Thanks to growing demand from customers and competition among providers, contact center solutions are rapidly replacing older call center software.

When we analyze the market, there will be some Nextiva bias. It’s not like we don’t believe in our own product 😉

When buyers select new contact center software, the strongest deciding factors are still customer reviews, comparable feature sets, and price.

That’s right. Price is still the biggest influencer at the end of the shortlisting process.

In this guide, we compare 15 of the best contact center software. The top three are as follows:

1. Nextiva
2. Five9
3. NICE InContact 

Here’s why Nextiva wins…

Nextiva vs Five9 vs NICE CXone

While distinguishing differences between all the contact center software in the market is hard, we’ve selected the top three. Here’s the side-by-side comparison, which shows why Nextiva comes out on top.

If you’re looking for a quick setup, a simple interface, with an omnichannel suite of features underpinning it, Nextiva is the choice if you don’t want to break the bank.

	Nextiva	Five9	NICE CXone
Setup In Hours	✅	❌	❌
Monthly Price	$99+ per user	$149+ per user	$94+ per user
UC + CC Integration	✅	✅	✅
Free Trial	❌	Custom Proof of Concept	60 days
24/7 Support	✅	✅	✅
Omnichannel	✅	✅	✅
Workforce Management	✅	✅	✅
Outbound & Inbound	✅	✅	✅
AI Agent Assist	✅	✅	✅
CRM Integration	✅	✅	✅

Best Contact Center Software for 2024

1. Nextiva
2. Five9
3. Dialpad
4. CloudTalk
5. 8×8
6. Avaya
7. Talkdesk
8. Genesys
9. Aircall
10. NICE CXone
11. RingCentral
12. Broadvoice
13. Cisco
14. Salesforce
15. Ringover

1. Nextiva

Pros	Cons
Quick and simple setup	No free trial
Affordable for businesses of all sizes	No support for on-premises deployments
New advanced AI features due to Thrio acquisition	Lack of out-of-the-box integration for some niche line of business apps

Nextiva provides a unified communications solution with the option to integrate a call or contact center platform. You can choose from inbound, outbound, or blended contact center software alongside your core internal communications app. 

You can expect a range of features, including call routing, advanced interactive voice response (IVR), and analytics for measuring agent performance, caller behavior, and customer preferences. You also get access to email, web chat, SMS, and social media via omnichannel routing.

Out-of-the-box customer relationship management (CRM) system integrations include:

• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Microsoft Teams
• HubSpot
• Zendesk
• Zoho
• Oracle Sales Cloud
• Workbooks
• ServiceNow
• SugarCRM
• Act! CRM
• Lotus Notes
• ConnectWise
• GoldMine
• Bullhorn

But where Nextiva really shines is its integration of your internal users and frontline agents. When you need to escalate customer cases, the blend of everyday communications apps is vital.

Handling the integration behind the scenes, Nextiva enables seamless calling, messaging, and document retrieval via the NextivaONE app. Agents have a single pane of glass to work from, benefiting from better productivity and providing a more efficient customer experience.

To bolster its already impressive feature set, Nextiva acquired Thrio in 2024, adding tons of new capabilities, like:

• A built-in AI assistant
• Dynamic scripting
• Native process automation
• Proactive customer notifications
• One intelligent display for all your agents’ needs

If you’re ready to supercharge your contact center productivity, the addition of these AI capabilities can be drip-fed so you see a genuine, tangible difference.

Customer Rating: 4.6/5

Customer Review: 

“The price point really drove the decision, because it was hard to beat. Having a device that is under maintenance was a no-brainer for me, since it would have taken a few years to break even otherwise. It’s been great: the devices are versatile, and we utilize all our current phones on power-over-ethernet at the corporate office. They were easy to plug and play and it was a good decision.”

~Vinny Torregrossa, IT Manager, Nothing Bundt Cakes

2. Five9

Pros	Cons
Longstanding AI legacy	High price point for small businesses
Focus on automation	Can be overwhelming for new users
Enterprise scalability	Needs separate provider for voice

If you’re looking for an advanced AI-powered contact center solution, Five9 hits the nail on the head. 

If you’re a large business with scalability concerns, or if you want to let your agents handle more value-added tasks and automate your run rate activities, Five9 makes AI do the legwork so your agents remain efficient and productive. 

Where it really excels is using AI to generate reports and provide sentiment analysis on your customer transactions.

If you’re a data-driven organization with tons of customers and a decently sized service team, Five9 can be a great way to get control of your contact center, with features that include:

• Agent assist
• Call recording and transcription
• Workflow automation
• Digital engagement
• Conversational IVR
• Quality assurance
• Workforce management

You can bolt Five9 on to a range of cloud telephony solutions and retain existing hardware and software. If you’re looking for standalone contact center software, Five9 is a solid option.

Customer Rating: 3.9/5

Customer Review:

“Five9 has increased my productivity tenfold! It has made reporting so much easier and I’ve barely tapped into all it can do!! One thing I do wish we could fix is the ability to have the agents’ emails also included in the email pop-up for automated reporting. Having to individually load them instead of picking from a pick list is a bit time-consuming. One other thing is I’d love to have the audio wave separate on all calls.”

~Tamara Lemasters, Trustpilot review

3. Dialpad

Pros	Cons
Longstanding leader in AI coaching	AI can be overwhelming
Next-generation analytics	Enterprise pricing not disclosed
Dynamic call scripts	Basic features like eFax cost extra

If AI is seriously top of mind and you want to eke out the most possible, Dialpad has been ringing that bell for quite some time. So, if you’re interested in providing real-time coaching insights and accessing next-generation analytics, Dialpad is a good option.

Entry-level features take the shape of call sentiment analysis, real-time text transcription, and built-in AI for call scripts. You can get agent prompts based on the context of live conversations to help serve customers in the most efficient manner possible.

With a specific focus on sales teams, Dialpad’s AI suggestions can prompt agents to mention new products and identify the ideal time to close a deal. Its outbound calling solution also features AI, including smart call monitoring and call queues.

If AI isn’t your sole requirement, Dialpad also provides unlimited calling, number forwarding, and custom call routing options for those looking to check off the basics.

Customer Rating: 4.4/5

Customer Review:

“Made the switch from RingCentral after talking with Will, the sales agent who answered when I called. So far the service has been great, call quality has been fantastic, and I’ve even saved a bit of money.”

~Matthew Sherwood, Trustpilot review

4. CloudTalk

Pros	Cons
Specialize in CRM integration	Lacks some omnichannel support
Native workforce management	Inflexible pricing
No on-premises legacy	Slow communications process

CloudTalk provides high-quality call and CRM software integration with effective workforce optimization tools. It’s ideal for businesses that prioritize managing high call volumes and applying select treatments.

As the name suggests, providing a cloud contact center gives CloudTalk the advantage of avoiding any leftover on-premises baggage. Everything is scalable and flexible, promoting the benefits of consumable cloud technology.

CloudTalk offers AI routing and call prioritization capabilities, customizable call queue messages, and toll-free numbers. It’s geared toward enhancing phone support efficiency, making inbound calls work as hard as possible.

Its AI-powered conversational intelligence module aims to “amplify human potential” by automating repetitive tasks that would normally add hours of work every week.

Customer Rating: 3.7/5

Customer Review: 

“Tried the free trial, and felt like Cloudtalk could work for our small business. The free trial has ended, we wanted to explore packages and use them going forward. The customer service is terrible, I have made numerous inquiries and they have not got back to one, I assume this is because we are a small company and not a high ticket client. I did have an automated message saying their diary is completely full, just sounds very strange and could’ve been dealt with much better.”

~Jade, Trustpilot review

5. 8×8

Pros	Cons
Composable DIY approach	Complex pricing
Co-browsing pioneer	Reliance on third-party hardware
Global calling coverage	Difficult to set up

8×8 offers an integrated cloud communications platform that combines contact center, voice, video, chat, and enterprise API solutions.

Thanks to previous acquisitions like Jitsi, 8×8 has a more programmable feel to it, similar to CPaaS. 

Standout features include:

• Omnichannel routing
• Workforce engagement management
• Speech and text analytics
• Quality management tools
• Co-browsing
• Customer journey mapping

8×8 is an all-in-one, select-your-functionality cloud deployment that’s popular with prescriptive customers. The 8×8 pricing plan works well for large businesses with global calling needs and a generous budget.

It integrates with several CRMs and has competitive pricing for mid-market customers.

Customer Rating: 2.2/5

Customer Review:

“What started off as a bad experience has turned into one of fulfillment and appreciation. My review got me the help that I needed, a pair of fresh eyes on the case and a great resolution. We are very happy, especially since we really like the 8×8 app and all its functions.”

~Claire, Trustpilot review

6. Avaya

Pros	Cons
Long history of providing telecoms solutions	New to cloud contact center market
Advanced reporting and analytics	Complex implementation
Large partner base	Financial instability

Avaya provides omnichannel contact center support across a range of on-premises, cloud SaaS, and hybrid models. Each implementation option includes advanced reporting and analytics, CRM integration, and a standard set of traditional call center features.

As well as providing on-premises and hybrid solutions, Avaya now has a cloud call center (CCaaS) offering via resale agreements.

Avaya’s contact center software gives your employees the tools they need to respond faster with greater insight, allowing them to engage and satisfy your callers.

Avaya comes with the safety of a longstanding telecoms player, and if you’re already invested in the Avaya ecosystem (phone system, handsets, etc.), you may get a discount.

Customer Rating: 4.1/5

Customer Review: 

“It’s a great call center product but could have better technical support. I like how great it can handle my call center needs and be versatile enough to do other items. The support is horrible; outage tickets take days.”

~Engineer in the IT services industry

7. Talkdesk

Pros	Cons
Advanced call routing and workflows	Lack of enterprise case studies
Focus on automation and self-service	Expensive add-ons
Easy implementation	Poor support for lesser integrations

Talkdesk is a cloud-based platform predominantly used by support enterprises to enhance their customer engagement via the use of automation and AI. 

It supports multichannel communication (email, web chat, SMS, and social) and allows for workflow and interaction personalization.

Related: Talkdesk vs. Five9: How Each CCaaS Platform Stacks Up

You get all your basic call center software features:

• Agent dashboard
• Call forwarding
• Call queuing
• Click-to-call
• Predictive dialing
• IVR
• REST APIs
• Call tracking
• CRM software integrations
• Call recording
• Voicemail inbox

The platform is best known as a premium call center solution with easy implementation and comprehensive features for call centers. 

That said, a lot of customization is available, proving useful for larger customers with complex routing and multichannel needs.

Customer Rating: 2.9/5

Customer Review: 

“Good idea; really poor execution. Most things in life you usually end up needing support, or repair, I understand that. Your car, your house, computer, software, it happens. What is not acceptable is how long it takes their support to even acknowledge an issue, much less resolve it. Counting down the months until our contract is over.”

~Kevin Williams, Trustpilot review

8. Genesys

Pros	Cons
Specialist in complex deployments	Not easy to set up
Enterprise scalability	Considerable number of layoffs in 2024
Experienced in various compliance environments	High upfront investment

Aimed at large enterprises and complex contact centers that need advanced features and customizations, Genesys specializes in on-premises and hybrid deployments for industries like finance and others with rigid compliance regulations.

Genesys offers scalability as a main selling point, boasting 1,000+ agent clients, including Vodafone and Sodexo. 

You get omnichannel support, advanced self-service features (chatbots, voicebots, and knowledge bases), and integrations with enterprise-level applications. If you’re rolling out at scale, consider Genesys for a complex, hybrid deployment.

Customer Rating: 4.6/5

Customer Review: 

“Genesys has been a great provider, who is always willing to provide support and resolution, and provides excellent resources to assist in our growth and use of the system.”

~Team leader in the education industry

9. Aircall

Pros	Cons
Variety of inbound call treatment	Limited out-of-the-box integration
Quick to deploy	Lack of omnichannel support
Easy to use	No enterprises features like SSO

Aircall focuses heavily on providing inbound call management to small businesses and startups looking to manage high call volumes without compromising on quality.

It includes call routing, IVR, call recordings, transcriptions, and collaboration tools for agents. You get CRM integration with major apps like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk and a quick-to-deploy, easy-to-use agent app.

Aircall’s pricing is attractive if you’re looking for premium call handling without the major expense of enterprise features including omnichannel, open API access, or single sign-on.

Customer Rating: 3.6/5

Customer Review: 

“Very easy to use and to adapt to the needs of our company. API is easily integrated. It doesn’t have complicated user manuals which makes it very easily applicable for larger firms where you have a range of employees who vary in their digital capabilities.”

