What sets the best-in-class contact centers ahead of their competitors? How they deal with recurring pain points and overcome common challenges. Ensuring agent productivity and customer satisfaction will have a positive impact on the bottom line of your business.

So, what exactly is contact center optimization? And how can you get started right away? Here, we’ll cover the best practices and tools to help your team run an efficient contact center.

What Is Contact Center Optimization?

Contact center optimization is about continuous improvement to maintain standards, ensure consistency, and provide a memorable customer experience. This can be broken down into three categories:

• People
• Processes
• Tools

Some consultants and business analysts refer to this as PPT, and traditionally, each category carries the same weight. But while there’s a lot to be said for self-service and automation, we feel that people are the heart of a contact center, so let’s start there.

Optimizing Your Contact Center Through People Management

There are four key elements to consider when it comes to effective people management.

1. Workforce optimization

When you optimize agent schedules to match call volume, you ensure appropriate staffing levels. This has a positive knock-on effect on your contact center in three ways:

• Customers get through to agents without long wait times.
• Agents are productive and no longer suffer from burnout.
• Excess staff members are not needed to handle inbound inquiries, so you’re not overspending.

When planning staff schedules, think about which agents are the best fit for each role. This could involve accepting inbound calls, managing live chats only, or dealing with a mixture of several communication channels.

Also, consider your agents’ lives outside your contact center. If they have young children, can you find a shift pattern that allows them to collect their children from school and spend quality time with them? Workforce management is about more than numbers on a screen. After all, a happy employee is a productive employee.

Related: How to Improve Your Contact Center Workforce Management

2. Hiring and agent training

Any people management process starts with hiring the right people. In contact centers, these individuals typically have strong communication and problem-solving skills. They’re not likely to shy away from a tough customer, and they can get to the bottom of most minor problems.

If this doesn’t sound like your team, or it doesn’t sound like the type of agent you’re targeting during your hiring process, you need to find the root cause of this issue. Some businesses fall foul of using the same recruitment template as other departments, like billing and admin. But the roles in those departments aren’t customer-facing, so they require different skill sets. 

When it comes to hiring new contact center agents, it’s not just about looking for good people. Once you hire someone, providing ongoing training to keep them up to date on products, services, and best practices is an absolute must. Failure to do so is a conscious choice to undervalue the job you’re asking your agents to do. 

Instead, create a call center operations and training plan that includes a regular review of skills, product knowledge, and call center performance management.

3. Agent performance management

When you set clear contact center performance goals backed by personalized initiatives, everyone works toward a common goal: contact center optimization.

You can track how agents are performing by monitoring interactions and providing constructive feedback for continuous improvement. Lean on your call center metrics and key performance indicators to identify which agents are falling short in which areas.

Specific staff members might have poor first call resolution rates and need extra agent training. But it could also be that some sales agents have a high average handle time and aren’t suited to cold calling. A regular and holistic review could transform the shape of your call center.

Think about introducing gamification in sales environments, then gauge whether this would also work in customer service. Rewards like receiving gift cards or cash and finishing early go down a treat with everybody, but you may need to customize the rewards for different personality types.

Meanwhile, using dashboards (that everyone can see) to display how certain people are performing might have the opposite effect on productivity.

4. Employee experience

Creating a positive contact center experience that motivates agents and reduces burnout is vital for performance and ongoing improvement. When you have a team of highly motivated call center agents who don’t dread coming in to work every day, you’re a step ahead of your competition.

Ensure a welcoming work environment by sharing company performance numbers and highlights, which makes employees feel like they’re contributing to the business. Moreover, nominate staff who’ve done well, and open the door for peer recognition.

Also, think about your center’s working conditions. You might need to introduce more regular breaks or offer remote working to eliminate staff members’ commutes, particularly for those who are subject to the mad rush at school time. The best way to find out what your employees need is to survey them, allowing you to gauge your internal Net Promoter Score.

Contact Center Functions That Optimize Agent Workloads

Let’s take a look at six contact center functions that make agents’ workloads a lot more efficient.

Interactive voice response

Interactive voice response streamlines the customer journey by allowing customers to reach the appropriate department or agent using automated menus. So when customers call your business, they can simply select a number to choose the most relevant option.

Not only does this provide your customer with a more efficient call but it also reduces the burden on agents who won’t have to redirect calls that aren’t meant for them. Instead, they can focus on dealing with calls that match their skills.

Skills-based routing

When planning your call routing, it pays to configure skills-based routing. This feature allows you to associate skills (contract renewals, first-line customer support, etc.) with each of your agents.

So when a call comes in and your customers choose “1” for sales, they’ll get routed to a sales agent rather than entering the agent lottery. You could also go even further and add a secondary menu that prompts different types of sales queries. 

Matching customers with agents who have the specific expertise to efficiently handle their inquiries means both customers and agents are winners.

CRM integration

If agents have a centralized platform to access customer data, preferences, and past interactions, they can provide a more personalized experience. This will reduce the number of app switches in their day, removing the back-and-forth of information retrieval. 

A centralized hub for all documentation, tickets, and purchases saves hours per week, which can then be dedicated to escalations, training, or free time. In businesses with an appetite for artificial intelligence, your CRM can even suggest why customers are contacting you.

Call recording and quality management

Recording customer interactions for training purposes, identifying areas for improvement in agent communication, and ensuring adherence to company policies are musts for all call centers.

Recording customer service calls, for example, means you have a bank of calls that:

• Keeps your business safe in case of compliance queries
• Acts as a library to demonstrate great or poor calls for training purposes
• Allows you to review agent adherence to scripts and best practices

You could start with a handful of calls or implement a formal call center monitoring program.

And, depending on your needs, you can even roll out features like speech analytics and customer sentiment analysis. These detect changes in the customer’s tone of voice and identify negative words. Once detected, you can notify supervisors who can intervene in real time or review after the event.

Self-service options

Self-service options empower customers to find answers and resolve issues independently through online knowledge bases, chatbots, or FAQs, and this frees agents to spend quality time on complex inquiries.

In many instances, this also means your customer gets a speedier response. There’s no queue attached to a bot, and FAQ databases can be searched in seconds. When you invest time in high-quality customer resources, you reduce the number of times customers need to speak with an agent.

Unified communications

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) integrates all digital channels (phone, email, and chat) into a single platform.

The direct result? A seamless customer experience and improved operational efficiency.

The NextivaONE app, for example, houses everything you need for all your conversations:

• Internal and external phone calls
• Instant messages with colleagues
• Voicemail and call recordings
• Audio and video meetings
• Chat and channel spaces
• Business text messages
• Contact management
• Reminder messages
• Surveys and reviews

For serious contact center optimization, choose to integrate your unified comms platform with your contact center platform. This way, all conversations across your organization get tied together, and agents can get support from subject matter experts and product specialists outside your call center.

Related Article

Better Together: Integrate UCaaS & CCaaS to Improve Customer Experience

Optimizing Processes Through Playbooks

It’s one thing having great people and arming them with great tools, but they also need some workflows and guidelines to follow when things get tricky. You need a unified approach to customer service, upselling, and escalation management to ensure everyone’s on the same page. Here are a few optimization strategies you can use:

Develop playbooks for common scenarios

Create step-by-step guides outlining the best approach for handling frequent customer issues. These should include every step in the process, no matter how simple they feel when you’re documenting them.

