

To maintain your edge to beat the competition, schedule your Business Communications planning session today. Contact TCI at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

Contact Center 101 – Understanding the Basics

There are plenty of companies that manage lots of customer interactions that could benefit from today’s contact center solutions, yet they’re not looped in on what’s available today. If you’re one of them, your business could be missing out.

What’s the Difference between a Contact Center and Your Organization?

A call or contact center is any facility that receives or transmits a large volume of phone calls. Whether it’s inbound, outbound, or a virtual call center, the traditional definition of the contact center has expanded as UC technology continues to evolve.

Contact center operations can range from a few customer service representatives in a small business to enterprise-level corporations with hundreds of agents spread across multiple regional offices.

Why Does Your Organization Need Contact Center Technology?

The modern contact center has evolved. Today, a contact center can be a small team managing internal help-desk requests, a car dealership connecting prospects to salespeople, or an elementary school office handling an influx of calls from parents.

If your organization handles frequent calls, then you’re a good fit for this affordable technology…

  • Unleash Your Sales, Service, and Support Potential – Start a different conversation with your customers when you give them the freedom to interact with you the way they want (voice, text, chat, video) on any device, and give your employees the tools to manage today’s omnichannel customer journeys.
  • Build a World-Class Customer Center – Don’t just connect with your customers, convince them you care with Mitel’s omnichannel suite featuring workflow designer, speech-enabled IVR, speech analytics, quality and performance management, real-time dashboards, and more.
  • Get Big Results Fast – Improve your customer satisfaction scores, first contact resolution rates, and customer effort scores with Customer Experience solutions.

What Kind of Call Center Technology is Available?

There’s a wide spectrum of call center solutions available to help your business operations. Today’s variety of call center solutions cover all the bases.

TCI’s contact center experts can step you through your options, and when you’re ready – design, deploy, and support your solution. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

TCI Host Service – Customized Contact Center, Team Collaboration & Business Communications

Empower your people to serve your customers better

For a single, low monthly price, you can upgrade old phones to advanced mobile-enabled desktop phones and use Mitel’s award-winning capabilities to dramatically improve your Customer Experience.

Cloud communications isn’t an all-or-nothing endeavor

There are several deployment models to choose from depending on your business’s unique situation, and you can shift from one approach to another over time. Managing a multi-site business? TCI Host can bring your offices closer together.

In and Outbound Contact Center / Call Center

Whether you’re a small or big business, you can support omnichannel queues that let customers contact you the way they prefer. Track your customer contacts and get real-time metrics for informed decision-making and better team coaching.

  • Integrate with your CRM, like Salesforce, Microsoft, and others
  • Offer Live Agents, Web Chat, Email, Text Messaging / SMS
  • Monitor and respond to Social Media feeds (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.)
  • Automate and access Full Reporting on Your Customer Interactions
  • Improve Customer Experience
  • Become more efficient

Powerful Collaboration Capabilities

Explore some of the Mitel-powered team-building and conferencing tools your users can tap into with their mobile or desktop phones…

  • Virtual workspaces for team meetings, conversations, content review, and project management
  • Team Video Conferencing and Recording
  • Participant management
  • Desktop application sharing
  • Team and private chat
  • Web-based file sharing
  • Document management

Unified Messaging and Integrated Apps

With access to these Mitel-powered tools, your team’s work can be tackled on more devices from any location:

  • Integration with business applications from tech leaders like Microsoft and Google
  • Presence Tools
  • Softphone App on Mobile Devices
  • Unified Messaging
  • Remote control of desktops
  • Outlook client plug-in
  • MS TEAMS integration (Mitel Assistant App)
  • Message retrieval from one synchronized message store

Our TCI Host Cloud Voice Service is all about flexibility

Add new cloud-based tools to your existing business phone system, and when you’re ready, migrate your entire platform to the cloud to reduce your overall telecom costs.

Schedule your TCI Host demo. Call us today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

Safeguard Your Customers and Data with Advanced Unified Communications Security

The bad guys will not stop… Cybersecurity challenges are never-ending.

This is a big concern in virtually every industry, especially those where most interactions have gone digital to meet customer preferences for self-serve and engagement through the channels they prefer – at the time they want.

While this is convenient for customers, it has created significant operational and cybersecurity challenges for contact centers. To provide excellent customer service experiences, contact centers must authenticate a customer’s identity, address questions and concerns, and process transactions quickly and efficiently.

Throughout the process, customers must feel like every interaction is secure, and companies must ensure they protect customer privacy during and after a call. With the proper unified communications (UC) tools, organizations can streamline and secure all contact center conversations to meet omnichannel service expectations before, during, and after a customer connects with a live agent.