~Marijke Christiaens, Trustpilot review

10. NICE CXone (formerly InContact)

Pros	Cons
Advanced AI agent support	High initial investment
Experienced in complex deployments	Long time to set up
Specialist in enterprise implementations	No underlying calling platform

NICE is another contact center vendor that’s launched its own generative AI and assistant-style modules. Its most recent innovations, Enlighten Copilot and Enlighten Autopilot, are pioneering the charge for automated companions for contact center agents. Agents can ask questions and get feedback on tasks they carry out.

This is all in addition to a robust set of features, like omnichannel routing, workforce optimization, and AI analytics.

NICE can also provide professional services, business consulting, and contact center training, making it a popular choice for enterprise contact center software or major technical deployments.

Customer Rating: 4/5

Customer Review: 

“Incontact is great at handling multiple contact methods. In addition to calls our agents also handle chats and emails. This helps balance the workload and keeps them busy during slow points of the day. This is all done within a single interface. The studio program is also easy to learn so adjustments like seasonal promo messages and hold music can be changed as needed.”

~Benjamin Brimhall, Trustpilot review

11. RingCentral

Pros	Cons
Single platform for voice and contact center	Expensive add-ons
New AI conversation intelligence platform	Core plan lacks advanced analytics
Strong network interconnects	Limited storage

RingCentral is a well-known communication platform with features that include push-to-talk, team messaging, and video conferencing for internal collaboration. Its contact center platform offers whisper coaching, call routing, and IVR among other features and supports multiple channels, including email, web chat, SMS, and social media.

In 2023, RingCentral unveiled RingSense to bring conversation intelligence to its platform. Using generative AI technology, RingSense makes it possible to:

• Automate customer follow-ups.
• Automatically score calls based on sentiment and tone.
• Track keywords (like competitor names) to see how often they get mentioned.
• Create two-way information exchanges between RingCentral and Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and other virtual meeting providers.

RingCentral has connectivity agreements with major vendors to make large-scale networking to contact centers a smooth process. If you’re a multi-location business using an SD-WAN backbone, RingCentral can bring everything together.

Customer Rating: 2.3/5

Customer Review: 

“If in the UK, call the London RingCentral number and they can sort technical out. However, the chatbot is useless and the cases never get answered. Also, if provisioning a new phone, you must plug it directly into the router to program, will not work through a switch.”

~John Spence, Trustpilot review

12. Broadvoice

Pros	Cons
Different solutions for business sizes	Publicly against self-service
Specialist in business process outsourcing	Confusing messaging
Simple to set up	Lack enterprise features

Broadvoice has a major push on putting the service back into customer service, even taking a dislike to self-service on its home page. It has a call center solution for small and medium businesses and an omnichannel contact center suited to larger businesses.

If you’re looking for scalable, basic-level contact center software, Broadvoice provides everything you need without the bells and whistles.

Also specializing in business process outsourcing, Broadvoice claims its solution is designed specifically for those operations.

Managing multiple customer bases is a unique challenge, so Broadvoice is one to check out if you’re tasked with doing so.

Customer Rating: 4.1/5

Customer Review: 

“When there is an emergency situation, I am able to text all tenants at one time. Love it!!! When we had to turn the water off to the entire community for a repair, everyone was notified at the same time.”

~Antonia, Consumer Affairs review

13. Cisco Contact Center (Webex)

Pros	Cons
Long telecoms history	Immature cloud contact center product
Single platform for calling and contact center	Lacks of modern UI despite facelift
Strong partner and integration programs	Complex licensing and upgrades

Cisco’s collaboration and contact center products have undergone a recent facelift, and its cloud offering now falls under the Webex umbrella.

The well-adopted platform supports call routing, omnichannel routing, integrations, and a management portal for creating customer profiles, segmentation, and resource monitoring.

More recent additions include generative AI components like Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, which identifies instances when an agent faces difficulties with clients or productivity. The assistant recommends breaks as needed and aids agents by providing automatic answers to customers’ questions in real time. 

Webex can also generate automatic call summaries to reduce manual workload and provide supervisors with insights for enhanced mentoring and support.

Customer Rating: 4.4/5

Customer Review: 

“Implementing Contact Center wasn’t terrible. It is the issues that were discovered after implementation that are causing headaches for staff in the organization.”

~Administrator in the health and biotech industry

14. Salesforce Service Cloud

Pros	Cons
Integrates into rest of Salesforce stack	Expensive for small businesses
Strong integrations across SFDC and others	High upfront cost if not an existing customer
Excellent document and information sharing	No underlying calling platform

Run by one of the world’s largest companies, Service Cloud helps businesses manage and resolve customer issues. If you’re a heavy Salesforce user for marketing and sales, it’s a logical step to retain all your customer history for future technical support.

You get case management tools, omnichannel support, a built-in knowledge base, and a variety of automation and analytics that we’ve come to expect from Salesforce.

If you’re already using Salesforce, Service Cloud can represent a significant cost saving, as you’re adding another license to an existing platform.

You’ll get a unified interface for a customer’s entire journey, which can track their first entrance to your company website through to their first support ticket and every time their renewal comes around.

Customer Rating: 4.3/5

Customer Review: 

“Salesforce has been a great tool for us. Not only does our Sales team use it every day but so do our Marketing and Supply Chain teams. I especially enjoy how easy Salesforce works with multiple BI platforms outside of their owned platform. Thankfully we’re able to connect Salesforce to a BI tool that gives us a lot of control which allows our teams to dive deeper into our data for faster insights.”

~Senior Business Intelligence Analyst in the manufacturing industry

15. Ringover

Pros	Cons
Unlimited international calls	Lack of support for lesser integrations
Robust basic call routing	Lesser omnichannel functionality
Specialist in sales and recruitment	Lack of contact center market exposure

Ringover is cloud-based software mainly used by small and medium-sized businesses. It offers unlimited international calls to various destinations and has robust basic voice call capabilities. The platform also includes advanced routing features for enhancing call efficiency.

With a focus on sales and recruitment, Ringover integrates with specialist CRMs like Bullhorn, TextUs, Sense Messaging, and Loxo.

For teams that wish to get set up quickly, Ringover boasts that you can get going in minutes. If you spend a little extra time (and money), Ringover supports emails, SMS, and social media.

At the top level, you get AI features like real-time transcription, predictive analytics, and radio coaching. 

Customer Rating: 4.1/5

Customer Review: 

“It works as expected. As a softphone, it has all that you need to handle calls in a call center environment. Also they have the client available for web, for windows, Linux and mobile. That is awesome. I like all the filters available, that helps me find some call recordings easily. A couple of months ago, they had some tech issues that interrupted the service. That had happened sometimes during this year. I hope they can improve that.”

~Ariel Dionicio, Customer Support Specialist and Content Moderator at Job Today

10 Contact Center Software Features You Need

When evaluating contact center software, it’s important to break through the noise and find features that specifically enhance your business.

Here are 10 modern contact center features that can futureproof your sales and support teams.

1. Omnichannel support

Omnichannel integrates your voice and digital channels and provides agents with a holistic view of all interactions. Rather than managing customer interactions on a call-by-call (or email-by-email) basis, agents can see the bigger picture.

Be it web chat, email, or social media, the agent who just picked up the phone can access everything they need, so your customers don’t have to explain themselves over again.

Functionality	Multichannel Contact Center	Omnichannel Contact Center
Support for multiple channels	✅	✅
Intuitive switching between communication channels	❌	✅
CRM integration for relevant customer data	❌	✅
Real-time insights on customer activity	❌	✅
One team to handle requests across all channels	❌	✅

The key difference between multichannel and omnichannel is the seamless transition between channels for customers and agents, ensuring consistency in customer service​​​​.

2. CRM integration

CRM integration is the process of stitching your contact center software together with your most used customer information system. It enables smooth and consistent customer experiences by ensuring agents have the necessary information to resolve queries effectively​​​​.

Seamless integration with CRM systems is a basic need for most contact centers. How many aren’t using a CRM of some kind, after all?

With deepened access to enterprise contact center software from higher pricing tiers, you can expect better data utilization and customer history tracking.

Nextiva provides integration with the following enterprise CRM platforms:

• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics
• HubSpot
• Zendesk
• Zoho
• Oracle Sales Cloud

3. Skills-based call routing

Skills-based routing uses customer input (via IVR systems) to connect inbound phone calls to agents with specific skill sets needed to assist the customer.

On the back end, admins assign skills to agents so your phone system or contact center software knows which agents to route incoming calls to.

The end result? Customers get to the right place every time, and agents deal with issues they’re best qualified to handle. As a direct result, you can expect an increase in first call resolution and lower average handle time.

4. Call recording and monitoring

Call recording is essential for quality assurance, training, and compliance purposes. Whether you need to take payments without storing card details or you want to create a formal quality assurance program, call recording is a must-have feature.

What separates the best call center software from run-of-the-mill programs is what you can do once those calls have been recorded.

Call recording is more than just a storage facility. Features, including monitoring and sentiment analysis, enable real-time tracking and reporting on customer satisfaction and agent performance​​​​.

Feeding into a wider improvement program, when you provide value-enhancing interactions, there’s an 82% probability that your customers will remain loyal when presented with an opportunity to switch. 

5. Analytics and reporting

Included with all contact center software is some form of reporting based on the data you collect. Contact center software can track everything that happens in your department and turn it into data insights. This applies to both real-time and historical call analytics.

Make sure your chosen software includes standard call center metrics, including:

• Call volume
• Average wait time
• Average handle time
• First call resolution
• Peak hour traffic

But also factor in more outcome-focused metrics:

• Net promoter score
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer retention rate
• Customer effort score

Contact center reporting has improved by leaps and bounds. You can now report on channel mix and agent utilization rate, not just call time. 

Moving to an all-encompassing reporting package allows you to use the data you’re generating to inform business decisions and improve operational efficiency.

6. Interactive voice response 

Interactive voice response directs customers through an inbound call center via voice or keypad inputs, offering self-service options and facilitating efficient routing.

Instead of connecting to a receptionist or routing to any agent and then needing to be transferred, callers can use an IVR to get through to the right person (or system) every time.

For example, if a customer wants to pay a bill, they don’t necessarily need to speak to a human. Instead, they can choose the option to make a payment, identify themselves with their account number and security details, and then make a PCI-compliant payment.

Likewise, if a caller needs to speak to an agent in a specific language or for a technical product, choosing the right options will direct them based on your pre-configured call flow.

7. Automatic call distribution (ACD)

ACD automatically routes calls to specific agents based on predefined criteria, enhancing the efficiency of call handling​.

When your business receives a call, ACD can recognize the caller and send them to your star agents via a VIP line. You might route customers who pay higher support rates to the front of a queue or to more qualified agents.

Modern cloud-based call centers let you distribute calls based on ANI, business hours, support level, and IVR selections. As a result, incoming calls reach the right agent or department quickly, without requiring the caller to dial a different phone number.

ACDs prevent unnecessary transfers by getting inbound calls to the appropriate agent using skill-based routing or other distribution methods. And since calls reach the right agent, handle times remain low with improved customer satisfaction.

8. Cloud-based flexibility

While not so much a contact feature but important nonetheless, VoIP technologies open the door to remote or hybrid work models. 

Your agents can access the same toolset and interface without compromising quality or productivity as their office-based colleagues. 

Assuming connectivity and workspace environment are sufficient, you can access contact center software via your web browser in any location. You can even take calls without any extra hardware.

9. Speech and text analytics

When you receive hundreds or thousands of calls and messages daily, it pays to analyze these interactions for insights into customer sentiment, trends, and compliance issues. 

By understanding, in real time or after the fact, how customers (and agents) feel during conversations, you can tailor coaching, schedules, and forecasting for your teams.

This functionality might be offered in-house or via a third-party solution.

Get access to the basics:

• Geographical breakdown of where your calls come from
• Stress levels per individual call
• Agent performance throughout the day
• Opportunities to upsell and cross-sell

Whatever happens in your customer interactions, you need to know what’s working and what’s not.

10. Predictive and power dialers

Dialers are outbound call center software specialized for sales, market research, and debt collection-type businesses. They improve efficiency in calling and managing customers and prospects.

Auto-dialer software comes in four different varieties:

• Predictive: Using smart algorithms to predict when an agent will be available to take a call, it auto-connects the next call when an agent is “ready.”
• Preview: Software brings up information about the next contact (via CRM integration) before connecting the call.
• Power: This software type dials numbers sequentially from a contact list.
• Progressive: This type of auto-dialer software combines elements of preview and power dialers. Agents get access to information before a call, and then the dialer automatically connects the call.