Here’s an example: Large organizations like Toyota rely on a start-to-finish approach to manufacturing every car part. Staff must follow every documented step as part of the Six Sigma process, which is displayed around employees’ offices so there’s never any doubt about what comes next or what gets handled in which manner.

In contact centers, these playbooks should include scripting guidance, troubleshooting steps, and recommended upselling or cross-selling techniques.

In my first job, as part of my role as provisioning team leader, I set aside a few hours every week to document how to order phone lines and configure broadband routers. This became the blueprint for any new staff member and acted as a guide whenever someone needed a reminder of the correct process.

Implement escalation strategies

When something goes wrong, is urgent, or needs a supervisor’s intervention, agents must know how to escalate a call, web chat, email, etc.

Start by establishing clear guidelines for when an agent should escalate a call to a supervisor or specialist. These guidelines must be documented and updated regularly. Share them on your intranet, physical noticeboards, and via email to ensure everyone has a fresh copy.

Include the following in your escalation plan:

• Levels of escalations (P1, P2, P3, etc.)
• Criteria needed to qualify for an escalation
• Service levels to handle customer expectations
• Contacts for different types of escalation queries
• Times for when different escalation contacts are on call

This ensures that the right personnel address these complex issues without disrupting the flow of the rest of your contact center.

Contingency plans for disruptions

When system outages or peak call volumes occur, it can feel like all your optimization plans go sour, so make sure you have a tested and communicated contingency plan. Think about including the following:

• Rerouting calls (to other locations, to home users, to mobiles, etc.)
• Having backup staff available (at other locations, home, co-working locations, etc.)
• Deploying chatbots for basic inquiries (phones may be down, but the internet may still work)

Each time you suffer a disruption, document the root cause, action taken, and any potentially better action you can take next time. Bake these into your contingency plan and update all the places you’ve shared it.

When staff know they’re covered, even when the unplanned happens, they can carry on doing what they do best.

Optimization Starts With the Right Contact Center Technology

Once you’ve got the right people using the right tools and following the right processes, combine your contact center operations with best-in-class contact center software.

If remaining organized and providing efficient customer service are top priorities for you, make sure you empower your staff with all the features they need in an omnichannel platform.

There’s no point investing in call center optimization if your software crashes every time you log in. And no matter how comprehensive your process, it won’t change how agents feel when they’re lost switching between apps.

So, stay organized. Empower users. Get performance insights into everything.

Ready to optimize your contact center? Try Nextiva Contact Center! 👇

Imagine you have a bow and arrow and must hit a target a few feet away. Would you rather take your shot blindfolded or with your eyes wide open?

Well, it’s a similar situation with running a business. If you don’t truly understand your customers and what they want, then achieving your goals can be just as hit-or-miss. Using customer intelligence (CI) effectively removes that blindfold and sharpens your focus so you can make every shot count.

Here, we’ll cover the basics of gathering customer intel, how it benefits your business, and how to implement it successfully.

Intro to Customer Intelligence

CI is the process of gathering and analyzing detailed customer information to better understand and serve customers. It uses data points throughout the customer journey, such as purchase history, customer sentiment, preferences, feedback, and demographic details. Then it analyzes them to identify patterns and insights to help tailor your services, anticipate future customer needs, and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

For example, suppose your behavioral data tells you that customers tend to purchase a specific product combination. In that case, you can create targeted promotions or bundled offers to increase sales and improve customer experience.

Here’s how The Inkey List, a popular UK skincare brand, uses CI to cross-sell:

How to Tell if You Need CI

Here are some signs that might indicate it’s time to implement CI:

• Lack of personalization: If your customer interactions feel generic, or you’re unable to offer personalized customer experiences, you might benefit from deeper insights into customer behaviors and preferences.
• Ineffective marketing campaigns: If your marketing efforts aren’t bringing in the results you’d like — for example, if your promotions aren’t converting — CI can help you understand what your customers really want.
• Inconsistent customer experience: If customers receive varying levels of service or product quality, CI can help standardize and elevate the overall experience by identifying gaps and aligning services across all touchpoints.
• High customer churn: If you’re losing customers at an increasing rate, it might mean your strategies aren’t meeting their needs. CI can help you figure out why customers are leaving and how to keep them.
• Lack of data-driven decisions: If you’re mainly making decisions based on gut feelings rather than data, CI can provide the analytics you need to make more informed, effective decisions.
• Readiness to scale: If your business is gearing up to grow, CI can give you the customer insights you need to expand and effectively meet market needs.

CX Benefits of Customer Intelligence

Knowing exactly how your customers feel and what they expect allows you to build more personalized brand touchpoints. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction, retention, sales, and customer lifetime value (CLV).

Here are the three main benefits of integrating CI into your customer experience strategy:

Improved customer retention

CI allows you to identify areas of opportunity in your business, proactively address pain points, and offer a better customer experience. This helps you to increase retention, reduce churn, and increase CLV.

That’s because when you understand and meet your customers’ needs, they’re more likely to stick around and continue doing business with you. Over time, this customer loyalty translates into increased revenue and a stronger, more sustainable business relationship.

Boost in brand reputation

CI data lets you identify your customers’ needs and solve their problems in a personalized way, leading to a more positive experience. And when customers have a good relationship with your brand, they’re more likely to leave positive reviews or recommend you to others, which is why happy clients are the best publicity.

Let’s say you’ve run a survey and discovered that your customer base values efficient customer support, but they dislike chatbots as the only communication channel. Once you’ve identified your unique customers’ preferences, you can make improvements, like changing your contact center provider to support more communication channels.

In return, you’ll get more satisfied customers who are happy to sing your praises. This improves your brand reputation and can even bring in new customers, as 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know.

Related Article

How to Build a Positive Brand Reputation: Key Strategies

Informed strategic decision making

Customer intelligence data helps businesses understand what their customers like and need, which makes it easier to make smart decisions that improve results and save resources.

Picture this: Your CMO is convinced you need an X (formerly Twitter) account, so you outsource social media management to an agency that quoted you an additional $2,000 a month for X management. Without CI, you’ll spend $24,000 a year for X content — on top of the hours your team spends reviewing and approving the work.

But what if CI reveals that your customers are mostly on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube? Based on this insight, you could refocus your resources to invest where you’re likely to see the highest engagement and ROI.

Related Article

How to Build the Best Digital Customer Experience Strategy in 2024

How to Implement CI at Your Company

Just getting started? Here’s how to implement CI at your company:

1. Identify data sources 
2. Consolidate and integrate data 
3. Analyze customer data 
4. Derive actionable insights 
5. Take action
6. Measure and iterate 

Let’s look at these six steps in more detail:

1. Identify data sources

Identifying your data sources tells you where to look to really understand your customers. This way, you can see how they interact with your business, what they like or don’t like, and what they’re buying. You can gather CI data wherever you interact with customers along their journey, from initial contact through to post-sale support.

