2020 Virtual Contact Center Product Category Social Ethnography Takeaways
Q4 2020 Takeaways
Q4 2020 Takeaway: Quick Integration upon launch of a VCC solution is essential for success
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Integration with CRM platforms such as Salesforce is not native for users and there are a lot ofwork-a-rounds that have to be done to make the VCC solution work.
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Frustration that a month from launch could go by and the VCC solution still isn’t working like it should such as status configuration not working while on a chat and phone call, some actions admin interface functions are not able to complete like deleting a ring group. Implementation schedules and timelines are thus needed to complement the support and knowledge conveyed during the sales process.
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A lack of urgency from VCC partners to address adoption challenges has led clients to conclude that the VCC solution purchases is not a great fit particularly for larger service organizations or that there needs to be added attention to small businesses with very specific needs and whose every phone call or interaction is important.
Q4 2020 Takeaway: Processes needed to be added or built upon by VCC partners to ensure their
clients optimize collaboration, engagement and, ultimately, productivity
- Users expressed particular gratitude when their VCC partners made it easy to use their VCC platforms to grow their call center to new heights never thought possible including:
- Providing ongoing new services to improve the efficiency and capabilities of agents so they can spend their time taking care of clients instead of navigating frustrating menus, etc..
- VCC partners demonstrating on their end a corporate culture that they truly care about the success of their agent and their clients. Supporting verbatims are as follows:
- Doing so would be a “refreshing change.”
- “It feels that I have to prove to them exhaustively that there is a problem, when they should be the ones who are taking any feedback and investigating. It isn't every time though and we do receive a lot of help from Support that is easy and helpful.”
- Providing flexibility and ability to meet the requirements of theirs sales department as
well as other departments.
Q4 2020 Takeaway: Cloud-based benefits vs On-premise VCC should be considered in selecting a VCC
solution
- Users conveyed that cloud-based platforms:
- Allowed contact centers to significantly reduce operational expenses from the support and licensing on-premise contact center software while benefiting from strong infrastructure and system benefits inherited from cloud including security, availability and maintenance.
- Enabled agents to care for customers from anywhere instead of being tied to a physical location or private network thus elevating the happiness levels of agents, supervisors, and customers.
Q4 2020 Takeaway: Some VCC UI/UX features are considered more impactful than others
- Users conveyed a need for more advanced reporting capabilities including:
- Cloning reports or sharing them with both users and non-users within the organization.
- Being able to drill down into SLAs to improve them (e.g., it was conveyed that some users decreased their abandon rates in particular from nearly 20% abandon rate down to 0.001%).
- Users conveyed that some features are offering basic functionality with no added value or covering more essential needs:
- “They support all the standard channels (voice, email and chat) plus any other social network you may want to use, like Twitter, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp... although only the voice channel it's worthy. The other ones are offering very basic functionalities and no added value. In general, it is a solution for small/medium call centers which don't use too many channels or don't have very specific requirements. For large call centers, it's to worthy unless you have a big development team behind you.”
- “Although they cover all the products for a contact center, most of them are quite basic
and don't really cover the needs e.g. email channel: you can receive emails, route them
and reply with a plain text message, but nothing else. Many things in the roadmap but
not sure when they will arrive.”
- Users expressed that ease of use and integration were appreciated such as logging in to start work immediately and transferring calls to another agent or an external number.
- Some users countered this ease of use and integration by conveying that their VCC solution was glitchy and would need to refresh thus leading them to seek another option.
Q4 2020 Takeaway: Remote VCC capabilities became important as a result of Covid
- Users conveyed how their VCC partners were needed to either get their remote workers up
and working or become a complete remote workforce.
- Users expressed appreciation for quick implementation within a couple of weeks without any issues to reduce costs, improve reliability, and integrate easily with other solutions.