Whichever you opt for, dialers automate the process of making outbound calls, improving efficiency and reducing labor costs.

By removing misdials and introducing functionality like screen pop, dialers let agents spend time on what matters most: delighting customers, collecting payments, and generating leads.

How to Choose the Best Contact Center Software Provider

Outside of comparable features, it’s important that you find a provider who gets your business . Look out for these key characteristics when evaluating vendors on your shortlist.

Compatibility with your business needs

It goes without saying that anyone you work with must know why you operate a contact center and what’s unique to you.

Make sure to clearly define the capabilities you need from a contact center. These might be things you take for granted but are custom to your industry.

Consider basic factors like the number of agents, required tools, and level of support needed. But also engage stakeholders to discuss and detail even minor complexities so you can start planning from day one​​.

Scalability

Whether you’re an enterprise contact center with 1,000 agents or a small business with a single-digit team, being able to change at a moment’s notice is invaluable.

Choose a provider that can scale with your business as needed. Ensure that it’s easy to add or reduce lines and features, adapting to changes in demand. Some providers make this more difficult than others. But, in a cloud-first world, there should be little reason, other than contractual issues, to get what you want whenever you need it.

Related: Call Center Software for a Small Business: Overview & Key Features

Easy implementation

Look for a solution that’s easy to set up and doesn’t require extensive time or resources for implementation. Thanks to cloud technology and the advent of SaaS-style contact centers, almost any user, supervisor, or admin can get access within a few clicks.

Sure, configuring complex call flows and applying special treatment needs time and attention. And if you have bespoke needs that require extensive planning, you’re probably an anomaly.

But cloud-based contact center software typically offers quicker and easier setup compared to traditional systems​​​​. 

Seamless integration

Implementation doesn’t end at your chosen vendor’s own solution. Think about all the other business apps your contact center agents use daily.

Ensure your contact center software integrates well with your existing tech stack.

Think about:

• CRM systems
• Email programs
• Collaboration apps
• Workforce management tools
• Bespoke line of business apps
• Help desk and ticketing systems

Security and compliance

It goes without saying that all contact center software must be secure. 

Verify that your chosen provider adheres to stringent security protocols and is compliant with relevant regulations, especially if you’re in a highly regulated industry like finance, healthcare, or legal services​​​​.

Make sure your next contact center purchase adheres to industry-specific guidelines as well as the basics, for instance, GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS.

As standard, Nextiva ensures:

• 99.999% uptime
• 24/7 network monitoring
• Real-time network status updates
• Off-grid power sources at each data center
• ISO/IEC 27001 certification
• SOC 2 compliance
• Call encryption

Quality of customer support

It’s not all that helpful to suggest you choose a provider with responsive and effective customer support. But finding out just how good your chosen vendor’s customer support is can be tricky.

Pro tip: Support is often one of the most-mentioned pros or cons in third-party review sites, so be sure to look out for a provider’s reputation when on these sites.

Scope out reviews on sites, including:

• G2
• Gartner
• GetVoIP
• Trustpilot
• Trustradius
• Deloitte Technology Fast 500

Check for credibility

No reviews or testimonials are red flags.

But simply adding a client or partner logo to a website is easy and can sometimes be misleading.

It’s worth researching your provider’s experience and expertise relating to your specific industry. If a provider has a full case study of someone in the same space as you, you’re in better hands than one without.

For example, if you’re a retail distributor, a contact center provider who only showcases finance companies on their testimonials isn’t much help in your decision process.

Common Contact Center Use Cases

Let’s get specific for a moment. Outside of the core technology, it’s important to match your type of contact center with the business objectives you want to achieve:

• Inbound sales: This means directing calls and web chats to sellers so they can answer prospects’ questions and generate revenue. 
• Outbound sales: With progressive outbound dialing, sales agents can vet leads before initiating a call to targeted accounts. 
• Customer service: Customer support reps can field incoming customer requests across multiple channels and maintain a superior service level. 
• Technical support: With interactive features that include co-browsing, support agents can take over a customer’s screen (with their permission) to provide real-time help. 
• Internal IT helpdesk: When employees need IT support, you can leverage identity verification to improve your security posture and ensure employees are directed to the right staff members.

Sharing these examples with a contact center software vendor lets them demonstrate how their platform solves these needs. 

See Nextiva’s Contact Center Software in Action

When you’re tasked with finding your new contact center, it’s a lot.

The sheer size of this guide demonstrates that when researching, demoing, and trialing providers, there’s so much at stake, and it pays to invest the time and effort upfront.

While there are many choices and some niche use cases for certain providers, we’re confident that Nextiva is the choice for an AI-powered contact center for businesses of all sizes.

Nextiva has received countless awards for service and support and offers:

• Dependable 99.999% uptime
• Numerous advanced call-handling features
• Support for inbound, outbound, and blended calls
• Expansion into more AI functionality from Thrio acquisition
• Integrations with enterprise business apps
• Omnichannel functionality for email, web chat, SMS, and social media

Related: Small Business Contact Center Software: Overview & Key Features

Contact center software market valuation source: Grand View Research

Contact Center FAQs

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If you currently focus on inbound or outbound calls only, you could be missing out on the benefits of a blended contact center, including:

• Improved customer experiences
• Boosted agent productivity
• Optimized operational efficiency

… And that’s just the start.

In this blog post, we aim to arm you with everything you need to know about blended contact centers.

So, if you’re curious about what you’re missing out on, you’ve come to the right place.

What Is a Blended Contact Center?

Blended contact centers handle both inbound and outbound customer interactions to offer ongoing support and proactive service.

This means agents can:

• Receive inbound calls, emails, chats, social media messages, etc., from customers seeking support, information, or sales.
• Initiate outbound calls for proactive customer support, sales pitches, follow-ups, or surveys.

When these interactions are combined, call center agents have a wider remit, access to more customers, and the ability to work with the same customer multiple times. Rather than a prospect or customer returning a missed call and getting someone from a different team, customer journeys can be personalized by assigning reps to open tickets.

This means agents in a blended environment must have a broader skill set, including:

• Customer service expertise to handle inquiries and troubleshoot issues.
• Sales knowledge for outbound calls promoting products or services.
• Communication skills to interact across various channels.

In a blended contact center, you can turn on as much or as little functionality as you choose, such as basic two-way calling or full omnichannel capabilities.

Key features of a blended contact center

The main features of a blended contact center are specific to inbound and outbound needs, as well as adding new contact channels.

Optimizing inbound calls

You can optimize inbound calls using automatic call distribution (ACD) and interactive voice response (IVR), which route incoming calls to available agents based on skill or workload.

You can distribute calls based on caller ID, business hours, support level, and IVR selections, allowing inbound calls to reach the right agent or department quickly and without the caller having to dial a different phone number.

Imagine a customer calling about a specific appliance at a big-box store. ACD can identify keywords and use call routing to find an agent familiar with that product line, ensuring expert help on the first try.

Optimizing outbound calls

You can use auto-dialer software to improve the efficiency of your outbound campaigns. You can automate outbound calls, increasing efficiency and minimizing agent idle time.

When you start using an auto-dialer:

• Misdials become a thing of the past
• Bad contacts get archived
• Missed calls go back into the queue

Agent productivity skyrockets because no time is lost due to manual error, as the manual tasks have been removed.

There are four different types of auto-dialer:

• Predictive dialer: Uses algorithms to know when an agent is ready to make their next call.
• Preview dialer: Shows customer information for the next call in the outbound queue.
• Power dialer: Dials from a prepopulated list.
• Progressive dialer: Combines elements of preview and power dialers. Agents get access to information before a call, and then the dialer automatically connects the call.

Related: Outbound Dialers: Benefits and Essential Use Cases

Introducing new contact channels for customers

Unify customer interactions from all channels into a single interface for agents using an omnichannel contact center, which will mean customers can contact you via:

• Phone
• Email
• Web chat
• SMS
• Social media

Agents can respond to incoming messages and calls while maintaining a holistic view of every interaction the customer has had with other agents.

If your customer called yesterday and is now following up via web chat, there’s no need to ask them to repeat their query and start over. Your agents can see the call transcript, call notes, and anything else you choose to link from your CRM.

Omnichannel enables two-way communication. Rather than just receiving emails or chats, empower your most suitable agents to respond efficiently on your customers’ channel of choice.

Now we know the key features of blended contact centers, let’s translate them into benefits.

What Are the Benefits of Having a Blended Contact Center?

You’ll have access to both inbound and outbound capabilities, but what can you expect to gain from them?

Improved customer experience

• Omnichannel support: Customers can reach your business through their preferred channel (phone, email, chat) for a more convenient experience. You’re minimizing customer effort every time they need you.
• Proactive outreach: Businesses can contact customers proactively for support, account management, or satisfaction surveys. There’s no more guessing; you can rely on genuine customer feedback.
• Faster resolutions: Agents with a broader view of customer interactions can resolve issues more quickly. Removing manual search and repeated conversations speeds up first call resolution.

Boosted agent productivity

• Reduced idle time: Agents can handle outbound calls during lulls in inbound call volume, maximizing their productivity. You can improve agent output by upskilling them.
• Skill development: Blended environments encourage agents to develop diverse communication skills, increasing their value. The more they add to your business, the faster your return on investment.
• Increased motivation: A varied workload can be more engaging for agents than solely inbound or outbound calls. Variety is the spice of life, after all!

Optimized operational efficiency

• Centralized management: A single platform streamlines the management of all customer interactions, simplifying operations. Users no longer need to switch between apps or lose information between systems.
• Cost savings: Blended contact centers can reduce costs associated with staffing separate teams. If one staff member can do the job of two, there’s an obvious win.
• Data-driven insights: Consolidated data across channels provides valuable insights for improving customer service strategies. Everything you learn about your customers is fed into outbound campaigns and inbound support workflows.

What Are the Challenges of a Blended Contact Center?

While blended contact centers offer advantages, they also come with a set of obstacles to overcome. The good news is they can be overcome. But it’s important to flag them so you know what you’re signing up for.

More in-depth training required

If you run an inbound- or outbound-only call center, you’re asking agents to learn new skills when moving to blended.

It’s not so much about learning how to answer the phone if they’ve been making calls for two years. It’s more about soft skills like dealing with customer issues, practicing active listening, and showing empathy. When customers initiate contact, it’s because they need something from you. A different set of communication skills is needed to deal with incoming calls.

The reverse is also true. Calling customers or prospects who aren’t expecting your call isn’t as easy as saying, “Hello, how can I help?” As you’re interrupting their day, you need a different approach. You need to create urgency and value right from the start.

If you plan to add new channels like email, web chat, and social media, consider the new interfaces agents will need to learn. For example, if an agent isn’t a skilled typist, they may need to work on their written communication skills before leveling up to deal with multiple channels.

Workload management can be challenging

Balancing inbound volume and outbound demands and managing new communication channels can be tricky at first. It’s important to drip-feed new functionality to agents so they don’t become overwhelmed.

Your outbound agent will be more than happy doing their “normal job” but may struggle when asked to handle customer complaints for the first time. If you’re asking them to troubleshoot an issue with a customer’s banking app, they need sufficient training before being asked to handle those calls.

You’re subjecting them to a new call center environment, so make sure you plan for the following:

• Product training
• Instruction using examples of good calls
• New interface training
• Role-play scenarios

Murky performance tracking

You can’t just give agents new responsibilities and hope for the best. Introducing a blended contact center is the perfect time to get your contact center reporting in order.

Think about agent productivity metrics like:

• Occupancy rate: The percentage of time agents are actively engaged in customer calls or other tasks.
• Average after-call work time: The time spent documenting or completing tasks after a call.
• Adherence to schedule: The percentage of time agents are available to handle calls.
• Transfer rate: The percentage of calls transferred to another agent or department.
• Resolution rate: The percentage of interactions in which the agent successfully resolves the customer’s issue.
• Average handle time: The average time, measured in minutes and seconds, that call center agents take to handle customer phone calls and other inquiries.

In a best-in-class blended contact center, expect the following as standard:

• Real-time graphs and individual agent performance reports for team managers.
• Call reports about contact reasons, dispositions, and customer satisfaction.
• Staffing forecasts and team activity reports for contact center managers.
• Customer experience KPIs and reports that support your strategic goals.

Resistance to change

When anyone, not just contact center agents, is asked to do something new, you must expect pushback.

Transitioning agents and supervisors to a blended environment requires clear communication and support, as well as motivation. 

Start by describing why you’re asking for these new roles and responsibilities. Explain how they will benefit your company and customers and how they can potentially advance your employees’ careers.