Some examples include:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) systems: Capture interactions like sales calls, customer inquiries, and meeting notes.
• Social media platforms: Look at comments, replies, and shares.
• Website analytics tools: Track metrics like which pages potential buyers and current customers visit most, how they navigate your site, and which offerings they spend time looking at.
• Customer surveys and feedback forms: Collect direct feedback regarding customer satisfaction with recent purchases or service interactions, including suggestions for improvement and reasons for satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
• Sales data: Analyze purchase history, revenue data, and product performance, like best-selling items or underperforming products.
• Support tickets: Examine recurring problems, customer frustrations, and the efficiency of your problem resolution.

2. Consolidate and integrate data

After identifying your data sources, use tools that bring all this information together into one easy-to-use dashboard. This makes it simpler for everyone to see the whole picture and use this data daily, whether they’re predicting trends, assessing risks, or understanding customer preferences. If the data is scattered around different folders, charts, and files, then employees will probably find it frustrating and will most likely make more gut-driven decisions.

Make sure the CI platform you choose also lets you view all customer communications in one place. A unified customer service tool saves your people time and makes responding to customers faster and more accurate.

3. Analyze customer data

Once you have your customer analytics in one place, use analytical tools and techniques to transform raw data into clear patterns, trends, and digestible statistics. Focus on uncovering insights like customer preferences, pain points, needs, and areas of improvement.

You could do this through statistical analysis, segmentation, or a machine learning model.For example, you can correlate demographic data from your CRM with your support service feedback score from your call center analytics. This might show you who values certain channels over others. For instance, you might discover that certain customer segments, like women over 30, prefer email as a primary support channel rather than phone calls or live chats. 

You can then use customer experience technology to build in-app product interventions based on the analyzed data.

Pro tip: Use voice analytics software like Nextiva Analytics to track real-time call statistics and review your individual customer information on one data platform — and in a single-page view.

4. Derive actionable insights

Once you’re done with the analysis, it’s time to translate these findings into implementable strategies that directly influence your business. Otherwise, you’re just filling up more spreadsheets.

Start by evaluating which data points have the highest potential for positive impact on customer satisfaction and business outcomes. Then, consider factors like feasibility, cost, and the time required to implement these changes. This helps focus your efforts on making changes that will deliver the most value.

Let’s say surveys and feedback forms reveal that customers are dissatisfied with your customer service response times. Since great customer service is the reason 88% of customers stay with a brand, addressing this issue is closely tied to your business’s profitability. In this case, a high-impact solution would be to improve response strategies or implement customer service automation, like chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), and self-service portals.

5. Take action

Based on what you’ve learned from your CI data, begin implementing changes that will make a real difference. To ensure these changes are effective, and to gauge their impact, set key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with your goals. 

Let’s say you’re personalizing your marketing campaigns. Your KPIs could include increasing personalized email open rates or improving conversion rates from targeted advertisements. Alternatively, if you’re looking to streamline the customer service experience, your KPIs might focus on reducing average response times or improving customer satisfaction scores.

6. Measure and iterate

Keep a close eye on how the changes you make affect your customers’ experiences. Here are some ways to track what’s working and what needs refinement:

• Test hypotheses: Start by testing your ideas. For example, if you think offering free shipping could increase sales, set up a test during a specific period and compare the sales data to previous periods without free shipping.
• Collect feedback: Regularly gather customer feedback through surveys or direct communication to get a sense of their reaction to recent changes.
• Use analytics tools: CI software like Google Analytics lets you monitor user behavior changes, such as time on site or conversion rates. For customer service improvements, track metrics like average response time and customer satisfaction scores.

Finally, continue this cycle. Make changes, measure results, and adjust. The goal is to constantly find ways to improve based on real feedback and data.

Pro tip: You can also use Nextiva Analytics to track customer success KPIs like talk time and the number of inbound calls answered. This way, you can hold your staff accountable for their performance and measure the success of your efforts.

Nextiva Helps You Understand Your Customers Better

Implementing CI in your business helps you to increase customer engagement and retention rates, along with enhancing your brand’s reputation and enabling you to make more data-driven decisions. But CX and customer success teams need the right tools to effectively analyze and act on this information.

Nextiva offers a full suite of unified communications and CX tools that simplify these tasks, making it easier for your teams to connect with customers and improve their experience every step of the way.

• NextivaONE has all your internal and external customer communications in one place, giving you a comprehensive view of customer interactions.
• Voice Analytics breaks down data silos and helps you analyze trends between time periods, employees, locations, and marketing campaigns.
• An AI-powered contact center lets you reach customers anywhere and deliver more tailored experiences.
• Customer journey orchestration helps you map out the customer’s path and gain the context you need to serve them and sell better.

But don’t just take our word for it. See how Nextiva helps you transform your customer experience today!

If you’re planning any kind of outbound call campaign for your organization, you’ll need an outbound dialer. By leveraging advanced dialing technology, you can significantly boost your team’s productivity and ensure that every call counts.

In this guide, we’ll explain how outbound dialers help you automate the calling process, free up time for agents to focus on closing deals, collect customer feedback, and achieve other goals tied to your core business outcomes.

What Are Outbound Dialers?

An outbound dialer is a cloud-based telephone dialing system used in contact centers to make outgoing calls. It’s sometimes referred to as an auto-dialer. The purpose of an outbound dialer is to connect live agents with prospects in a reliable and professional manner.

Instead of searching for contacts and dialing numbers manually, outbound call center software automatically dials numbers on a contact list and routes answered calls to available agents. This allows agents to focus on actual customer conversations instead of getting bogged down by manual dialing and other time-consuming tasks.

Outbound dialers also reduce downtime between outbound calls and increase the number of successful connections with customers — making your call center more efficient.

Types of Outbound Dialers

Call centers deploy one or more of these outbound dialer software. 

1. Predictive dialers

A predictive dialer places calls to multiple numbers simultaneously, aiming to connect agents to a live person as soon as they’re available.

It uses algorithms to forecast when an agent will be done with a call and dials multiple numbers ahead of time. It then routes the next answered call to the agent as soon as they complete their current conversation. 

Predictive dialing is typically used in environments with high call volumes such as telemarketing campaigns. It ensures that agents spend more time speaking with customers and less time waiting for calls to be answered — boosting agent efficiency and productivity. However, good forecasting is required to avoid overwhelming agents with calls.

Related Article

Auto Dialer vs. Predictive Dialer: What’s the Difference?

2. Progressive dialers

A progressive dialer places calls to one number after another based on the agent’s availability. 

Unlike predictive dialers that dial multiple numbers while the agent is still on a call, progressive dialers only dial the next number on the list after the agent has finished the conversation and is available to take a new call. 

This gives the agent a bit of time to review customer information, allowing for more personalized outbound calls. Progressive dialing is often used in sales and customer service environments where personalized and attentive customer interactions are crucial.

3. Power dialers

A power dialer gives live agents more control and flexibility over the outbound calling sequence. 

Unlike progressive dialers that dial the next customer as soon as the agent completes a phone call, power dialers allow the agent to determine the speed for automated outgoing calls. 

For example, let’s say you want to take a quick break after every call. In that case, you can configure the power dialer to automatically dial the next phone number on your call list one minute after a conversation. 

Due to its high degree of flexibility, power dialers work best for contact centers with low call volumes and those seeking highly personalized interactions.

Benefits of Outbound Dialers

Let’s look at a few reasons why auto-dialer software is an excellent addition to your outbound call center.

1. Improves contact rates

Outbound dialers reduce the idle time agents experience between calls. 