Voice Authentication personalizes Service and Reduces Fraud

Large and small organizations are implementing digital transformation strategies designed to streamline contact center interactions. Since only some customers need the help of a contact center agent, these efforts are focused on automating processes with self-serve channels that lower costs. For example, chat and voice bots are being introduced to act as virtual agents, deliver services, promote new products, and provide personalized customer experiences — all without connecting the customer to an agent.

But regardless of which digital self-serve path is available, chances are that a caller will eventually want to go beyond simple questions to discuss a specific account. At that point, a live connection with an agent will be needed. When that happens, the agent must be assured of the caller’s identity before dealing with personal account information. While security questions were enough to protect the customer and the business in the past, today’s cybersecurity landscape is a lot more complicated. A disembodied voice on the other end of the line may not be who it claims to be.

Speech recognition systems can be integrated with existing UC platforms to add a layer of cybersecurity protection. These systems can identify the caller’s intent, authenticate the customer using voice biometrics, and then segment and route the call to the best agent to handle the request. With these digital workflows, companies can streamline the call management process and enable a more personalized interaction because the agent will spend less time authenticating the person on the other end of the call and more time dealing with the customer’s specific questions.

Integrated Voice Response and Recording Capabilities enable Advanced Cyber Protection

TCI offers contact center solutions that include an embedded, self-service Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system with an optional speech recognition feature that enables authentication before an agent is connected. With our customized UC platforms, businesses get a complete communications, collaboration, and customer experience solution designed to maintain the security of contact center interactions for any organization.

Organizations that want additional cyber protection for contact center calls can opt for Interaction Recording (IR) to record all calls and then search for, play, and interrogate call recordings for security and privacy regulation compliance. Advanced speech analytics capabilities built into the system enable companies to analyze recordings for potential fraud, categorize calls as “high risk,” and then suggest countermeasures that can be taken to avoid losses.

TCI’s advanced solutions can be applied to support both centralized contact center operations and decentralized organizations with multiple branch offices that manage customer calls.

Privacy Features that ensure Regulatory Compliance

Of course, in addition to maintaining a high level of cyber protection for all contact center interactions, companies must also comply with data protection regulations designed to protect the privacy of customer data. The changing and complex regulations surrounding data privacy and security compliance have created another challenge for both centralized and decentralized operations.

TCI offers solutions built to protect personal data captured during a call by contact center agents either on an agent’s screen or a voice recording. For example, information collected by workflows can be masked to protect personal data as it is being collected. To control access to stored data, information required by the system to perform certain functions (name, phone number, email address, and voice and multimedia transcripts) can be automatically deleted when no longer required to provide service. Plus, multi-level security privileges can be applied to limit access to all data based on user profiles.

Enable Great Customer Service while optimizing Cybersecurity

Ultimately, the cybersecurity protection that businesses build into their contact center processes should be seamless and efficient. Self-serve options should authenticate a customer’s identity before connecting to a live agent. Agents should be able to address customer questions and manage transactions quickly and efficiently without being bogged down by cybersecurity protocols. UC tools enable enterprises to achieve this level of protection without compromising omnichannel service objectives.

Learn how TCI can help your contact center thrive in the digital age, improve your bottom line, and adhere to security, compliance, and fraud mitigation requirements.

Call us today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 


Supporting DC Metro Leaders in Education, Hospitality and Retail with On-Premises & Hybrid Unified Communications

The on-prem, private hosted, and hybrid Unified Communications (UC) platforms TCI deploys and supports offer unique advantages for education, hospitality, and retail organizations.

A 2023 Metrigy global survey found 64.7% of those in the hospitality industry are on-premises or private-hosted, 56.7% of education, and 50% of retail. These high adoption rates of on-prem and private hosted UC platforms, coupled with the relatively small percentage of those planning to move to UCaaS, highlight significant benefits for the on-premises, private-hosted, and hybrid models for these industries.

4 Reasons Why Education, Hospitality, and Retail stick with On-Prem and Hybrid UC

1. Reliability – The primary reason cited across all three industries for staying with on-premises and private-hosted solutions is their reliability. In the retail space, with large numbers of distributed locations, stores must be able to operate even if there is a network outage. Individual locations must be able to place and receive calls and ensure that systems such as alarms can always function. Hospitality operates under a similar model. A hotel, for example, can’t tolerate downtime for its in-room communications or be unreachable by those looking to make a reservation if there is a network outage or a UCaaS outage. Educational organizations, too, must ensure reliability, especially for higher education institutions spread out across campuses, and support communications modalities, including emergency calling systems.

2. Cost Savings – Nearly 46% overall, including half of retail and hospitality organizations, say that cost savings are the primary reason they stay with on-premises or private-hosted deployment models. On-prem or private-hosted models can often be less expensive and may already be fully depreciated. They also can allow companies, through hybrid solutions, to add additional cloud-based features, such as analytics and application integrations, without making wholesale changes to UC and contact center platforms. And they can preserve existing investments in endpoints and infrastructure such as gateways.

