The primary objective of a contact center is to provide a good customer experience. The traditional KPIs are customer satisfaction, average time a customer spends on hold, and how quickly an agent answers the customer’s question or provides a resolution. However, there’s no direct correlation between customer experience and frontline productivity. Before trying to improve customer experience, you need to carefully analyze agent tasks and issues that arise.

Instead of wondering how to make customer service more productive, it’s important to understand which barriers hinder agents. And improving the agent experience will ultimately increase customer satisfaction rates by 11%, according to Gartner.

Barriers to a Great Agent Experience

System complexity often is a barrier for contact center agents. Even though you invest in new or updated applications, systems and information to improve the frontline, too many disparate tools make it difficult for agents to properly serve customers. Simplifying daily customer service tasks will improve both customer and agent experiences.

Connectors Solve System Complexity
Connectors, powerful add-ons that integrate CTI systems with major CRM systems, can facilitate daily contact center routines. In addition to basic features, like call transfer, automated screen-pop and click-to-call option, connectors offer other benefits.

  • Connectors support all media channels, including inbound/outbound calls as well as chat, email, third-party and social media, work items, IWD, and open media.
  • Unique interface for all channels: Agents don’t need to swap screens or windows because every feature they need to perform their duties appears in the same workspace.
  • Synchronization between the two entities: Users range from full interaction between CTI and CRM systems to selectively using one.
  • Full control from CRM systems: A customizable delegation feature allows the selected CRM system to fully override a Genesys CTI desktop and interactions.
  • Multi-CRM access: Agents can access various CRM systems through a single automated, selective and attached-data-driven screen-pop.
  • Media blending and interaction concurrency: By leveraging Genesys capacity rules, frontline agents can handle multiple chats, email or other concurrent interactions using any media type.
  • Tailored and easy integration: A scripting engine lets you trigger automated actions into a CRM system, linking customer experience interactions and CRM data.
  • Retrieval of interaction transcripts and recordings: Store specific properties into both entities and retrieve them for reporting, compliance, marketing and other business purposes.

In addition, connectors are up and running with out-of-the-box features just after the installation. And they’re customizable for advanced use cases. The ability to use a single interface for all channels and handle more interactions simultaneously improves agent experience and efficiency. And contact center managers have visibility into advanced KPIs and in-depth monitoring. All of these factors lead to an improved customer experience.

Softphone is a Genesys AppFoundry partner that offers powerful out-of-the-box solutions that enable Genesys® PureCloud® and PureEngageTM platforms to integrate with all major CRM systems. PureConnectTM integration is coming soon. Smart Connectors by Softphone leverage the widget, interface and channels that Genesys provides and integrates them through fully customizable procedures so features can adjust as your needs change. Find one of their listings and be sure to search for the full suite of Smart Connectors on the AppFoundry Marketplace. You can also register for the on-demand webinar to learn on how to improve customer and agent experiences through seamless CRM integrations.

This blog post was co-authored by Softphone CEO, Alan Lugiai, co-founded the company in 2004. He drives the strategy, marketing and business development efforts. Alan spent the last 19 years working in the Genesys ecosystem (from version 5 to 8.x) and has led major Genesys projects in Europe and other countries. His extensive experience is a critical input to Softphone product roadmaps.