The system automatically dials the next number as soon as an agent is available, minimizing downtime and keeping agents engaged in active calls. That way, they can speak with more people — boosting agent performance. 

Most outbound dialers have a filtering feature for weeding out unproductive calls, such as busy signals, no-answers, disconnected numbers, and answering machines. This means agents spend more time speaking with actual contacts rather than dealing with these interruptions.

2. Boosts campaign efficiency

An outbound dialing system streamlines your marketing outreaches and similar campaign efforts. 

Automated dialing modes, such as predictive, power, and preview dialers, reduce downtime and ensure that your agents spend more time talking to potential customers than manually dialing numbers. 

An outbound dialing system can prioritize and segment your call lists based on predefined criteria, ensuring that the most critical calls are made first. It uses intelligent routing and automatic call distribution to direct live conversations to the most appropriate agents, balancing workloads and enhancing call outcomes.

3. Increases agent talk time

Picture this: You’re an agent who needs to make 1,000 phone calls for a predictive dialer campaign. You manually dial each number on your call list and wait for a response before moving to the next one. It’s a tedious process — apart from all the time spent, you might mix up a few numbers.  

An outbound dialer solves this problem. It automatically dials numbers and connects agents to answered calls, minimizing errors and wait times. Agents get more talk time and can focus on having productive conversations with prospects and customers.

4. Provides data-driven insights

Outbound call center software provides insights into the performance of outbound calling campaigns, agent productivity, and overall call center performance.

First, it provides high-level metrics, such as the total number of calls made, answered, and missed. Then you can drill down further to monitor the number of calls per agent, average call length, and the average time agents spend between calls. 

You’ll use these insights to improve outbound campaigns and optimize call center operations. For example, let’s say you discover that some agents spend too much time on calls. You can provide scripts to guide conversations and help them complete calls more efficiently.

5. Integrates with CRM systems

Outbound dialers sync data with CRM software like Salesforce, providing a unified view of customer interactions and campaign results.

CRM integration allows agents to access up-to-date customer information in the dialer to personalize interactions. Any updates in the dialer are automatically reflected in the CRM software, giving you accurate customer information.

Use Cases and Examples of Outbound Dialers

Outbound dialer systems are useful for every aspect of your organization.

1. Sales and marketing

Outbound dialers are integral to successful sales and marketing campaigns. You can use them to cold call prospects to introduce products or services, follow up with leads and sales conversations, and set up appointments for sales meetings, product demonstrations, and consultations. 

Sales teams can also use outbound dialers to engage with existing customers for upselling, cross-selling, or renewals to maximize customer lifetime value.

2. Customer service

Outbound calling software makes it easy for customer service teams to facilitate one-on-one conversations with your users and collect real-time feedback. 

They’ll use it to administer customer satisfaction surveys and collect qualitative feedback on your products and services for marketing insights. This process personalizes the feedback collection, allowing you to uncover a valuable perspective to improve the overall customer experience.

3. Debt collection 

Use outbound dialers to follow up on outstanding payments and work out a repayment plan. 

You can develop and load call scripts into the dialer to guide agents’ conversations with debtors — ensuring that they comply with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and other related legal requirements. 

Outbound dialing solutions also have call recording and monitoring features for tracking agent-customer interactions, maintaining call quality, and improving call center performance.

4. Nonprofit fundraising

Nonprofit organizations can use outbound dialers to reach out to potential donors and supporters to share information about their cause, upcoming events, and fundraising campaigns. These personalized conversations help you build stronger relationships with the people passionate about your nonprofit’s causes — typically translating into more donations and awareness. 

Outbound dialers also play a crucial role in recruiting volunteers for various nonprofit activities and events. You’ll use it to contact individuals interested in volunteering, learn more about their motivations, and find the perfect fit for your team. It’s a great way to quickly build your volunteer base and support network.

Step Up Your Outbound Game With Nextiva

Nextiva offers a unified contact center solution that helps agents field blended calls (outbound and inbound calls) with ease in a single platform that integrates well with their customer data sources. It’s flexible and has affordable pricing plans for businesses at every growth stage. 

Check out Nextiva’s contact center solution to see how we can help your business. 👇

Outbound Dialers FAQs

Find answers to frequently asked questions about outbound dialers. 

Originally known for its on-premises business phone system, Avaya has evolved into a cloud contact center solution that helps businesses manage their customer interactions across multiple channels, including voice, email, chat, and social media. 

However, its rigid pricing and complex setup often push users to seek more flexible and reliable Avaya alternatives like Nextiva. 

In this article, we’ll discuss Avaya’s features, capabilities, and pricing packages and show you why Nextiva is a better option for your contact center. 

Avaya Contact Center Explained

Avaya started as an onsite business phone system for enterprise organizations. Over time, it has evolved into a cloud-based contact center solution for omnichannel customer engagement.

However, its evolution has been riddled with challenges. Since 2017, the company has filed for bankruptcy twice and still struggles to balance its on-premises solutions with more modern cloud contact center services.

Nevertheless, it has many features suited to enterprise-level organizations, including attribute resource selection, self-service automation, and Bring Your Own Channel.

Avaya components

Avaya offers a wide range of contact center products designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes and in all industries. Its most popular UCaaS products include: 

• Avaya Aura Contact Center: A modern contact center solution that provides multimedia routing, workforce optimization, and outbound self-service for mid-sized enterprises. 
• Avaya Enterprise Cloud: Running on Microsoft Azure, Avaya Enterprise gives you the best of two worlds: an on-premises contact center that’s fully integrated with the cloud. This integration allows customers to leverage the power of Azure’s cloud infrastructure to deploy and manage their communication and collaboration solutions. 
• Avaya Contact Center Select: Avaya Contact Center Select is a real-time telephony platform. It integrates with Avaya IP Office, providing a wide range of call center features, including skill-based call routing and reporting and unified agent management.

Related Article

The Complete Guide to Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

Services and features

Here’s what users love the most about Avaya.

1. Omnichannel integration

Avaya Cloud Office application powers your entire business communication setup from a central platform. That way, you can make calls, host video meetings, and chat with your team in one application instead of switching between multiple channels — making your contact center more efficient. 

2. Cloud integration

Avaya’s hybrid cloud experience allows businesses to take advantage of the benefits of both cloud and on-premise solutions. With Avaya’s hybrid cloud approach, businesses can leverage the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of cloud solutions while still maintaining control over their critical data and applications. 

This approach allows businesses to choose the deployment model that best suits their needs, whether that’s a fully cloud-based solution, a fully on-premises solution, or something in between.

3. Integrations 

Avaya is known for its extensive integration capabilities that enable businesses to seamlessly connect their contact center with a wide range of native applications and third-party platforms. 

Businesses can create a highly customized and streamlined communication and collaboration environment that meets their specific needs and workflows. For example, you can connect the Avaya Experience Platform to your CRM software, allowing your agents to access updated customer information for personalized interactions. 

4. Management and support

Avaya provides end-to-end contact center management and support, and Avaya Enterprise Cloud manages your contact center on-premises or as a dedicated cloud. 

Avaya Managed Services provides continual updates and backend maintenance. There’s also a consulting arm that provides expert advice on optimizing customer journeys and communications strategies.

