Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that run contact centres between 10 and 100 seats have often made do with makeshift solutions from multiple vendors. This could include one or more platforms for internal collaboration and several for external communication. There might even be separate teams for social media and contact centres.
Businesses that implemented communications solutions over time often did so in a piecemeal way, stacking services on top of others. This has created increasing complexity and inefficiency of siloed systems.
In a world that demands customers can converse with businesses through seamless omnichannel experiences, and where businesses need communications systems to be integrated with back-office systems to run efficiently, this fragmented way of delivering a customer experience isn’t fit for purpose anymore.
We believe every business interaction between customers and businesses should be exceptional. We focus on the SME market, because that’s where we think we can make a sizeable impact.
We hear resellers and SMEs alike telling us about their pain points but that enterprise level solutions don’t address their needs and constraints.
Yet, with the right technology, SMEs of a wide range of sizes can better compete with enterprise rivals by offering comparable customer experiences.
For this to happen though, we believe that SMEs and their reseller partners need contact centre solutions packaged differently than enterprises, better suiting their budgets, internal IT skills and business models.
As we continue to hear that many customers are receiving poor customer experiences, we believe that CCaaS in the SME market represents a new or expanded revenue stream for many resellers. The feedback we’ve already received from customers and partners reinforces this view.
Tangible pain points
The fundamental reason we’re sure CCaaS will grow is that it solves a range of tangible pain points that many SME contact centre staff struggle with today, holding them back from growth.
Meanwhile, the importance of the contact centre’s performance has also never been greater to a business, orchestrating the entire customer experience to positively influence sales effectiveness, retention and everything in between. The issue is a critical one for businesses to remain competitive.
From customers’ perspectives, companies with siloed systems are less able to deal with their requests first time. They may have to repeat information and chase cases that fall through the cracks. In today’s age, it won’t take many such experiences before a customer switches.
The agent job can be stressful, trying to hit targets for calls and quality, while leveraging many sources of dispersed information across disparate systems. We have seen from our research that it can take years of experience to become a top performer in some contact centres, partly because of the challenge of navigating complex internal systems while dealing with a wide range of customer scenarios.
The learning journey for new starters is made particularly difficult. If new starters have an early negative experience in their new role – such as systems that hinder rather than help their job – it sets a poor example for customers and can affect staff morale from day one.
Not only do siloed systems affect the agent-customer experience, but it prevents decision-makers from getting a true bird’s eye view of customer behaviour and performance. That viewpoint can help with coaching staff, intervening in poor service, and forecasting resource requirements.
Exceptional experiences
When systems are integrated, customers are more likely to receive exceptional contact experiences consistently, irrespective of channel or time. Not only is the customer likely to be happier but agents are also more capable of delivering a positive interaction, better able to focus on the customer through the interaction and make it memorable for the right reasons.
If customers are happier and agents are enjoying their roles more, there is more chance of improving both employee and customer retention, which are both so critical for businesses at the moment.
Now is the perfect opportunity for resellers to incorporate a lower-cost CCaaS solution into their portfolio. SMEs have different requirements from enterprises and they also tend to come along with a broader range of contexts, challenges and needs. Therefore, we have been developing propositions that can be consumed more easily by resellers and their SME clients.
This enables solutions to either augment existing services or replace older siloed solutions. Elements can also be bought modularly, allowing both resellers and SMEs to go at their own speed and accommodate budget constraints, which is particularly important given the present economic uncertainties.
All considered, the contact centre market is on course for considerable growth this decade. We’d advise resellers to consider the opportunity.
This opinion piece appeared in our December 2022 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.