“Let me put you on hold while I retrieve the information” This sentence is all too common for anyone that calls or uses the services of a contact center.
Agents do what they are told, using the tools available, so the root cause is not here. More than pointing fingers or finding whom to blame, it is far more important to understand why this happens and define solutions to help overcome this problem.
If an agent needs to navigate through several applications and screens to find the answer to a simple inquiry, putting customers on hold is the only way. By doing so, the call will probably take longer, the customer will get anxious and even the agent will feel frustrated for not being able to provide a good customer experience. Multiply this situation by hundreds of calls a day and you are in trouble.
Just as the pilot of an airplane needs to have all the information available at his fingertips, the agent also needs a desktop with all the available applications and data. In this scenario a unified Agent Desktop works as the Contact Center Universal Remote from which the agent controls the interaction, proposes customers with cross and up sell opportunities and has the necessary context and access to back-office applications necessary to provide an outstanding service.
What is a unified desktop?
There are several definitions but we identify very much with the one provided by the Pelorus Group “…smart desktops, intelligent desktops, universal desktops, and unified desktops…products that seek to condense required contact processing information onto a single desktop application and organize the sequencing of screens to coincide with workflow .”
A unified desktop is not a luxury but an essential need for all contact centers that want to be in the forefront of providing excellent customer services by empowering agents to proactively find better solutions and exceed customer expectations. Don’t think that the unified desktop can only help agents. One of our customers mentioned that “With Altitude we can quickly replicate, change, add, move, make changes on the fly as needed and push this out to the desktop.” Results, a North American outsourcer, is taking advantage of the Altitude Unified Desktop to streamline processes and support the IT team to quickly deploy new campaigns and services to agents in a seamless way, not affecting operations and agent performance.
Altitude Unified Desktop has helped global industry leaders to improve their operations, increase First Call Resolution rates and boost agent productivity and Optima, also a North American outsourcer, is another great example of how an integrated and unified desktop is an important competitive advantage in today’s uncertain times “The Altitude solution helped Optima achieve its FCR targets with intelligent call routing and providing contact history at the agent desktop. Moreover, as an outsourcer, we needed separate knowledge bases for each one of our major clients and the Altitude suite enabled us to do so. At the same time, it provided us with an innovative technology solution that increased our productivity and service levels”.
We see the agent desktop as a pivotal tool in the contact center, working as a universal control where all the critical information is available to agents to consistently perform at the highest level, help IT to provide a better support for both in-house and remote agents and improve the customer experience.
If you wish to learn more about how Unified Desktops can improve your contact center operations, please download the white paper: “Agents Desktops, The Contact Center Universal Remote” by the Pelorus Goup.