Related Article

Top 10 Avaya Alternatives & Competitors in 2024

Avaya Contact Center Pricing

Avaya’s published pricing is based on a three-year contract for call centers with 200–399 users. 

The actual pricing may be much higher for smaller businesses over a shorter term. You also need to contact sales for an exact pricing quote based on your preferred package. 

That said, here’s a quick table showing what each Avaya pricing package offers: 

Avaya also offers a highly customizable package that lets you create a solution that meets your unique contact center needs. But, while this can be seen as a benefit for enterprise contact centers seeking tailored solutions, it adds complexity to the budget planning process for smaller organizations. 

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Why Nextiva Contact Center Is Better

Although Avaya offers decent features, its complex pricing and user experience often push organizations to switch to more reliable contact center platforms like Nextiva. 

Nextiva provides a comprehensive range of call center and digital capabilities, making it a versatile solution for various contact center needs. 

1. Transparent and flexible pricing 

Unlike Avaya, where customers must contact sales to get an accurate quote, Nextiva’s pricing is right there on its website so you know what to expect from the get-go. This means you can purchase your contact center software and enjoy its ROI early instead of wasting time on lengthy sales conversations. 

Nextiva also offers more flexible pricing options than Avaya. While Avaya mostly locks you into three-year contracts, Nextiva allows monthly or annual payments to suit different budgets. 

For $99 per month, Nextiva gives you a contact center with outbound and inbound calling capabilities, real-time reporting, and workflow management. And, you can upgrade anytime to access more contact center features as your organization scales. 

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2. Comprehensive features

Nextiva offers everything you need to run an efficient contact center at scale, including unlimited calling, video conferencing, and advanced call routing, as well as access to real-time analytics.

Let’s discuss each of these a bit more:

• Unlimited calling: Enjoy unlimited VoIP calls in Canada, the U.S., and Puerto Rico — which eliminates the need for landlines and reduces phone costs. 
• Video conferencing: Nextiva has built-in video conferencing software that lets you host and join video meetings right in your VoIP phone system.
• Advanced call routing: Automatically queue and distribute incoming calls to the best-fit agent based on a predefined set of rules and criteria, such as an agent’s skill set. This improves agents’ efficiency, reducing call wait times and improving customer experience. 
• Real-time analytics: Monitor your call center performance in real time using Nextiva’s robust analytics features. You can track call metrics, record and analyze calls for insights, and share data with your team using customized dashboards. 

And those aren’t all. There are other benefits of signing up for Nextiva’s contact center as a service offering. 

3. User-friendly

Something that stands out for our users is how easy it is to set up and start using Nextiva. You don’t need any special tech skills to implement our contact center solution — simply follow our implementation guidelines, and the software will be up and running in no time. 

But don’t just take our word for it. Hear from one of our users:

While Avaya is easy to use, some customers struggle to implement certain capabilities like SIP trunking. Avaya’s platform can also get buggy, affecting your agents’ productivity. 

4. Highly reliable

With eight points of presence and carrier-grade data centers, Nextiva offers a superior 99.999% network uptime, ensuring practically zero disruptions. You can also see its uptime status in real time to check if its performance has slowed for any reason.

Some Avaya users experience frequent downtime, leading to call disruptions. At their worst, calls are missed, dropped, or experience audio glitches or pops. 

You Get It All With Nextiva

While Avaya offers decent contact center capabilities, its expensive pricing plans and complex implementation processes will likely hold you back. 

Nextiva, on the other hand, offers an all-in-one contact center solution with comprehensive features, flexible price plans, and a great user experience. It’s the best choice for organizations looking to efficiently scale their contact center operations. 

Click the “Get started” button below to check out our detailed breakdown of Nextiva’s contact center solutions to find a package that’s right for your business. 

It’s been a long time since customer support teams only had to cover phones and email. Customers are now everywhere, and they expect the brands they buy from to be there, too.

As many as 72% of consumers expect a fast response when they use social media to raise an issue or ask a question, but, according to the National Customer Rage Study from Customer Care Measurement & Consulting, a whopping half of all customer complaints on social media go unaddressed.

With social media interactions alone, you can now provide product guidance, kick off the refund process, solve issues, and help customers choose the right solution for their needs. It’s not just customer service — it’s your marketing, sales, and customer retention efforts combined.

The sooner you embrace it, the more you’ll win. Read on for a complete guide on nailing social media customer service in your business.

How to Prioritize Your Social Media Customer Service Program

There are four building blocks that turn your social media presence into a thriving customer service operation: channels, people, strategy, and resources.

1. Dedicated channels and social media monitoring

First, define the channels your customer service team will cover. Of course, there’s no point in wasting resources where your customers don’t spend time. They might be on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, as well as platforms for direct messages (DMs) like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Social customer care is about meeting your customers on a platform they already use and keeping them there to make the experience extra smooth. Imagine the frustration a customer would feel if they asked a question on your Instagram post and you directed them to LinkedIn to see your response.

How can you know where your customers like to hang out online? Try these methods:

• Ask your customers in surveys or customer service conversations about their social media use.
• Use website analytics (like Google Analytics) to see which platforms your traffic comes from.
• Comb through demographic data and different social media trends with a resource like Pew Research Center.
• Look at a specific platform’s audience breakdown, demographics, industries, and interests; here are examples for Facebook and TikTok.

With a list of platforms handy, set up a social listening tool that will track every brand mention and customer conversation for you. Instead of feeling overwhelmed with too many platform options, you’ll know exactly which channels to focus your social media customer support efforts on.

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2. Responsive team

You might be tempted to simply assign your customer issues to the team in charge of your social media plan, aka the people who brainstorm post ideas, publish images and videos, and build your brand awareness.

Don’t make that mistake. If they try to look after your marketing and your customer service requests at the same time, you’ll spread them too thin and do poorly on both fronts.

Instead, have a dedicated customer service team that will look after customer inquiries on social media just like they do on email, phone, or live chat. You’ll want reps that are:

• Familiar with your brand, tone of voice, and communication style
• Comfortable navigating the intricacies of each social media platform
• Fully trained on handling customer queries professionally and with care and speed

This team will merge the best of both worlds — social media proficiency and a first-class approach to customer care.

3. Defined strategy

Once you know who looks after customers on which channels, you need to define how that gets done. 

You’ll need guidelines that explain:

• Your tone of voice in social media conversations: The goal of social media customer service is to make your customers feel heard and taken care of, no matter what. That’s the case even if your usual tone of voice online is sarcastic or filled with memes. Create guidelines with examples and must-have phrases for customer service interactions on social media.
• Response times: Responding to a customer within a day is quite a different game than responding within an hour. Of course, the faster you can get back to them, the better, but take into account your team size and frequency of issues when setting expectations. Whichever way you go, be intentional and strategic about it.
• Escalation procedures: What types of issues can you solve in a public interaction like comments and tweets? At what point does a conversation need to move to the privacy of an inbox or involve other pros on your team? Define rules that make it easy to categorize every conversation from the start.
• Response templates and must-have details: Want to get to the bottom of each issue and negative comment quickly, every time? Templates are the way to do so within one or two exchanges. Your response can be an acknowledgment of the issue, an apology, and a search for more details all at once, so all you need is a library of templates that accomplish this and streamline each customer interaction.