3. Security and Data Privacy – On-premises and private-hosted deployment models allow organizations to control their own data. Educational organizations may use their UC platforms to manage student data, including potentially sensitive information such as grades and health records. Hospitality companies may hold information related to customer location, travel history, and payment preferences. Retail organizations must process payment information per Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance standards. Organizations may have sensitive competitive information they wish to ensure isn’t shared with service providers or potentially outside their control.

4. Integrations – Education, hospitality, and retail organizations will likely have extensive and unique integrations between business applications and their communications platforms. In our research, the need to integrate file management, project and task management, HR, CRM, and ERP applications into collaboration platforms is common to all three.

Beyond those drivers, there are several industry-specific examples of how On-Prem and Hybrid UC supports unique requirements, including:

Education:

  • Self-service portals allow students to check their account balances and billing information by phone or messaging app bot.
  • Student management platforms integrated with call centers enable students to click to call for support from within a learning management app such as Ellucian Banner or Blackboard.

Hospitality:

  • Guest management platforms enable customers to check account information, order food, movies, or services, or easily reach a concierge through a single click on an in-room phone or via an integrated mobile app.

Retail:

  • Inventory and order management systems allow customers to check product availability or order status by phone or receive text updates.
  • In-store wireless communications platforms for employees allow on-the-go communications and enable mobile staff to take incoming calls from customers seeking assistance.
  • Marketing automation systems send special offers and updates to customers via text.

Education, hospitality, and retail organizations may also integrate security systems into calling and paging platforms to provide automated notifications in an emergency.

In all these cases, on-premises and private-hosted solutions allow education, hospitality, and retail organizations to customize and control their communications environment.

Furthermore, education, hospitality, and retail organizations can use hybrid solutions to add additional features and functionality from the cloud while preserving their existing investments in on-premises and private-hosted platforms.

TCI has decades of industry-specific expertise. Let’s talk about leveraging the best technology to help achieve your organizational goals.

Contact us at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 


6 Tips to Improve Your Bank’s Online and Omnichannel Customer Experience

While the new financial experience may involve fewer person-to-person interactions, clients still expect high levels of personalization.

Financial services Customer Experience (CX) encompasses every customer interaction with an institution on every platform. While this used to primarily happen over a teller counter, the new omnichannel CX includes apps, embedded finance, online systems, digital communications, and contact centers – any way users access their services. The better a customer’s experience at every touchpoint, the more likely they are to trust that company with their finances.

From their initial deposit to their many investment milestones, here are six tips for creating a better experience that your customers will know they can bank on.

1. Build Trust with Digital-first Customers – Digital money management can be daunting for new customers, especially if they are unfamiliar with your brand. Earning client trust can be challenging, but there are ways to make them feel more comfortable using your products. Center your company’s mission and values with consistent messaging and back it up with your services. Clients are concerned about the security of their transactions, so be transparent with your compliance and data privacy policies.

2. Prioritize Self-Service – Currently, most transactions originate digitally, with customers accessing self-service portals or making payments through embedded financial technology. Online transactions like trades or transfers are automated and fast. They generally require little intervention from human agents, making them efficient for the client and cost-effective for the financial institution.

3. Add a Human Touch – In an era where customer interactions are limited, each point of human-to-human contact is valuable. When self-service and AI can’t solve an issue, it’s up to the human agent to step in and provide exceptional customer service. Empower agents with up-to-date information about the client’s history to easily step into the conversation for personalized, empathetic support.

4. Create Connections Between Customers and Employees – Clients will feel more comfortable knowing their money is in the hands of knowledgeable, dependable financial employees, so make sure the transition between self-service and live agent assistance is seamless. Ensuring contact center agents are always available via phone or chat and equipped with top-of-the-line communications solutions leads to faster resolution rates and happier customers. UC solutions like AI-assisted agent support for dynamic real-time responses and work-from-anywhere technology will empower your people to respond professionally and customers will feel confident in their care.

5. Optimize Your Workforce – Human capital is the most valuable – and one of the most expensive – elements of running an organization. Finding the right balance of automated solutions and human expertise can help manage budgetary concerns while improving employee and customer satisfaction. Automated workforce management technology uses analytics to track times of peak demand, creating strategic schedules for flexible, efficient contact center staffing.

6. Collect Valuable Feedback – Today’s digital-first customers quickly tap a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon, but gathering meaningful feedback is essential in providing high-quality financial experiences. Whether it’s a satisfaction survey at the end of a call or a net promoter score after an online chat, give customers a chance to share their thoughts. Their insight can identify pain points and lead to CX improvements you hadn’t considered.