Implement adoption and training incentives (similar to traditional contact center gamification techniques) to inspire staff to excel during training and maintain these new skills when dealing with customers.

Managing expectations when shifting to a blended environment and making sure your agents are motivated (monetarily as well) to exceed performance are imperative to the success of your blended contact center, while the opposite, effectively demanding that agents start a new job, can have a severe negative impact. If an agent becomes upset, their motivation and productivity will drop. 

Losing an unhappy agent further down the line results in the cost and extra time required to recruit and train a new agent. You could find yourself in a vicious circle unless you address the root causes of this turnover. 

Note: This sentiment also applies when you plan to start a new call center. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

Interested in a Blended Contact Center? Look No Further Than Nextiva

If you need to transform your organization to one that handles both inbound and outbound calls, blended is the way to go.

By incorporating two-way communications, you improve customer experience, boost productivity, and upskill agents. You’re also optimizing operational efficiency, making blended agents more valuable, and contributing more to your bottom line.

What’s more, introducing omnichannel capabilities will delight your customers. Instead of waiting in a call queue every time they need to get hold of you, open up self-service options like web chat and provide asynchronous options like email and social media. 

Placing your customers on hold until you’re ready is a thing of the past, as is asking them to repeat what they already told another agent on another contact channel.

When moving to a blended environment, you need all the key features in a single platform, which will mean: 

• Managing inbound, outbound, and omnichannel from the same screen. 
• Reporting on agent productivity and customer satisfaction from one app.
• Blending all your contact center management into a holistic view for agents and supervisors.

Nextiva makes this easy with its contact center solution designed for those who want to run a blended contact center without hassle, interruption, or barriers to adoption.

AI assistants are catapulting how businesses interact with customers, and intelligent virtual agents are at the forefront. This software mimics human conversations to interact with customers and helps businesses scale their teams, resolve customer issues faster, and drive better customer experience.

In this article, we’ll learn more about intelligent virtual agents, explore some of their key features and use cases, and show you how you can also use them to improve your customer experience.

What Is an IVA (Intelligent Virtual Agent)?

An intelligent virtual agent (IVA), also called an intelligent virtual assistant or AI assistant, is a software program that uses artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning to provide automated and personalized assistance to users. These virtual agents can understand and respond to user requests, perform tasks, and make recommendations, simulating human interactions.

While virtual agents are sometimes confused with chatbots, they’re significantly more advanced and provide a critical level of service for many businesses.

Unlike traditional chatbots, which are limited to pre-programmed responses, IVAs use conversational AI to better understand the context of customer queries and enable more personalized and natural interactions.

IVAs can handle complex questions, examine multiple data sources, and tailor answers to the conversation’s context.

How IVAs Work

Intelligent virtual agents combine various technologies to understand user input, process information, and provide appropriate responses.

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): Allows IVAs to understand the meaning behind user text or speech. NLP techniques like tokenization, stemming, and sentiment analysis enable IVAs to break down sentences, identify keywords, and even gauge the emotional tone of a query.
• Machine Learning (ML): Machine learning algorithms power the continuous learning capabilities of IVAs. By analyzing vast amounts of data from past interactions, IVAs can identify patterns, improve their understanding of language nuances, and refine their responses over time.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI acts as the central nervous system of an IVA, allowing it to process information, make decisions, and generate relevant responses to the context of the conversation.

When a user interacts with an IVA, the NLP engine parses the query, identifies keywords, and extracts meaning.

This information is then fed into the AI core, which uses its knowledge base and machine learning capabilities to determine the most appropriate response.

The IVA can then deliver helpful answers, complete tasks, or even escalate complex issues to human agents.

An intelligent virtual assistant in action

Scenario: A customer interacts with a banking IVA to check their account balance.

Customer: “Hey, can you tell me my current account balance?”

The IVA processes the user’s input using NLP, recognizes the intent as “check_account_balance,” and identifies the relevant entity as the customer’s account.

It then retrieves the account balance from the banking system and generates a natural language response: “Your current account balance is $1,500.”

The IVA logs this interaction for continuous learning and improvement, and if needed, it can handle follow-up questions or provide personalized assistance by integrating with external systems securely.

Benefits of Using Intelligent Virtual Agents

Adopting IVAs offers businesses a variety of benefits.

1. Improved customer experience: IVAs use natural language understanding (NLU) to offer a human-like experience that can instantly assist customers in finding a solution, automating tasks such as answering FAQs and routing inbound calls to the right agent, reducing wait times.
2. Task automation: IVAs can automate multiple workflows and offer self-service, such as scheduling appointments, setting reminders, making recommendations, and providing information, all of which reduce the burden of day-to-day tasks on customer service agents.
3. 24/7 availability: Since virtual agents can respond to most typical inquiries, this effectively scales your customer support after hours and saves employee billable hours.
4. Improved efficiency: IVAs help deflect customers from email, phone, and live chat in favor of AI assistants, ensuring that live agents directly assist customers with particular needs or sensitive situations that call for a personal touch.
5. Data collection and insights: Virtual agents are an excellent way to amass actionable data collection since they converse via text. Analyzing this data and other applications of AI and natural language processing can produce valuable insights.
6. Scalability and cost-savings: A good combination of virtual agents for repetitive tasks and support agents to manage inquiries that need human assistance can lead to better returns and a more sustainable business expansion plan.
7. Omnichannel integration: IVAs can be integrated across multiple digital channels and devices, such as websites, mobile apps, SMS & messaging platforms, and smart speakers.

Virtual Agents Use Cases and Examples

Many businesses now use intelligent virtual agents to improve customer service, generate leads, and provide IT support.

IVAs can answer frequently asked questions, troubleshoot technical issues, track order status, and even facilitate returns.

When it comes to sales support, IVAs can aid in lead generation, qualify leads, answer product inquiries, offer personalized recommendations, and schedule appointments with sales representatives.

A virtual agent can also easily perform software updates, password resets, and simple IT support troubleshooting tasks. It can collect information and create a ticket for more complex requests, reducing the burden on IT teams.

Here are some specific examples of popular businesses using intelligent virtual agents:

• Retail: H&M uses an IVA to help customers find products, check stock availability, and get styling tips. The IVA drives better customer engagement and sales for H&M.
• Banking: Bank of America’s “Erica” IVA has over 10 million users and has handled over 100 million client requests. Erica can help customers with account inquiries, transfers, bill payments, and more.
• Telecommunications: Vodafone’s “TOBi” IVA handles over 70% of customer inquiries across multiple channels, reducing call volume to human agents and improving customer satisfaction scores.
• Healthcare: Babylon Health’s IVA provides symptom checking, appointment booking, and remote consultations with doctors. The IVA has helped reduce healthcare costs and improve access to care.

IVAs vs. Other Virtual Assistants

IVAs are part of a broader landscape of AI-powered solutions used in customer service and other business processes. It’s important to understand how it’s different from these key technologies so you can choose the right solution for your business.

Chatbots. Chatbots are relatively simple and typically answer basic questions or provide links to relevant information. They follow pre-programmed rules and cannot understand the context of a conversation.

Virtual agents are more sophisticated at simulating human speech, understanding customer intent, and answering real-time queries. You can also ask follow-up questions and forward chats to human agents if necessary.

Voice Assistants. Like IVAs, voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant use NLP and machine learning to understand and respond to user queries. However, they’re primarily designed for voice responses and are often used for more general-purpose tasks like setting reminders or playing music.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA uses software “robots” to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks such as data entry or invoice processing. While RPA can help streamline back-office operations, it does not involve the same level of natural language interaction as IVAs.

Knowledge Management Systems. IVAs are often integrated with knowledge management systems that store information about products, services, and common customer issues. By connecting to these systems, IVAs can provide more accurate and up-to-date responses to customer queries.

Related: Conversational AI vs. Chatbots: Choosing the Best Solution

How To Implement Intelligent Virtual Agents

Creating and implementing an IVA requires careful planning and preparation. Here are some best practices for successful implementation:

1. Define clear goals and use cases: Identify the specific customer service issues or business processes that an IVA could help with, and set measurable goals for improvement.
2. Design effective conversation flows: Use a combination of decision trees, natural language understanding, and machine learning to create conversation flows that can handle a wide range of customer inquiries and provide personalized responses. You can use IVA software or a contact center solution to get a pre-built IVA with conversation flows for common use cases without building one from scratch
3. Integrate with other systems: Connect your IVA with your CRM, knowledge base, and other relevant systems to provide a seamless customer experience and enable more advanced functionality like account lookups or transaction processing.
4. Test and refine continuously: Monitor the performance of your IVA using metrics like customer satisfaction scores and first contact resolution rates, and continuously refine its knowledge base and conversation flows based on feedback and data analysis.

While implementing an IVA can be complex and require significant resources, the benefits in terms of improved efficiency, customer satisfaction, and cost savings are substantial.

The Future of Intelligent Virtual Agents

As AI technology continues to advance, IVAs will become even more sophisticated and widely used.

More powerful AI algorithms will enable virtual assistants to carry on natural conversations with even greater fluency and emotional intelligence. This will further blur the lines between human and machine interaction.

Integrated with other technologies like virtual reality (VR), IVAs can create immersive customer experiences. Imagine a virtual assistant guiding you through a product demonstration in a VR showroom.

While IVAs will handle routine tasks, human agents will continue to play a crucial role in dealing with complex issues and building genuine customer relationships.

Getting an Intelligent Virtual Agent for Your Call Center

Traditional IVA implementation can be a tangled mess of business needs, customer preferences, system integrations, and scalability concerns.

Nextiva cuts through the complexity with a comprehensive and innovative solution.

Our advanced IVR powered by conversational AI seamlessly integrates with our contact center software. This powerful combination helps you offer personalized service, maintain constant customer contact, and automatically optimize agent scheduling based on fluctuating call volume patterns.

But Nextiva’s support goes beyond the technology. Our dedicated team helps you find the perfect IVA configuration, tailored to your unique business needs.

Don’t let the challenges deter you. By prioritizing your needs, aligning with customer preferences, and ensuring smooth integration, you can unlock the benefits of IVAs.

Remember, it’s a strategic decision. Invest wisely and reap the rewards of improved service, efficiency, and growth.

Frustrated customers and plummeting satisfaction ratings. That’s the harsh reality for businesses without a solid call center strategy.

Call centers remain a crucial touchpoint for businesses to connect with customers. However, long wait times, frustrated callers, and agent burnout can paint a negative picture.

This is where a well-defined call center strategy comes in. It’s your roadmap to an optimized call center that excels in efficiency, customer experience, and agent well-being.

This guide will walk you through crafting a winning call center strategy that balances both customer experience and employee experience and propels your business forward. But first….

What Is a Call Center Strategy & Why Do You Need One?

A call center strategy is a blueprint for your contact center, outlining how your agents will handle customer interactions, how your team will be managed, and how you’ll measure progress toward specific goals.

A well-documented call center strategy leads to better training, smoother interactions, and faster resolutions, resulting in a happier customer base (think: 74% of consumers who’re likely to buy based on experiences alone).

Clear goals and direction keep agents engaged and reduce call center turnover while efficient processes and proactive planning prevent wasted time and money.

So, why do some businesses wing it? Common reasons include:

• Misunderstanding the value: They underestimate a strategy’s impact on their bottom line.
• Feeling overwhelmed: Day-to-day operations can feel all-consuming, leaving strategic planning on the back burner.
• Lack of awareness: They might not be aware of the significant benefits of a call center strategy.

Colin Taylor, a customer experience expert at The Taylor Reach Group, suggests most businesses create a call center for these reasons:

Does this resonate?

If so, take a step back from your day-to-day. Let’s focus on planning out, managing, and optimizing your call center operations better.

How To Build a Successful Call Center Strategy

While success might look different for various business units, a truly successful call center goes beyond simply exceeding customer expectations. It should also optimize agent workflows and contribute to the overall business strategy.

Here’s how to get started with your contact center strategy to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

1. Define your purpose

Your purpose isn’t just to serve your customers but also to maintain the highest standards for call center employees so they can strengthen customer relationships and keep churn low.

Sometimes, you’ll need to adjust the vision for your contact center. Traditionally, business leaders view it as a cost center, such as classic customer support. But the closer you get to revenue, you’ll earn a bigger budget and spark more creativity.

For inspiration, here are several ways call centers can increase revenue: 

• Proactive and reactive customer retention
• Upsells and cross-sells following support interactions
• Win-back former customers
• Capture customer referrals
• Generate positive customer reviews

Once you have clarity of your purpose, you can gauge customer needs and align both well.

