We have all called some brand or the other during our lifetime and encountered a range of different types of experiences while connecting with the brands call center.
Some customer service call centers may have rudimentary systems and others may have highly advanced technology
Call center technology is now commoditized and easily available to all including small and medium enterprises
The key elements of call center technology are as follows:
Telephony
This refers to the part where the consumer, the telephone and the call center connect.
It’s the technology that enables the consumers call to be connected to a representative who may be one of many sitting behind what is publicly seen as only one phone number
In reality that one phone number has got multiple channels and those channels are connected to a system (in an office environment it is often referred to as EPABX).
This aspect of getting the consumer to connect with representative using the phone system is referred to as Telephony.
It can be a rudimentary EPABX or it could be a high tech call answering switch or a sophisticated
The telephony portion is the one that works to create the connection and distribute the calls to the available representative.
In higher tech solutions there are options of skill based routing, language based routing, department based routing and so on where specialized representatives are available within various sub-groups.
Ticket Creation
Once the call lands on the system and connects with the service representative, the conversation begins.
At this stage, the system generates a unique number often called a “Ticket”. This ticket is a record of the track that an interaction took place. It is not necessarily a detailed record of the interaction itself.
Ticketing systems usually will take in data entered by the customer service representative especially in areas of articulating the problem and the resolution.
The ticketing system is available on the screen for every representative to access and is often used to capture information that can be then used to either investigate the case or to be able to respond immediately.
This ticketing system can also have varied levels of sophistications. Normal ticketing systems will surely have features like recording of customer issues, creation of a disposition, assignment of the ticket to the relevant staff and communication of the ticket number to the customer.
A ticketing system in itself is not a CRM and neither does it usually hold all the customer information in advance. However, it would normally have a feature to be able to read the caller ID and then based on the integration with the customer database or the CRM would be able to pull-up the customer record as the call is about to be answered by the representative.
Email and WhatsApp Ticketing
Just like a phone call the ticketing system can also be available for email response management. And more recently for WhatsApp based customer care. The fundamental principles are still the same except that in the case of an email of WhatsApp, the ticket gets generated automatically and the ticketing system does not hold any additional information beyond what was mentioned in the email or WhatsApp. Whereas for the phone based interaction ticketing, the representative can add additional data to the case as they are interacting with the caller.
The ticketing system is not a replacement for your CRM but it is purely a method to collect information about a particular query that the consumer has and to be able to create a workflow around that to pass to different departments or to resolve within the service department itself
Ideally a good ticketing system should have email, phone and WhatsApp all on the same system. This enables the representative to be able to view all the different interactions that have happened for the consumer on a particular ticket thereby avoiding extra work and replication of effort across different channels that the same consumer may have interacted with (it is not uncommon for consumers to send an email and follow it up with a phone call, thereby creating two separate tickets and further administrative workload for all)
Ticketing System Vs CRM
As above the ticketing system and the CRM system are two different systems. Ideally both of these should talk to each other so that data entered in the ticketing system can flow back to the CRM and the CRM data is available to the customer service representative while answering the call for any new or existing ticket.
The CRM also can further have workflows created including ongoing communication with the customer based on the status of the ticket (this can also be done from the ticketing system if required)
Work from Home Reps
Web based telephony and ticketing system – Now that we are forced to work from remote locations and work from home, we need to consider using web based telephony and web based ticketing systems. These are available in abundance and any decision made should be well thought through on the following criteria:
Features of the ticketing system
The ongoing product development by the organization that has created this ticketing system
The overall safety features that are built into the system to protect your customer information
The ability for your ticketing system to be able to interact with consumer across multiple channels as well as interact with your CRM and customer database without much effort (it should have APIs available for easy integration)
Cost – Usually a monthly SAAS fee per user would be preferably with no fixed monthly cost
Commitment of subscription timelines. Ideally this should be on a monthly basis initially so that your organization can try it and get used to it and have other options available in case you need to switch to better technology or one that suits your processes better.
If you are a Brand Manager, Customer Service Head, Service Center Head, Business Head looking to implement a call center within your organization wherein you need to have your service representatives working from home and other locations, you could consider the above in your decision making.
If you would like to know more about telephony and ticketing system, feel free to contact Kankei Consulting Services
Drop us an email at info@kankei.com or WhatsApp +91 9324747575 or click here
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