Improve Your Financial Services CX with TCI

The pivot to online financial services is an opportunity for traditional banks, credit unions, and other institutions to provide new levels of exceptional customer experiences. Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 


Check Out This Easy-to-Deploy Game Changer – Your New Virtual Receptionist: Mitel Voice Assist

If excellent customer service is your goal, Mitel has stepped up with the solution you need… their new Voice Assist solution.

Voice Assist is like having a virtual receptionist to help answer basic customer questions, route calls, and deliver personal service without tying up an employee on your team. Voice Assist is a simple application that’s added to your Mitel communication server solution.

If you’re spending too much time helping to route calls to the right person and answering simple questions, Voice Assist can help. If your customers are spending too much time navigating your voice system to find the right person, Voice Assist can help them, too.

Designed for organizations that don’t require a contact center solution, but still need to deliver a professional call experience.

Voice Assist features powerful text-to-speech and speech recognition capabilities for a natural, conversational experience – customers can choose the language and voice they want to hear. Instead of a busy signal or a generic voicemail message, your customers immediately get the assistance they need, and you get the help you need to focus on your primary job while ensuring your customers feel heard and served.

Requires no coding or advanced programming knowledge and is a free add-on for users with a Mitel Software Assurance license.

Although built to be simple and easy to deploy in the cloud, Mitel didn’t leave out sophisticated features like text-to-speech and speech recognition, multilingual support, and full integration with Google Places. That last feature is great for small businesses that use Google Places to advertise their business. It now means that your intelligent auto attendant and Google Places can be linked and synched for a better customer experience.

PDF: Mitel Voice Assist Admin Guide

The Low-code, No-code Future

The communications applications of tomorrow won’t have complex interfaces that require heavy coding skills. They’ll be graphically based, intuitive to use, and require no or minimal coding for customization. This is the direction that system designers are moving in, and Voice Assist is Mitel’s first product to fully leverage this low-code, no-code design.

This means more freedom for small businesses to quickly build the digital customer front door they want. Creating call routes, voice menus, and pre-recorded messages can be easily accomplished through prebuilt templates and a drag-and-drop interface. If your organization is spread out across different geographic regions, Voice Assist’s user interface can be customized to support local languages with the click of a button.

Voice Assist is another example of more value for your money. If you’re not a TCI customer today, now is the perfect time to look at our innovative solutions for your business.

Learn about Mitel Voice Assist and how you can deliver a professional call experience for your customers. Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 




Attn. DC Region Financial Services Firms: Check Out the 2023 eGuide to Improve Client Experience and Grow with UC

TCI Serves Leading Banks and Credit Unions Across the DC Region

Financial organizations must innovate to compete, which is why you need to plan ahead – and stay ahead – of emerging technology trends.

Today’s unified communications technology can help your bank or credit union stay on top of customer demand, achieve compliance objectives, and help differentiate your organization in the marketplace.

In this guide, we provide valuable insights into successful Customer Experience and Unified Communications strategies that will enable you to deliver greater connection, personalization, and convenience.

Learn about…

  • Transformational UC and Setting Up for Success
  • Analyzing Insights to Keep Pace with Customer Demands
  • Connection is the key to Successful CX and EX
  • Applying UC to Financial Services: The Benefits to Users and Customers
  • Omnichannel Communications: Faster Decisions and Better CX
  • Back-Office Processes That Deliver Front-End Service
  • 2023 and Beyond: The Future of UC in Finance
  • Protect Your Future with the Right UC Investment

eGuide: Powering the Digital Journey with Mitel Financial Services Solutions

Let’s talk about new ways to serve your customers and compete in a rapidly changing marketplace. Contact TCI at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

TCI’s Popular Cloud, On-Site or Hybrid Voice Subscription Supports Customized Communications and Improves Customer Experience

Acquiring an enterprise-level phone system typically requires a hefty CAPEX investment or lease. But now TCI offers a budget-friendly way to simplify your Communication and Collaboration needs as a predictable OPEX subscription.

Why Subscribe to TCI Hosted Voice?

  • Only pay for the number of users you have now – scale up and down as needed
  • The latest software/security updates are included
  • Deployment flexibility – You can choose the best arrangement for your needs: On-Prem, Private Cloud, or Public Cloud
  • Choose your calling, collaboration, video, and contact center user features and permissions
  • Make budgeting predictable and reduce your upfront costs

TCI deploys the precise mix of communication, collaboration, and contact center applications you need – without the big upfront price tag.

  • No need to combine tools from multiple vendors – TCI delivers an end-to-end on-site phone and unified communications solution from a single provider.
  • Mobile-first IP Desktop Phones – we support a range of devices with exceptional HD audio quality, one-touch Bluetooth pairing, and seamless integration with your mobile phone.
  • Flexible, Easy-to-Manage Platform – Web-Based Management ensures administrators can deploy a multi-site solution from their web browser.

For more details on TCI’s Hosted Voice subscription plans, contact us today: (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.