2. Understand customer needs

Imagine a customer reaching out to your call center, frustrated and confused. They’ve been on hold for what feels like forever, shuffled between departments, and still haven’t gotten a straight answer. This is the exact scenario a well-crafted call center strategy aims to avoid.

The very first step to achieving call center success is understanding your customers’ needs and expectations. This isn’t just about resolving their immediate inquiry; it’s about creating a positive and personalized experience that fosters trust and loyalty.

Here are a few ways to get your finger on the pulse of your customer base.

• Become a customer yourself: Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes. Navigate your interactive voice response (IVR) system, explore your self-service options, and even contact your call center directly with a common question. This firsthand experience will expose any pain points or areas where the customer journey could be smoother.
• Use surveys: Craft targeted surveys that ask customers about their recent call center experience. Go beyond simple satisfaction ratings and delve deeper. What aspects of the interaction were helpful? Where did they encounter frustration? Open-ended questions can provide valuable insights you might not have considered.
• Dive into social media sentiment: Look for mentions of your brand, both positive and negative. What are customers saying about their interactions with your call center? Are there recurring themes or areas for improvement? By actively monitoring social media, you can identify potential issues before they snowball.
• Listen to your call recordings: Listen back to anonymized interactions to identify common customer queries, agent strengths and weaknesses, and areas where scripts or training materials could be improved.

A comprehensive understanding of your customer base and their experience with you lays the groundwork for crafting a customer-centric contact center strategy.

3. Set goals & align with customer needs

Once you’ve identified your customer needs, it’s time to establish clear goals for your call center. These goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Specific: Vague goals like “improve customer satisfaction” lack direction. Instead, define a specific target metric. This could be aiming for a 10% increase in Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT) within the next quarter.

Measurable: How will you track progress toward your goals? Identify quantifiable metrics to gauge success. In the previous example, CSAT scores provide a measurable way to track customer satisfaction.

Achievable: Be ambitious, but also realistic. Don’t set goals completely out of reach for your team or resources. Aim for a challenging but attainable target that motivates your agents.

Relevant: Ensure your goals align with your overall business objectives. Are you aiming to reduce customer churn, boost sales through upselling, or improve brand loyalty? Align your call center goals with these broader business priorities.

Time-bound: Set a specific timeframe for achieving your goals. This creates a sense of urgency and allows you to track progress over time. Perhaps you aim to achieve a 10% CSAT increase within the next quarter.

While setting SMART goals is crucial, don’t operate in a vacuum. Understanding and aligning your goals with customer needs is paramount.

• Gather customer feedback: Use surveys, post-call satisfaction ratings, and social media insights to understand customer pain points and desired outcomes.
• Analyze call recordings and transcripts: Identify frequent customer issues and areas where agents struggle.
• Focus on resolution rates and first contact resolution (FCR): Empower agents to effectively resolve issues on the first call, reducing customer frustration and repeat calls.

Setting SMART goals tightly coupled with customer needs enables your call center to become a strategic asset, driving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.

4. Structure your call center

Having the right structure in place is key. You’ll need agents with the knowledge and skills to solve customer problems, team leads to provide guidance, and quality assurance specialists to ensure everyone’s on the same page.

While the term “hierarchy” may have negative connotations, a well-defined structure provides the necessary framework for a call center to operate efficiently.

A typical call center structure consists of various roles, each with specific responsibilities:

1. Call Center Agent – The frontline employees who handle incoming calls, emails, chats, and other customer interactions.
2. Team Lead – Provides day-to-day guidance and coaching to a team of agents. Ensures the team adheres to policies and meets performance metrics.
3. Call Center Manager – Manages a group of team leads and oversees the operations of a call center department or site.
4. VP of Customer Service – A senior executive who is responsible for the strategy and performance of the entire customer service organization.
5. Call Center Director – Leads all aspects of call center operations, including workforce management, quality assurance, training, and more. Reports to VP.
6. Data Analyst – Analyzes call center data to uncover insights and opportunities for improvement. Provides reports and recommendations.
7. QA Analyst – Monitors call center interactions to ensure adherence to policies and standards. Provides feedback and coaching.
8. Workforce Management – Forecasts call volumes and schedules agents to meet service levels and ensure adequate staffing.
9. Call Center Operations Manager – Responsible for day-to-day oversight of workflows, policies, technologies, and facilities.
10. Team Trainer – Develops and delivers training programs to ensure agents are skilled in systems, processes, and policies.

These roles may have different titles depending on the organization. For example, the terms “analyst” and “manager” have evolved to become “Quality Assurance Manager” in some cases. Senior agents may be assigned quality assurance tasks, such as listening to recorded calls for training purposes.

Your call center hierarchy doesn’t have to be rigid. Create a structure that aligns with your goals and needs without overwhelming your employees with designations and reporting lines.

5. Train & empower your agents

Providing effective call center training is key to running a successful call center.

Equipping your agents with the right knowledge, tools, and a culture of empowerment cultivates a confident and capable call center team. This translates to enhanced customer experiences, improved call resolution rates, and reduced call center churn.

Invest in your agents, and they’ll invest in your call center’s success. Here’s a focused approach to follow:

1. In-depth product knowledge: This is the foundation. Dedicate ample time for agents to learn your products inside and out. This builds confidence when interacting with customers and establishes trust through genuine expertise.
2. Call control best practices: Software is constantly evolving, so provide comprehensive training on using your call center platform effectively. Cover everything from handling warm and cold transfers to setting up conference calls. The goal is to eliminate issues like misdirected calls or accidental disconnects.
3. Training mix: Offer a diverse training mix, including formal classroom sessions, informal peer-to-peer learning, accredited certifications, and in-house programs tailored to your specific services.
4. Listening to recorded calls: Use call recordings to identify areas for improvement. Call center analytics pinpoint unnecessary silence, knowledge gaps, excessive hold times, incorrect information, or repetitive questioning. These findings go into personalized development plans but also highlight areas where agents excel and foster open communication.
5. Live monitoring: With customer permission, monitor calls in real-time to provide coaching or take over if needed. Ensure you fully understand the customer’s needs before intervening to avoid extending the resolution process.
6. Formal escalation procedures: Document and regularly update escalation processes so agents can calmly explain the steps to customers and transfer them to the appropriate person, whether it’s a team leader, billing specialist, or product expert.
7. Up-to-date documentation: Every department will have designated owners who refresh escalation protocols and routing information monthly. Also, maintain a log of changes to ensure agents have access to the most accurate information for confident customer interactions and seamless call transfers.

As staff progress in their career, their development becomes crucial to the success of your call center. Make sure you factor individual career progression into your call center strategy.

Think about incentives to keep people on the right track daily and at monthly or quarterly intervals. 

When you invest in your team member’s success and give them autonomy to do right by the customer, they’ll likely do what’s best for the organization.

You might employ team-level gamification or create a bonus structure based on maintaining constant customer service.

6. Use the right technology

It’s no use putting the above training into practice if your technology doesn’t live up to your standards. You can have the best agents in the world, adhering to world-class processes, but if your technology fails you, it’s all for nothing.

Look out for these areas that suggest your technology is hindering your call center’s performance:

☎️ Call quality issues

If callers keep disconnecting abruptly, it’s likely not intentional on their part. While some frustrated customers might hang up and redial, others experience technical difficulties on your end.

This could manifest as distorted audio or periods of silence when a caller seems to be speaking. These issues point to deficiencies in your telephony equipment. Upgrading to a business-grade VoIP phone system can significantly improve call quality.

⚙️ System preferences

Customers expect immediate access to their account details upon calling in. If you frequently have to apologize for slow system loading times while retrieving information, it puts your agents at a disadvantage.

Regularly reviewing both your internet connectivity and internal network performance is crucial. Optimizing these aspects improves overall call center efficiency and reduces troubleshooting time.

❌ Disjointed customer experience

Customers reaching out via email or web chat and then following up with a phone call shouldn’t have to explain their situation repeatedly to different agents. An ideal scenario involves a unified customer experience.

Equipping agents with customer interactions across various channels (even if they don’t manage all channels themselves) empowers them to provide seamless and efficient service.

This omnichannel approach might not be feasible for call centers in the early planning stages, but it’s the best solution for streamlining the customer experience, especially if these situations arise frequently.

7. Optimize your call center operations

Once you’ve established an existing or desired structure and trained your agents, optimizing call center operations is an ongoing effort.

Here’s how to optimize your call center operations well for efficiency and satisfaction:

📊 Make data-driven decisions

Don’t manage your call center in the dark. Track key metrics like call volume, wait times, and customer satisfaction scores.

Analyze this data to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. For example, use it to forecast call volume and ensure you have the right number of agents available at peak times.

✅ Empower your agents for success

Invest in user-friendly technology like CRM software, a knowledge base for quick access to information, and contact center solutions with advanced features and capabilities.

Provide ongoing training to keep agents up-to-date on products, services, and best practices for handling customer inquiries. Most importantly, give agents the authority to resolve customer issues without unnecessary escalations.

💡Focus on the customer experience

Give your customers options. Offer online resources like FAQs, chatbots, or knowledge bases so they can find answers to simple questions without needing to call.

Use clear and concise IVR menus to efficiently route calls to the appropriate department or agent. Reduce hold times by implementing call-back options or prioritizing calls based on urgency.

Finally, personalize interactions whenever possible using customer data to provide a more relevant experience.

📈 Continuously improve

Regularly solicit feedback from both customers and agents. Customer surveys and social media sentiment analysis can reveal areas for improvement.

Encourage agents to share their feedback as well. This will help you identify issues with processes, technology, or even training needs.

Stay on top of the latest call center technologies that further streamline operations and enhance the customer experience.

8. Measure success

Just like any other business function, a call center’s effectiveness hinges on its ability to track and measure success.

Vague notions of “good customer service” won’t cut it. You need to define and monitor key call center metrics that tell you if your call center strategy is on target.

• Track customer satisfaction: Track metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) obtained through surveys or after-call interactions. NPS measures customer loyalty and their likelihood to recommend your business to others. A high NPS score indicates a customer base that is not only satisfied but also enthusiastic about your brand. Focus on delivering exceptional service experiences to increase your NPS score and turn happy customers into brand advocates.
• Focus on efficiency: How quickly are calls being answered? This is reflected in the Average Speed of Answer (ASA) – the time it takes to connect a caller to an agent. Another key metric is First Call Resolution (FCR) – the percentage of calls where the customer’s issue is resolved on the first interaction. High FCR indicates efficient problem-solving and reduces customer frustration.
• Monitor agent performance: Track metrics that go beyond just the number of calls handled. Look at Average Handling Time (AHT) – the average time spent on each call. AHT can be impacted by the complexity of issues or agent skill level. It’s important to find a balance between efficiency and providing thorough customer service.
• Focus on employee retention: Agent turnover can be costly and disrupt operations. Track metrics like absenteeism and call center churn rate. Invest in employee satisfaction surveys to improve the work environment or training. Happy agents translate to better customer experiences.

Running a Successful Call Center: Best Practices

Effective call center management is the foundation for implementing call center best practices. It ensures you have a structured environment where agents are empowered to deliver a great customer experience.

1) Invest in employee engagement

The resounding theme here is to put your employees at the forefront of your call center strategy.

The logic is simple, and you can apply it to almost any routine task.

Think about it. If you enjoy your work, you’re more likely to focus and drive better results.

It could be surfing, soccer, swimming, or sewing. Regardless of the task, agent performance will skyrocket when agents are engaged in what they’re doing.

Make sure your call center onboarding and training plans focus on the business and the person by asking your agents what they need from you.

2) Act on customer feedback

It’s not just employees you should ask for feedback. The voice of the customer is the most valuable data that needs to be considered.

It’s one thing to create a training plan. It’s another to tailor it to what your customers need.

Conduct regular CSAT, NPS, and outbound call surveys to discover where your customers feel a gap in your call center or the business itself. 

When you have that feedback, book time to follow up on what you’ve learned. Information that gets stored away for a rainy day never gets used.

3) Perform a SWOT analysis

You can conduct a SWOT analysis using the output of your CSAT surveys.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

A typical SWOT consists of four quadrants. The upper half is focused on the internal functions within your company. The bottom half involves external activities you don’t necessarily have influence over.

Call center SWOT analysis example:

Once you have identified them, you have the basis for an improvement plan in your call center strategy — and to improve business outcomes.

4) Identify and solve chronic issues

Another key element in improving your call center is the simple questions people ask most often.

First, you need a method of tracking your top call drivers. Otherwise, you’ll need your agents to track common questions individually. While this sounds like an easy remedy, it’s open to incorrect customer data if agents miss customer calls.

If you’re not already using wrap-up or disposition codes, you can configure these based on your business type.