Take it from Wendy’s, a fast food chain. Every time they respond to a customer complaint on X, they acknowledge the problem and ask for additional information based on the complaint in a template-based but efficient (and effective) way.

4. Knowledge base and resources

What’s the best way to make sure your customers reach out to you when they really need your help? Help them help themselves.

Self-service customer support options give your customers autonomy in their customer journey. They save them time and energy waiting for a response. Many will prefer that, even if your response happens in minutes.

It gets better. When your customers can help themselves using resources you built, it reassures them you understand and anticipate their needs. It’s a fantastic trust builder.

Some examples of self-service options you can create for customers include:

• Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
• A knowledge base with videos, photos, screenshots, and step-by-step instructions
• A chatbot that answers commonly asked questions
• A customer forum or community group (on your website, on Facebook, etc.)

Related: How Social Media Customer Service Platforms Help Your Business

Key Drivers for Social Media Success

What are the markers of success for your customer service efforts on social media platforms?

Here are the four drivers of a successful strategy:

1. Listening to the voice of the customer

Having your ear to the proverbial ground isn’t just good for putting out fires and resolving issues. It’s also a fantastic way to deeply understand your customer needs so you can improve and launch products based on what you learn and create an exceptional customer experience.

Social media is a goldmine of customer feedback. With a social listening tool like Nextiva, you can actively listen to customer concerns and look for patterns of issues, needs, and requests that keep coming up. This way, you can:

• Launch a new product version, like Yubico did with YubiKey.
• Add a highly requested product feature, like Rent The Runway did with pocket filters.
• Offer a different way to shop, like Cometeer did with a bundling option.

The best customer service examples are those that don’t just react to issues but turn them into opportunities for long-term customer happiness.

2. Using powerful call deflection

What’s one of the best things social media platforms can do for your customer service reps? Act as a first line of defense and deflect issues that would otherwise end up on your traditional support channels like phone and email.

Let’s say your customer wants to upgrade their subscription to the next tier and asks you how to do so in an Instagram comment. You can respond quickly in a matter of minutes using one of your response templates. Not just that: a dozen other followers with the same question will see your response and take action based on it.

This took a total of 60 seconds on your end. If that person, and those other 12 people, called your support team, 60 seconds to serve them could have easily turned into an hour.

Call deflection with social networks means you can spend your call center resources on more complex issues that require a personalized approach, like:

• Order-specific issues
• Country-specific settings and requirements
• Complex or technical problems that require a multi-step solution
• Custom solutions for high-value customers

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3. Improving customer effort scores

Customer effort scores measure how easy it is for your customers to accomplish what they want with your product or get help from you. 

The easiest way to measure this is by running a survey with just one question or statement focused on ease of use and offering a numbered scale as possible answers. Companies usually use a scale of 1–5, 1–7, or 1–10 along with a question or statement like:

• [Company name] is easy to use.
• [Company name] made it easy for me to solve the issue.
• How easy did [Company name] make it for you to solve the issue?
• How easy was your interaction today with [Company name]?

Folks at Gartner found that 96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction become disloyal compared to just 9% with a low-effort experience. Generic service, switching between reps, and channel switching are the biggest culprits in high-effort interactions.

Quick response times, clear answers, and one-interaction solutions are the way to happy customers, both on social media and off.

4. Establishing a strong brand reputation

How you treat each customer’s question or complaint on social media speaks to your brand image and your online reputation as a whole. Each interaction — each effort to improve your customer satisfaction — is a small piece of a huge puzzle that everyone can see.

With every new mention of your brand, every social media post, and even a negative review, you get a choice to:

• Respond to it with kindness, empathy, and professionalism
• Get defensive and argumentative
• Ignore it altogether

It’s not hard to see that responding every time, even when it’s less than great, is the way to go. It speaks to your brand values and shows you’re ready to handle any type of crisis. It builds trust.

Each of your choices compounds. You can be the brand everyone either loves for its product or respects for its customer-first approach on social media — or you can be the rude, ignorant company no one particularly loves dealing with. The choice is yours.

Best Practices for Better Customer Service Interactions

Follow these five principles of outstanding customer support, both on social media and off.

1. Be prompt and professional

Speed, ease, and customer focus are the name of this game. These are the activities that matter:

• Respond to customer reviews, comments, and complaints quickly, ideally within hours.
• Have a friendly tone and use respectful language in all interactions, including positive comments, negative reviews, and product complaints.
• Acknowledge any mistakes and delays that caused the issue. Always provide updates on the resolution process as soon as possible to show customers you truly care and are actively looking for a solution.
• Make sure that everyone on the social media customer service team adheres to top-level standards of communication with customers — no exceptions.
• Work with the goal of exceeding customer expectations. Look for ways to go above and beyond to address their needs and concerns.

2. Personalize every interaction

Want to make each customer feel special after they interact with you? Here’s how you can, every time:

• Address customers by their names whenever possible. This creates a personalized experience even in the shortest of interactions.
• Take into account the specific needs and preferences of each customer, and use them when formulating responses. Your customers will see you as empathetic and understanding.
• Don’t forget about past interactions with customers to provide relevant recommendations or solutions. Customer data like previous purchases and conversations are a personalization goldmine.
• Follow up with social media users after interacting with them to show appreciation and gather feedback on their experience.

3. Be transparent

Honesty and openness are the ultimate trust builders between a business and its customers. Do this to ensure it in your customer care on social media:

• Be honest and upfront about product or service limitations, pricing, and policies, which will sometimes be the cause of a complaint on social media. That’s okay. Be as helpful as you can, given the circumstances.
• Avoid technical jargon or complex language that may confuse your customers and that they generally don’t need to know. Remember they’re your customer because of the solution, not because of how that solution works.
• Check in with your customer to let them know if a solution takes longer than you initially indicated. The delay will bother them significantly less than if you leave them in the dark.
• Take responsibility for a mistake or your own shortcoming, and offer a sincere apology when necessary.
• Encourage open conversation and feedback from customers. Let them know their feedback genuinely shapes how things get done in the future. It’s the ultimate trust builder.

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4. Cover multiple channels

Real multi-channel support is smooth and seamless. This is how to make it happen:

• Put customers in the driver’s seat where your conversation happens. If they started one in a reply on X (Twitter), keep it there unless you need a more secure environment to protect their personal information. Likewise, if they reach out over a direct message, don’t push them over to a public post or, say, live chat on your website.
• Keep your standards high and your processes crisp for every single channel you’re covering. It’s the ultimate customer service experience builder.
• Offer self-service options like FAQs or knowledge bases and make them easy to find from every social media channel you use with a link in bio, a pinned post, or another feature of the platform.
• Avoid prioritizing one channel over another. In other words, if you cover both Instagram and X, keep your response times consistent between the two.
• Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of each channel so you can make adjustments based on customer feedback and usage patterns.

5. Measure and adapt

Your social media customer service strategy is never truly done. Here are some ways to regularly level it up:

• Define key performance indicators and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your social media customer service strategy. Some examples include response time, customer satisfaction, resolution rate, channel performance, escalation rate, and volume of interactions.
• Analyze trends and patterns in topics of customer queries. This way, you can proactively address common issues.
• Regularly hold training and development programs to keep your customer service reps at the top of their game.
• Use everything you learn from customers and team members to regularly refine and improve your customer service processes on other channels and offline, not just those on social media.