For example, sales teams can use Completed Sale. If you have a technical support team, they can use Issue Resolved, Pending Resolved, or Escalated.

5) Use call scripts as a guide

The best customer service teams are the ones that render the best customer experience. And the best customer experience makes them feel valued and confident in your product or service.

Long gone are the days of linear call flows. But the use of scripts won’t disappear entirely.

Instead of reading word-for-word from a script, review the most critical steps and create a process chart. Even a simple outline in bullet points can work well. 

So, rather than 100 words to move to the next step, ask specific questions and wait for the customer to respond. After all, what happens if their answer isn’t in your script? Probably an avoidable escalation.

As a call center leader, move from scripts to a human-first customer experience. It’ll set your team apart from the rest.

6) Give information to customers on hold

During your call queues, what do you offer to your customers? Some organizations don’t offer anything at all. This means customers wait on hold listening to elevator music.

Your call center software should let you easily add messages to callers when on hold or before reaching your call distribution system. 

On-hold message opportunities:

• Inform callers of the expected wait time
• Offer a call back when an agent is free
• Present self-service options like opening hours
• Route to overflow answering service
• Give the option to leave a message
• Suggest using chatbots on your website

Next-Level Customer Service Can Now Be Yours

Atlas had the world on his shoulders. You have a call center. 

You’re not alone. This guide outlines the top areas to include in your call center strategy. Only you can make it fit your organization.

If there’s one takeaway, begin with a vision a few years out and work backward. What steps are necessary to get there? Fill those in, and you’ll be in a great spot to lead your contact center. 

Nextiva provides robust call center solutions designed to drive effectiveness and improvements for the future of your call center.

As your team scales and technology progresses, you benefit from a future-proof contact center and an evolving call center strategy.

The best part is you won’t have to figure it out by yourself. We have the expertise to help you shine for your customers and the C-suite.

Get a cloud contact center solution from Nextiva.

IVR, call recording, VoIP numbers, call routing, advanced reporting–integrated in ONE cloud platform.

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Gone are the days when a single phone number was the hero of customer care. 

In today’s hyper-connected landscape, B2B and B2C customers expect exceptional service across multiple touchpoints — from the constant use of social media and messaging apps to self-service portals and AI-powered chatbots.

That’s where a digital customer care strategy steps in to save the day. This omnichannel approach empowers your business to deliver seamless customer experiences, build stronger customer relationships, gain a powerful edge over competitors, and more.

But what exactly is digital customer care, and how should your business implement it? Keep reading to learn a few best practices or risk falling behind.

What Is Digital Customer Care?

Digital customer care leverages various online channels to provide convenient, personalized, and efficient customer support. This comprehensive support ecosystem empowers customers to connect on their terms — wherever, whenever. 

We can break down digital customer care into five key pillars:

1. Omnichannel support

Imagine a customer with a burning question about your product. They reach for their phone — not to dial your contact center, but to fire off a quick message on your company’s social media page or access the self-service portal.

In a multichannel support system, these disconnected service silos keep customer information hidden from your agents, which often results in poor resolution and customer satisfaction.

But in an omnichannel support system, customers are free to choose their preferred method of communication, whether via phone, email, text messages/SMS, live chat, or other means. Even better? Their data and interactions integrate into a single, easy-to-access platform for your agents to see.

Statistics show that 86% of consumers expect this seamless communication across multiple channels with customer support. Two in five US consumers even say they’ve used three or more channels to reach a company’s customer service team.

Digital customer care is all about empowering customers to choose the communication method that best suits their needs, inquiries, and preferences.

2. Always-on accessibility

Customers don’t operate on a nine-to-five schedule anymore. Digital customer care provides a level of “always-on” accessibility to ensure your customers can find information or get help whenever needed.

Options like chatbots can handle basic inquiries 24/7, while knowledge base articles offer self-service solutions. This around-the-clock support caters to people across time zones and with varied schedules to boost customer satisfaction and resolutions.

3. Personalized interactions

According to recent customer service statistics, 68% of people feel brands should create personalized experiences in every interaction, including customer support. 

A well-equipped digital care system leverages tools, AI, and data analytics to:

• Instantly recognize customers and provide agents with a snapshot of their customer journey.
• Offer personalized support, recommendations, and solutions.
• Integrate chatbots that learn from past interactions and tailor responses accordingly.

4. Proactive service

A digital customer care strategy includes tools that anticipate customer needs and provide support before issues arise or escalate. 

Your proactive service may involve:

• Sending automated reminders.
• Sharing targeted product information based on past purchases.
• Flagging potential problems based on account activity.
• Engaging customers with personalized updates and information.
• Using social listening tools to address potential issues and offer proactive solutions.

Businesses fail to address about half of customers’ social media complaints, and more than two-thirds of customers say they want organizations to “reach out and engage with proactive customer notifications.”

Digital customer care helps you cover your bases.

5. Efficiency and scalability

Digital tools built for customer service automation reduce agent involvement and streamline workflows so support team members can focus on resolving more complex issues. 

While AI-powered technologies automate repetitive tasks and chatbots handle routine customer inquiries efficiently, your team improves response times and ultimately helps more people.

Digital channels are inherently scalable, allowing you to easily manage an influx of inquiries without significant infrastructure or resource investments as your company grows.

Why Does Digital Customer Care Matter for My Business?

Investing in digital customer support is about keeping up with the times and giving your business a strategic edge. 

The following five benefits can help skyrocket your brand to the next level

Enhanced customer satisfaction

The greater the customer effort to resolve issues, the higher their dissatisfaction. But everyone loves prompt, convenient, efficient, personalized support across their favorite channels, so you’ll significantly improve customer satisfaction, boost customer loyalty and retention, and increase word-of-mouth referrals.

After all, surveys reveal that:

• Consumers are 5.1 times more likely to recommend a brand after an excellent customer service experience. They’re also 3.5 times more likely to purchase from a business after positive customer experiences.
• Consumers who report a good customer service experience are 38% more likely to recommend that company than consumers who received bad customer service.
• 94% of consumers who give a company a great customer service experience rating are likely to purchase more products or services from that company in the future.

Increased operational efficiency

Omnichannel contact center software automates repetitive, routine tasks to free up your customer care team to focus on complex issues and provide high-touch support.

Unified, streamlined communication also provides all the information agents need to resolve concerns quickly and efficiently the first time.

You’ll reduce your agents’ workload, decrease call center turnover, shorten resolution times, and elevate your customer service simultaneously. That’s why recent whitepapers show that:

• 79% of businesses consider automation necessary in their customer experience strategy.
• Classifying service issues with AI and automatically routing incoming customer contacts increases agent productivity by 1.2 hours a day.
• Nearly two-thirds of customer service tasks and up to 70% of contacts can be automated with an AI-powered omnichannel contact center solution.

💸  Bonus: McKinsey researchers discovered that businesses using automation to revamp their customer experiences can save up to 40% on service costs. So it’s a win-win all around!

Improved brand reputation and trust

Prompt, effective responses to customer inquiries build trust, encourage positive online reviews, and strengthen brand reputation. They’re the cornerstone of every customer experience strategy.

Your digital experiences also allow your business to address customer concerns publicly, demonstrating your commitment to transparency and accountability.

The result is a positive brand image that keeps and attracts new customers.

Access to data-driven insights

Digital customer experiences generate valuable data about customer behavior and pain points. Analyze this data, and you’ll gain incredible insights into customer needs, preferences, buying habits, and more.

Leveraging these data-driven insights will enable your team to develop targeted customer engagement strategies and continually improve your product offerings, service lines, and customer support. You’ll also identify weak areas and processes that must be optimized for success.

Over 60% of consumers expect customer service agents to know about their unique needs and expectations. A DCC that collects customer data and makes it easy to use will be able to exceed those expectations.

A powerful competitive advantage

In today’s competitive landscape, exceptional customer care is a serious differentiator.

We know that 91% of customers say they’re more likely to make another purchase after a great customer service experience, so brands that excel in digital customer care automatically stand out in a crowded market, attracting and retaining more customers than their competitors.

Higher operational efficiency also means they’re doing so without exceeding their budgets. That’s a sustainable long-term advantage, especially during unpredictable markets.

How Does Digital Customer Care Benefit Cloud Contact Centers?

Cloud contact centers are the backbone of digital customer care and lead to the following.

Integrated multi-service channels

Cloud contact centers seamlessly integrate multiple digital communication channels into a single unified communications platform.

This unified view of customer interactions from traditional channels (like phone calls and email) and emerging channels (like WhatsApp and Instagram) enables a smoother, more efficient omnichannel service experience. 

The customer’s journey is consistent and integrated across all channels, so they can switch between channels without losing context, having to repeat information to your support team, or getting frustrated.

Flexibility and scalability

Cloud solutions are inherently flexible and built to scale. 

You can easily add or remove features, agents, and channels as your business needs evolve. This ensures you’re always prepared to meet customer demands and manage peak periods without significant upfront investments in infrastructure or hardware upgrades.

Cloud contact center technology also allows customer service agents to work from anywhere, facilitating remote work. This flexibility can lead to increased agent satisfaction and productivity.

Access to essential and advanced features

Cloud contact centers offer a range of features designed to enhance customer care, including:

• In-depth analytics and reporting: Cloud platforms provide access to real-time analytics dashboards and reporting tools. This enables businesses to monitor customer interactions, agent performance, and customer satisfaction metrics, leading to more informed decision-making.
• Personalization: Leveraging cloud-based analytics and AI, these centers can offer more personalized service by analyzing customer data and previous interactions to tailor responses and recommendations.
• AI and call center automation: Automated call routing and skills-based routing ensure your customers reach the best person to handle their concerns. Chatbots and virtual assistants also automate responses to common inquiries to provide 24/7 on-demand support.

Using these features and agent collaboration tools will empower your team to deliver exceptional customer service faster and easier.

Clear cost efficiencies

Agent efficiency gains translate to lower operational costs. Cloud solutions also eliminate the need for upfront setup costs, expensive hardware and IT infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance of traditional, on-premises contact centers.

Subscription-based pricing also provides predictable monthly expenses. Nextiva offers a pricing model based on the number of lines in use, allowing companies to pay only for the resources and services they use.

Enhanced customer satisfaction

Your customer’s cloud contact center experience encompasses every touchpoint, communication, and interaction with the agents and technology in your support hub.

In a digital customer care strategy, this platform can:

• Improve response times: With integrated digital channels and tools, agents can access all the information they need at their fingertips, leading to faster resolution times and happier customer interactions.
• Facilitate self-help: 78% of customers expect a brand to have self-service options over traditional customer service channels. AI-powered tech can fulfill their wishes.
• Encourage proactive engagement: Leveraging valuable data and analytics on these platforms allows agents to proactively engage with customers, personalize the customer journey, and offer support and information before issues arise.

How to Adopt a Digital Customer Care Mindset

Shifting to this model requires a cultural shift within your organization. 

Below are some key steps to consider when implementing a digital customer service strategy.

Understand your customers deeply

Take the time to understand your customer demographics, preferred communication channels, and pain points along their customer journey. This will help you tailor your digital customer service strategy to their specific needs.

To research your customer’s expectations for service and support, you should:

• Conduct surveys.
• Gather feedback from your support channels.
• Analyze social media conversations and sentiments.
• Track customer behavior, interactions, and journey data.

When you understand your customers better, you’ll know what works (and what doesn’t) and where you’ll score the most ROI before investing time, budget, or resources.

Evaluate your current capabilities

Ask your team these questions to assess your current customer care infrastructure, resources, and team skill sets:

• Are we present on the right channels? Before expanding, start by focusing on the communication channels your customers use the most.
• Do we have the technology, tools, and resources to handle inquiries effectively? Identify any gaps that need to be addressed to effectively implement a DCC strategy and areas where technology can streamline your processes. Research and invest in comprehensive tools to support omnichannel customer service.
• Do our reps have adequate training? Identify your agents’ strengths and weaknesses. Equip them with the skills to navigate the digital landscape, including training them on new technologies, communication channel best practices, and active listening techniques.

Answering these questions will help you prioritize investments and tailor your digital customer experience strategy.

Invest in the right technology

The right technology makes all the difference. Consider scalability (a solution that flexes with your business needs), integration (with your existing CRM and other tools), and ease of use (to minimize training time and allow your team to focus on personalized experiences).

A cloud contact center is a must-have. As the ultimate foundation for digital customer care, this unified platform should integrate multiple digital channels in a single view, offer robust AI-powered features and functions, provide dashboards and reporting, and more.

Prioritize CX Software — a suite of tools designed to manage, analyze, and improve all aspects of a customer’s interaction with your company. CX Software includes tools for tracking, overseeing, and organizing every customer touchpoint from start to finish.

Your team can track customer purchases, online browsing behavior, and feedback from various channels, such as social media and customer service calls, to understand what customers are looking for. Then you’ll be in a stronger position to provide what they need.

Implement customer-centric strategies

To drive customer experience scores, you must always put your customer at the center of all your decisions. 

To do that, you should:

• Use customer data to personalize interactions, anticipate customer needs, and provide proactive support based on customers’ preferences and prior behavior.
• Establish a strong social media presence for customer service inquiries.
• Enable user-friendly self-service options, including a searchable knowledge base with FAQs and troubleshooting guides.
• Empower your agents to go the extra mile, encouraging proactive, creative, solution-oriented problem-solving.
• Train your agents to be empathetic and build rapport as if they were speaking to customers face to face or assisting them in person.
• Foster a culture of collaboration between your care team and other departments to ensure a seamless customer experience.

Measure, iterate, and aim for continuous improvement

Digital customer support is an ongoing journey that requires continual customer experience management. 

To succeed here, you should:

• Set and track CX key performance indicators: Customer satisfaction scores, resolution times, channel engagement metrics, cost savings, agent productivity, and more will help your team measure the effectiveness of your strategies, identify areas for improvement, and ensure you’re on the right track.
• Collect customer and agent feedback: Listen to your customers and refine your strategy based on their suggestions, complaints, and concerns. Train your team to regularly provide feedback based on their time in the trenches to enhance your digital customer service further.
• Make iterative improvements: Don’t be afraid to experiment with new tools and approaches and iterate based on your findings. You’ll stay ahead of the curve and show customers that you value their feedback.

Getting Started With Digital Customer Care

Embracing digital customer care is an investment in the future of your business. It allows you to create a seamless and convenient customer experience that fosters loyalty and drives business growth. You’ll be empowered to meet the ever-evolving needs of your customers, reduce operational expenses, and gain a competitive edge.

But you can’t achieve any of those goals without the right technology!

Nextiva is the preferred digital customer care platform for cloud contact centers.

Our all-in-one solution offers a unified platform for communication and customer insight. You can track customer sentiment, get real-time alerts based on customer needs, automate actions to interact with customers based on their experiences, and more.

By having everything in one place, you’ll quickly resolve customer problems, save on third-party software costs, and simplify workflows for your staff.

🌟  See why Nextiva stands out for organizations that need a unified, holistic customer experience tool, customer-centric features, and scalable, affordable pricing now!

When monitoring call center operations, few metrics receive more scrutiny than average handle time (AHT).

Many call centers closely monitor AHT as a key performance indicator (KPI) of agent productivity and efficiency. The push for quick call resolution times is based on simple economics: Shorter calls reduce labor costs and allow more customers or callers to flow through the system.

However, adhering too strictly to AHT goals can also hurt the customer experience.

In this article, we’ll do a quick rundown of AHT to help you understand what this customer service metric means, how to calculate it, and tips for improving it for your call center.

What Is Average Handle Time (AHT)?

Average handle time is basically just average talk time. It refers to the time, measured in minutes and seconds, that call center agents take to handle customer phone calls on average.

AHT is tracked in your call center software and is one of the key metrics and KPIs that call centers use to analyze customer support performance.

The length of the call is measured starting from when the customer call begins, including hold time, total talk time, and any wrap-up time spent documenting the call after hanging up.

AHT often relates to customer satisfaction and agent performance. In theory, the quicker you resolve a customer’s concern, the happier they will be. But, of course, there’s a significant human impact to factor in here, too.

Average talk time is one important data point that contact centers should track to improve customer experiences. Other metrics include speed of answer, first contact resolution, customer satisfaction score, and Net Promoter Score®.

Remember, your customers will be the happiest if you resolve their concerns on the first contact. A shorter handle time isn’t always better, so don’t try to hurry customers.

Why Is AHT Important?

The average handle time is simple yet an important metric to measure. It plays a crucial part in improving your customer interactions.

If the time customers spend on a support call is longer than they’d like, they form a negative view of your business. In a perfect world, the average handle time is zero — as they’d rather not need to contact you at all.

On this basis, it’s easy to think the lower the AHT, the better. But there’s more in play than just time.

Contact center leaders recognize that the entire customer experience is more valuable than any individual call. So we’ve evolved from asking, “How was this call?” to “How do you view our company?”

Despite the shift to customer experience, contact center leaders still recognize the importance of AHT. Handle time impacts the total hold time, which influences customer effort and customer satisfaction scores.

Here are some key reasons to measure AHT:

• Agent Productivity: AHT allows call center managers to measure how efficiently agents handle the customer’s issue. This helps optimize labor costs when agents can handle higher volumes.
• Service Level Monitoring: Call centers aim to answer a high percentage of calls within an average duration of 30-60 seconds. Lower AHTs mean calls flow faster through the queue, enabling staff to answer more calls within service-level timeframes.
• Identifying Improvement Areas: Tracking individual and call center-wide AHT metrics over time provides data to analyze patterns. Spikes may indicate that agents need extra training. Consistently high performers showcase best practices that can be replicated.
• Staffing and Capacity Planning: Historical AHT data helps businesses forecast staffing needs and capacity planning. Knowing turnover rates and the average length of calls makes it easier to make sure appropriate agent staffing levels are in place.
• Cost Analysis: Since call center costs directly relate to the labor spent on handling calls, AHT has a measurable financial impact. Reducing average handle time by even small increments generates significant savings at scale.

While chasing aggressive AHT targets can undermine service quality if taken too far, moderate goals balanced with customer experience in mind help call centers maximize efficiency, capacity, and quality assurance.

How Do You Calculate Average Handle Time?

The conventional way to calculate call AHT is by dividing the total handle time (total talk time, total hold time, and after-call work time or follow-up time) across a defined set of calls by the number of calls.

AHT = (Talk Time + Hold Time + Follow Up Time) / Total Number of Calls

Many call centers monitor both individual agent AHT and overall call center AHT to track performance.

AHT calculation example

Let’s say you had 10 phone calls for the day and spent 50 minutes talking, five minutes on hold, and five minutes adding notes in your CRM.

So the formula for the average length of your calls works out like this:

[50 mins + 5 mins + 5 mins ] / 10 calls = 6 minutes AHT

Once you’ve calculated your average handle time, you can use the figure to optimize staffing. You can forecast the headcount you need if you know the average amount of time to help each customer.

Then when you know your call volume and average handling time, you can enter these figures into an Erlang calculator:

The Erlang calculator finds the best number of staff for a contact center at any given time. Supervisors use this to predict the ideal number of agents for peak periods so the customer experience remains at its best.

What Is a Good Average Handle Time?

Six minutes is considered a good average handle time across industries:

But remember, there’s no universal “good” average handle time that applies to all call centers.

The optimal average handle time depends on various factors, such as the type of call center (inbound, outbound), simple queries vs. complex technical support, call types (sales calls, billing questions), and agent performance (experienced vs. new hires).

Setting the target AHT should factor in call type distribution and complexity to have realistic expectations.

AHT Industry Benchmarks

One recommendation by DeAnna Kerley, Customer Success Manager at Kustomer, is to lay out AHTs per service type. She suggested the following handle times for these call centers. The average handle time across these services is 6.73 minutes:

Service Type	Average Handling Time (Minutes)
Delivery	4.45
Marketplace	7.5
Retail	6.25
Services	8.7

Another report by Cornell University tracks AHT by company size and sector. The average of these industries is 6.46 minutes:

Sector & Company Size	Average Handling Time (Minutes)
Large Business	8.7
Telecommunications	8.8
Retail	5.4
Business & IT Services	4.7
Financial Services	4.7

If we accept around six minutes as the industry standard, is it a good AHT? When delivery teams are averaging under four and a half minutes, it’s easy to expect the same from your other units.

Of course, your business may already be performing at a lower AHT. Does this mean you should make an effort to lengthen the time for calls handled?

You can only determine a good figure in conjunction with Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT). NPS measures how willing your customer is to recommend your product or service. CSAT measures how satisfied your customer is with your product or service.

Once you’ve got your AHT metrics and customer feedback, decide whether you’re spending too much time with customers.

Common Mistakes When Managing AHT

For customer service operations, understanding and optimizing average handle time is important. Problems arise, however, when focusing on this metric too much. It can impact both service quality and support team dynamics.

Here’s a closer look at some of the common challenges and how they might affect your operations:

• Overemphasis on Speed: Prioritizing AHT over quality can lead to rushed conversations, decreased customer satisfaction, and unresolved issues.
• Inconsistent Measurements: Without a formula to calculate average handle time, measurements can be inconsistent and thus affect reliability.
• Agent Morale: An intense focus on reducing AHT can pressure agents, potentially leading to burnout and affecting the support team’s morale.
• Neglecting Complex Issues: AHT does not account for the complexity of certain customer calls, potentially skewing performance assessments.
• Lack of Training: Without proper access to an internal knowledge base or training, agents may struggle to improve their talking time and resolution efficiency.

Balancing efficiency with quality and providing comprehensive training and resources are key to addressing these challenges.

Let’s take a deeper look at how to improve your AHT.

How Contact Centers Can Improve Average Handle Time

You can use many tools and techniques to improve AHT. A short average handle time often correlates with high NPS and CSAT but doesn’t necessarily result in more profitable customers.

Follow these five tactics to decrease average call handling times and improve your customer experience.

1) Offer specialized agent training

When a new agent starts, what do they do in their first week? If they only receive generic workplace training, you could hurt your handle times on day one.

Specialized agent training lets you tailor your customer service function around select inbound inquiries or customer segments.

Document all your products and segments in an internal knowledge base, and then note how many staff specialize in these areas. Next, conduct a gap analysis to identify which areas need more resources.

When you train agents this way, you can apply skills-based call routing to your queues. Customers then choose their topic and get routed to the best agent to solve their issue.

2) Assign high AHT agents a low AHT buddy

Training shouldn’t end at the end of your onboarding process. Identify successful agents with low AHT and pair them with an agent with a high AHT.

Working in real-time next to an agent means the low AHT agent can document and provide tips to avoid unnecessary delays.

These might be standard contact center practices or personal habits they can share with your wider team. Perhaps there are macros and shortcuts available to speed up after-call work (ACW) tasks.

If your resource doesn’t allow for buddying up in real-time, you can use call recording to apply the same process after the call.

3) Record calls and live monitor agents

A staple of any call center is access to recorded phone calls and speech analytics. Let supervisors or agents with shorter handle times listen to calls from those with a high AHT. This function can uncover triggers and behaviors that result in unnecessarily long calls.

Call recording is a great feature to determine if agents adhere to call center best practices and to uncover the causes of high call times.

When you listen to a call, document how agents can improve the customer experience. Is your team forgetting to acknowledge a high wait time? Identify if there are gaps in product knowledge or having to find the right place to enter information.

Go a step further and monitor your agents in real time. While it might sound creepy, live monitoring is interruption-free for both the customer and the agent.

When supervisors have access to in-progress calls, they know what is happening in the heat of the moment. If an agent needs help, they can use advanced features like Whisper to coach the agent or Barge-In to take over the call. Intervention here helps the agent for future calls.

4) Use self-service and automation tools

Part of your extended interaction times could be time spent transferring customers to the correct department. This overhead can add unnecessary minutes to the average handling time of your customer.

A big part of optimizing AHT involves streamlining information access and workflows to improve first-call resolution time.

While it’s easy to blame a customer for not selecting the right option, tools like interactive voice response (IVR) help customers pick the right option and remove unneeded call transfers.

Your AHT may also include “short call outliers.” These are common questions with short answers that customers call in to get a quick response. Consider adding things like business hours and how to pay invoices to your IVR.

The result? A more accurate AHT and a better customer experience.

5) Invest in employee experience

While the customer experience is crucial in any call center, the employee experience is paramount.

Disengaged employees pass on their negativity to customers — and average hold time can surge in just a matter of minutes. Pay attention to your call queues so the overall service level stays in check.

Make sure your scorecards and displays are beneficial for agents. In some cases, the added pressure of being an underperformer is a burden rather than encouragement.

Rather than displaying a league table based on talking time, try gamification to motivate employees.

Striking the Right Balance Between AHT and Efficiency

All the above tools and techniques should form part of a comprehensive customer experience strategy. Prioritizing AHT improvement starts with a plan that’s specific and measurable.

Rather than as standalone call center metrics, leaders should AHT to drive improvements in their processes. For instance, high call times can be avoided with in-depth articles published regularly on a knowledge base.