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Top 5 Social Media Customer Service Platforms

Let’s be real: doing all this well is impossible without some help in the form of a specialized software solution.

These are our top picks to manage all your social media customer service channels in one place:

1. Nextiva

Nextiva is a unified customer experience platform that tracks customer interactions holistically and in real time across almost any channel you can imagine.

Here’s how Nextiva helps you run an extraordinary customer service operation on social media:

• Social media tools: Publish and schedule content to different social media accounts, monitor and listen to your audience, and enhance your presence and customer engagement — all from a single platform, not 12 different browser tabs.
• Marketing suite: Fully integrate your customer experience from first marketing interactions to sales and support conversations, including answering questions and replying to feedback in social media comments, messages, and brand mentions.
• Workflow automation: Save time by automating and streamlining tasks like tracking social mentions, managing reviews, and organizing inboxes.
• Collaboration: Get team members to make each other’s life easier with custom tags, role assignments, and keyword monitoring.
• Reporting and analytics: A robust dashboard tracks performance metrics and measures customer satisfaction.

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2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management platform for brands and agencies seeking robust publishing, scheduling, reporting, and collaboration functionalities.

It has built-in customer service features, which include:

• Unified inbox: Manage messages, comments, and mentions across different social platforms in one place and with a consistent brand voice and experience.
• Social listening: Monitor brand mentions, keywords, and industry trends with alerts.
• Collaboration: Work with team members in real time with case-specific communication features like mentions and editing.
• Analytics: Reports, automations, and surveys track engagement metrics, response times, sentiment analysis, and customer satisfaction.

3. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is an omnichannel help desk and ticketing software with social media integrations for streamlining customer service operations.

Here’s what it offers:

• Digital customer care: Convert social media comments and messages into tickets for efficient tracking and resolution.
• Self-service options: Get AI-powered conversation chatbots to tap into the right article and summary to answer questions and handle high ticket volumes.
• Integrations: Merge your platform with an ecommerce solution like Shopify, a CRM like Salesforce, and different messaging apps.
• Streamlined admin: Use a unified agent workspace, workflows, and customizations to automatically route and assign social media inquiries to the right support reps.

4. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a help desk software platform that manages customer requests across various channels.

It’s an affordable solution with a user-friendly interface, with features like:

• Integrations: Support customers on Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, Viber, Slack, and WhatsApp.
• Universal inbox: Follow a customer’s progress through an issue in one convenient place.
• Workflows and automation: Use customizable rules, canned messages, predefined answers, and ticket notes to collaborate and work faster.
• Categories: Divide your team members into departments and route the right customer to the right expert every time.

5. Kustomer

Kustomer is an AI-powered customer service CRM platform that brings phone, email, chat, and social messaging customer support together.

Here’s what it offers:

• Threaded conversations: Get a single customer view that integrates Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp conversations and comments.
• Timeline view: View orders, reviews, appointments, and other customer actions in a chronological view.
• Agent productivity: Use auto-translation, canned responses, suggested actions, dynamic text, and tags to work faster.
• AI: Detect customer intent and use historical data to classify and route conversations to the right customer service rep.

Manage All Your Social Media Better With Nextiva

By now it’s clear: If your customers are on social media, you can’t afford not to be there.

Speed, efficiency, empathy, and a personalized approach are the ways to do it. The way not to do it? Manually logging into every single social media platform and keeping up with dozens or hundreds of notifications.

Not only will that burn you out, but you’ll also struggle to look after those customers well. You’ll have comments and real customer issues slip through the cracks, which is a recipe for chaos.

Instead, lean on a single, integrated customer experience platform like Nextiva that lets you track, manage, and respond to customers wherever they are on social media. Add to that our smart features, like advanced filtering, ticketing, and routing, and you’re unstoppable.

Use Nextiva’s social media management solution to provide integrated, world-class customer service across all your social media channels from a single location.

The quality of your customer experience can make or break your business. Customers demand excellence from every brand. Can you keep up?

As competition intensifies, you must take a proactive approach to defining your team’s playbook to boost customer satisfaction and retention.

That’s where successful customer experience management (CXM) comes into play. It acts as a map, guiding business owners through every detail of their customers’ journeys.

Customer interactions — be they on social media, in physical stores, or on a support center call — must have positive customer sentiment, ultimately serving as a building block for a lasting customer relationship.

In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of CXM, discover strategies to refine your ‌customer lifecycle and learn about CXM software that can help you chart a course for exceptional service.

What Is Customer Experience Management?

Customer Experience Management (CXM) is a set of strategies and processes to track, organize, and optimize every customer interaction for a company.

From their first visit to your website to their post-purchase survey, CX management is a complete map of their journey with you. It provides a chance to get to know your customers inside and out, predict their needs, and tailor their experiences to meet or exceed their expectations. 

Think of customer experience management as an orchestra; you, the business owner, are the conductor. Each part of the orchestra represents a different department: marketing, sales, product development, or customer support. You must make these elements work in harmony to deliver a great experience.

With each interaction, you’ll note an insight, notice a pattern, or receive feedback Voice of the Customer (VoC). Use this information to make changes, such as adjusting your marketing or enhancing your customer advocacy, to continuously improve your customer’s experience.

Business owners will be happy to hear that 70% of consumers spend more with companies that offer great customer experiences, according to a 2023 report by Zendesk.

This report reflects the success of the consulting firm McKinsey. Their customer experience strategy has led them to impressive results over the past decade, including increases in sales by up to 20%, decreases in service costs of up to 50%, and increases in customer satisfaction of up to 20% for over 900 of their clients.

A customer experience management strategy isn’t a month-long initiative. Ongoing, integrated tactics will help your business tap into the greatest benefits of CXM. Read on to learn more. 

Benefits of Customer Experience Management

1. Achieve a stronger product–market fit

An effective customer experience management strategy is like a compass that guides you through the needs of your existing and new customers. By staying in constant contact with them, you gain more opportunities to promote greater customer advocacy.

This helps you anticipate and exceed expectations, crafting offerings perfectly suited to each customer profile.

2. Improve your employee experience

Customers aren’t the only ones benefitting from effective CXM — employees do too. Having more positive customer experiences means dealing with fewer angry ones, resulting in more enjoyable employee interactions.

A happier workforce leads to more trust, engagement, and productivity at work.

3. Reduce churn

By cultivating deeper links and unlocking customer loyalty, effective

management reduces customer churn.

A business that consistently meets or exceeds customer expectations knows how to foster trust with customers and deliver satisfaction, making it much less likely that customers will turn to your competitors.

These days, the stakes are high.

A single negative customer experience can have significant consequences on brand loyalty: 32% of customers would consider switching companies after only one poor experience, reports PwC and 16% would even pay more for higher quality service.

At the heart of reducing churn lies empathy.

Customer experience best practices, personalized experiences, simple onboarding, and proactive problem-solving create caring connections with your existing customers and help ease their pain points.

Good customer experience management stabilizes your customer base and ensures long-term profitability.

Effective strategies to lower customer churn (via Gartner)

4. Create more profitable customer segments

Focusing on customer experience management initiatives can help you identify and cultivate more profitable customer segments.