As your business takes a closer look at AHT, it’s essential to use a defined formula consistent with contact center industry best practices.

“There is a trend in customer experience where metrics like average handle time are becoming less important in isolation. There is now a trend toward using a more holistic approach when measuring CSAT. By using a combination of different metrics, like average handle time, a business can analyze its genuine CSAT. They can measure this with broader indicators like Net Promoter Score (NPS) — but AHT remains a key indicator as processes get revamped.”

~Patrick Watson, Senior Analyst, Cavell Group 

Rather than firefighting and trying quick fixes, contact centers must plan for the future. Otherwise, you’ll end up in the same position six months later and have to revisit the amount of time people spend on the phone.

When documenting your plan, include these five tools and techniques. But, also spend time assigning an owner and a delivery date.

Remember, a plan without benchmarks and dates is a plan doomed to fail.

Make sure you have the right communications platform that call center agents and supervisors enjoy.

When businesses adopt a cloud-based contact center, they exert more control over their calls and customer experience.

Average Handle Time FAQs

Imagine the last time a brand not only met your expectations but exceeded them in ways that left a lasting impression. Perhaps they anticipated a need you hadn’t voiced or resolved an issue with such ease and empathy that it transformed a moment of frustration into one of gratitude.

These customer experiences don’t just shape our view of a brand, they forge a connection that inspires loyalty and advocacy. This isn’t just good customer service. It’s the essence of customer experience marketing. In a time when personal touch often gets lost in automation, the brands that stand out are those that prioritize the human element, seamlessly integrating it into every customer interaction.

But how can your business achieve this? The answer lies in leveraging the creativity and insight of your marketing team to design experiences that anticipate and exceed customer expectations at every turn.

In this guide, we’ll share five strategies so that you can provide a brag-worthy customer experience.

But first, let’s talk about customer experience for a minute.

What Is Customer Experience Marketing?

Customer experience marketing (CEM or CXM) is a strategic approach that focuses on creating positive, memorable experiences for customers throughout their entire journey with a brand.

Unlike traditional marketing, which often centers on promoting products or services, customer experience marketing goes deeper into the relationship between a brand and its customers, with the goal of achieving loyalty and customer advocacy.

Many marketing departments are only focused on acquiring new customers. This approach is counterproductive since acquisition costs continue to climb.

And it doesn’t take much for consumers to cut ties with a business after a bad customer service experience:

• 59% of people will walk away from a company after several bad experiences
• 17% will walk away after just one bad experience

And that’s just in the U.S. In Latin America, 49% of people say they’d walk away from a favorite brand after one bad experience.

At its core, CXM is about understanding and responding to the needs, desires and pain points of customers at every touchpoint. This involves not only the moments when they are considering a purchase or engaging with a product, but also the ongoing interactions they have with the brand, whether through customer service, online experiences, or personalized communications.

Remember, the ultimate goal of customer experience marketing is to build a strong, emotional connection with customers so that they feel valued and understood.

This approach recognizes that positive customer experiences are inherently more memorable and shareable than low prices and high-quality products alone. They lead to organic word-of-mouth promotion and higher levels of customer retention.

By prioritizing the customer’s experience, brands can differentiate themselves in a crowded market, reduce customer churn and, ultimately, drive growth through increased customer loyalty.

Companies can measure their customer experience using qualitative and quantitative analysis. Top metrics include Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Effort Score, and customer retention (churn).

Why marketing and customer service should work together

Your customers don’t view customer service as a department — they see your entire company through this one filter.

When treated well, happy customers are your strongest brand advocates. They spread word-of-mouth and leave positive reviews, which helps define your online reputation.

Not only that, but 81% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer service, and customer retention rates increase by 5% for every 1% increase in customer satisfaction.

So here are the top benefits for why you need marketing and customer service to work together:

• Improved Customer Insights and Feedback Loop: Because customer service teams are directly engaging with your customers, they have specific, first-hand knowledge of customer needs, preferences and pain points. This invaluable information allows marketing teams to refine their strategies, tailor messaging and develop products or services that better meet customer expectations.
• Consistent Brand Messaging and Experience: When marketing and customer service work together, you can be sure that the brand message is consistent across all channels. This means that the promotional materials, social media messages and the support customers receive are all aligned. Consistency helps reinforce brand values and promises, making customers more likely to stay loyal and recommend the brand to others.
• Enhanced Customer Retention and Loyalty: Marketing can use insights from customer service to create targeted campaigns aimed at addressing common issues or promoting loyalty programs, while customer service can leverage marketing materials to provide better support and upsell or cross-sell services in a way that feels natural and beneficial to the customer.
• Streamlined Response to Market Changes: A collaborative relationship between marketing and customer service can lead to more agile and responsive strategies. Customer service can provide real-time feedback on how market changes are affecting customer perceptions and behavior, allowing marketing to quickly adjust campaigns and messages to address these changes.

In a nutshell, your marketing and customer service teams on the front lines can solve profound issues in the customer lifecycle — before your competitors do.

Top Strategies to Reduce Customer Churn

So how can your brand leverage CX marketing? Let’s take a look at some simple but effective marketing strategies to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

#1: Create an Engaging Learning Center

Creating a learning center is the first way to elevate your customer experience.

A customer learning center is a dedicated resource hub created by businesses to educate their customers about their products, services and relevant industry topics.

The content in this learning center answers questions that prospects or existing customers have about your product. It’s often the first place customers visit to solve a problem on their own. This documentation also gives prospective customers a realistic glimpse of your support offerings.

To get started, ask your customer service team what pain points customers face. Assess the number of inquiries and impact on customer experience for each topic. Meet monthly to select new topics to add to the knowledge base.

Give your marketing team access to sales or support call recordings to get the most out of this CX strategy. That also includes access to support tickets and researching accounts in your CRM.

For this strategy to be fruitful, use the exact terminology that customers use in the content you create, from blog posts to landing pages to social media posts.

Publish content with an educational angle

A good customer experience is built around high confidence in using your product. The first place people seek help is a Google search (whether you like to admit it or not!). Instead of resisting it, capitalize on the organic traffic that’s already there.

Take this Nextiva example — they have a double ranking in search thanks to a well-maintained support site. The information about network jitter is relevant to current and prospective customers.

Remember, customers want to do more than just learn how to perform basic tasks with your product. Exceed customer expectations by showing them how to improve the way they live and work so they actually look forward to using your product or service.

Also, don’t let account set-up webinars fall by the wayside. Consider curating your webinars in order to welcome new customers. Canva does this exceptionally well with an educational video series that fast-tracks new users into their platform:

Share goal-driven tutorials and engaging case studies

Help articles should go beyond the basics. Step up your customer experience by elevating the purpose of support articles. Featuring specific outcomes or industries draws in more customers to consume the content.

Case studies can also compel your customers to do more with your product. Breaking down how your company helped other customers or clients can be an excellent way to encourage those who are still in research mode to take action.

#2: Build Customer Loyalty with Social Media

Social media has become one of the first channels that customers contact to get help. A study by Facebook cites that 64% of people prefer to message a business than other methods:

If you’ve ever wasted time trying to reach an actual customer service person because you’re required to press one for this issue or press two for that department, you’ll understand why customers prefer live chat, either on the brand’s website or on their social media channels.

So it stands to reason that you should use social media in your customer service efforts. Share your most popular support articles and case studies on social media. You’ll be surprised to find that future customers who are on the fence could be swayed to choose you with all these easy-to-access, preemptive help.

Just be sure to respond to questions and comments on your social platforms!

#3: Simplify the Onboarding Experience

Did you know that increasing customer retention rates by only 5% increases a company’s profits by 25-95%?

This mindset should start as soon as the customer is onboarded. How well you manage this makes the difference between repeat business and flushing money down the toilet. Guide the onboarding experience with behavioral targeting tools to trigger the right messages at the right time. This creates a more coherent experience for the customer.

Your goal at this point is to reduce friction. What’s friction? It’s anything that induces buyer’s remorse or runs counter to expectations set earlier. It also erases the customer lifetime value you’ve worked so hard to earn:

Add FAQs that answer common and relevant customer service issues or needs into your onboarding materials or landing pages. Addressing these concerns cuts down on the amount of live support you need to provide later.

If you already have a solid onboarding process, look for more learning opportunities. One idea is to collect feedback through short customer satisfaction surveys. Verbatim responses can help your marketing team develop stronger buyer personas.

According to growth advisor and our VP of Marketing Zach Grove, it’s a smart idea to automate this process:

“When a new user first signs up for your product, consider adding an automatic email with a direct question — and encourage them to hit reply. You can ask them why they decided to sign up or what goal they’re hoping to achieve with your product.

From there, you can start back-and-forth email conversations with customers that will inform your buyer personas more than any marketing tool could.”

Using these insights, you can create a tutorial to lead customers using your SaaS product. Help them get the most out of it to achieve the most common user goals. A welcome video can help them get excited about using your product or service.

Use onboarding to accomplish different goals

For instance, Holstee, which created the journaling app and website called Reflection, uses its onboarding process for two functions:

• First, it demonstrates the app in action.
• Second, it provides a great customer experience.

When users sign up for a free account, they receive a guided writing prompt every day for two weeks by email. Each prompt gets users comfortable with the app and demonstrates the value of journaling.

This customer experience strategy proves to customers the benefit of the product, which upholds the promises made by its marketing.

#4: Deliver a Clear, Consistent Message

Content marketing is one of the most significant areas to back your support team. You might find many questions along the entire customer journey revolve around product capabilities. Marketing answers these questions long before the person becomes a lead.

Design your marketing campaigns so they deliver clear, consistent messaging. Customers should know the desired outcome of your product or service. If you’re running a promotion, make it clear how the sale works. If you’re unveiling a new product, make sure you clearly outline the benefits. If you’re rolling out a loyalty program, your audience should easily understand how to join, earn and redeem rewards.

Addressing these gaps early on reduces customer service questions and disappointment later.

Here’s an example of a clear and an unclear marketing message for a campaign we’ll call “Streamline Your Day with TimeTracker: Every Minute Counts”

• Clear marketing message: “Unlock the power of every minute with TimeTracker, your go-to solution for maximizing productivity and efficiency, both at work and at home. Experience a seamless way to manage your time, tasks and projects with precision and ease.”
• Unclear marketing message: “Experience the essence of moments with TimeTracker, where the journey of your day finds its harmony in the mingling of productivity landscapes and the symphony of task orchestration.”

Use an omnichannel platform so customers get a consistent brand experience regardless of how they contact you. Audit your outbound email templates and support documentation at least annually. This effort keeps your message consistent across every touchpoint.

#5: Deepen Your Customer Insights

It’s essential to understand your customers in order to make the best business decisions. Even better, surveying customers regularly will uncover risks and address them earlier.

Look at the difference in experiences and attitudes between respondent groups over time. Analyze what causes this difference, and decide how to close the gap.

Once you have your customer data, make targeted improvements. An example includes revising content in your knowledge base if it drives complaints. Likewise, retailers can also address gaps in customer support processes or templates.

If you’re not savvy with conducting surveys, get up to speed with these survey best practices:

Use proactive customer service

Many businesses use reactive customer service. This approach means customers often start with a bad experience.

On the other hand, proactive customer service means reaching out to your customers to share improvements to your products and services or ask them how they’re enjoying your product or service.

Proactive messaging contributes to a positive experience because it shows your advocacy. It’s also strategic because it reminds customers of your innovation and growth.

Be bold about your commitment to customers

With stellar customer experience, you have newfound confidence to serve tomorrow’s customers. Don’t keep it a secret. Great customer service stands out in any industry. An outstanding customer experience gives you an edge against larger companies.

Pagely, an enterprise WordPress host, boasts real-time Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction scores on its site and social media. Satisfied clients consistently endorse them when pitted against rivals for their no-nonsense attitude and responsiveness.

Customer Experience Marketing Is a Success Story in the Making

When orchestrated well, marketing delivers a positive customer experience that rivals can’t duplicate.

Your customers will tell their friends and colleagues about their experience. Be it a great support call, a super relevant email, or a shoutout on social media. Give them a story to tell.

Customer experience management doesn’t have to be difficult. Anyone can uncover meaningful topics to cover on your website. The bottom line is these marketing initiatives lighten the load on your customer service team and attract new customers.

These marketing strategies don’t just apply to slick startups. All brands of any size can deliver a more unified customer experience strategy with Nextiva, thus raising the bar for their industry. Remember, there’s always more you can do to elevate your customer experience.

Ready to close the gap between your customer support and marketing teams? Nextiva’s customer service platform brings it all together in one view. 

Customer Experience Marketing FAQs