By studying these segments, identifying patterns, reviewing customer interactions, and analyzing feedback, companies can establish which segments are more engaged and assign these a higher lifetime value.

With the right customer experience management platform, companies can tailor their offerings based on qualitative customer data, ultimately boosting their bottom line.

By knowing and providing your customers with exactly what they need, they’ll become brand advocates, sharing word-of-mouth reviews and driving further business growth on your behalf.

5. Increase operational efficiency

The impact of CXM on operations is often overlooked.

Key customer insights can identify redundant processes and help you shape more efficient customer operations. This measure is about cutting costs and creating an agile company that responds well to customer needs.

Above all, customer experience management helps your entire team meaningfully increase customer loyalty as a routine business function — not merely a one-off effort to grow NPS survey responses.

Helpful Strategies for a Unified Customer Experience

🌐 Optimize omnichannel experiences

Objective: Deliver a consistent experience across all channels

Modern customers often switch between devices, platforms, channels, and physical stores, making it important to deliver consistent service. This ensures customers receive the same level of attention no matter how they choose to engage with your business. It also creates a rare atmosphere of consistent customer support.

Unfortunately, ensuring this consistency is often easier said than done.

By integrating your communication channels and your customer data into a central system, you’ll be able to deliver and manage seamless service across all touchpoints.

📌 Proactively address at-risk customers

Objective: Identify early indications of churn

The familiar saying holds, confirms Gartner: It’s far more cost-effective and profitable to retain and sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

That’s why proactively identifying and engaging with at-risk customers is a strong strategy for minimizing churn. To minimize churn, you need to monitor customer behavior and feedback to identify early signs of dissatisfaction. 

Then, you can take preemptive action by reaching out with personalized digital experiences or solutions, automating the deployment of special offers, or simply reminding them that you value their business.

Related: How to Build the Best Digital Customer Experience Strategy in 2024

📝 Streamline onboarding steps 

Objective: Provide numerous check-ins and opportunities for feedback

Customers appreciate simple processes, and if your onboarding demands too much of them, you’re off to a bad start. Simplifying the onboarding process is key for maintaining customer interest and lays a strong foundation for a long-term relationship. 

This could look like:

• Providing simple information and instructions
• Guiding customers through the first steps
• Setting clear expectations and being transparent

It’s also best practice to check in often during this process, allowing customers to provide feedback. It’s rarely too early to ask them what they think.

❌ Don’t box knowledge in 

Objective: Share insights openly with team members

Encourage the sharing of insights within and across teams for the most cohesive customer-centric experience. Cloud-based, self-service CXM software can help companies avoid detrimental data silos.

You never know how other colleagues or teams may benefit from customer data, and collaborating enhances the customer experience.

According to Treasure Data, access to customer experience data remains a challenging factor for 54% of organizations.

High-quality customer service starts with well-informed, unified teams that frequently share insights. 

Nurture a culture of knowledge sharing with regular data training sessions and team meetings and make centralized pools of customer feedback and insights easy for everyone on the team to access, not just data ops individuals.

Related: How to Create a Unified Customer Experience (CX) at Scale in Four Steps

Top Features in Customer Experience Management Software 

1) CRM integration

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform stores customer information, tracks interactions, and helps businesses create stronger connections.

It plays a large part in CXM, and having a CRM integrated with your systems makes it easier for your teams to work together, deliver excellent support experiences, and put the customer first.

Key benefits of CRM integration:

• Sync all customer data into a single, unified system
• Access a comprehensive view of customer interactions and history
• Enhance personalized service and informed decision-making
• Provide workflow and marketing automation capabilities

Nextiva’s Salesforce integration, for example, bridges the information gap between your CRM and phone system. This handy integration helps your team access additional features, such as real-time call logging within Salesforce to store notes on a call and automatically log activity in Salesforce. 

A feature like this further enriches your customer data and the potential CXM insights drawn during analysis. 

2) Customer journey mapping

Customers pass through multiple stages as they interact with your brand. A customer journey map visualizes this path from start to finish.

Each map is made of touchpoints that include interactions such as discovering your product on Instagram or reaching out for technical support. Each interaction serves as an opportunity for you to delight customers while collecting valuable data.

A clear map of your customers’ journeys allows you to identify and track key touchpoints, such as trial signups or predicted outcomes.

It’s a vital component of managing the customer experience, and Gartner outlines it as a key factor for customer success. Of marketers polled, 47% said journey maps positively impact the success of their CXM efforts.

Key benefits of customer journey mapping:

• Model customer journeys with your brand from start to finish
• Observe the sales experiences from your customer’s perspective rather than the sales perspective
• Identify key touchpoints and milestones
• Predict how customers will behave as they travel through your sales funnel

Here’s an example that begins with a visit to your website:

Your customer visits a landing page, signs up for your newsletter, and begins a chat with your support agent. Several days later, the customer receives your newsletter, which leads to a demo booking and, eventually, a purchase.

Related Article

How to Use a Customer Journey Map to Keep More Customers [+ Real Examples]

3) Omnichannel customer engagement

Opting for a platform that embraces omnichannel customer engagement results in a unified experience across all platforms. This seamless experience thrills customers, who often interact with brands across three to five communication channels.

Benefits of omnichannel customer engagement:

• Captures customer experiences across channels (online, in-store, and on mobile)
• Helps maintain a cohesive and consistent brand experience
• Ensures a smooth customer journey
• Leads to high customer retention and brand loyalty
• Gains better customer insights

Effective omnichannel engagement strategies in action include consistent messaging, omnichannel staff training, and proactive support quality across all channels.

For a retail brand with a website and mobile app, effective omnichannel engagement could mean syncing a customer’s shopping cart across devices or ensuring that a contact center agent is already informed about an issue a customer raised on social media.

For modern customers, it’s all about providing a seamless experience where the customer picks up exactly where they left off.

Related: Omnichannel Customer Experience: The Complete Guide

4) Enterprise analytics

Enterprise analytics go beyond traditional data analysis by incorporating elements such as AI. Thanks to advanced features, businesses can forecast customer behavior and build more accurate customer journey maps.

Benefits of enterprise analytics:

• Capture data about customer profiles, personas, and behaviors
• Produce sophisticated, easy-to-read visualizations for informed decision-making
• Predict outcomes, allowing you to anticipate customer behaviors
• Provide real-time metrics that are easily shared with your team
• Highlight customer behavior, preferences, and trends, aiding in strategic decision-making and targeted marketing efforts

A fast-food franchise, for example, can leverage predictive enterprise analytics for CXM by forecasting regional ordering trends. This helps teams create tailored menus, efficient supply chains, and strategic outlet placements. 

The result? Customer needs and preferences are proactively being met.

Related: Customer Experience Analytics: How to Track and Improve CX

5) Call Pop

Call Pop, also known as a screen pop, is a handy feature for customer service operations. The service experience is significantly improved when agents have comprehensive customer information during calls. 

Benefits of Call Pop:

• Provides contact center call agents with customer information for every incoming call, such as contact information, company, payment details, customer history, and customer sentiment
• Reduces abandonment rates and average handle call time
• Improves sales conversions with relevant sales offers

Call Pop enables call center agents to answer every call with valuable customer context. Useful features include displaying the account value, a last interaction indicator (i.e., positive or negative), and an experience score. 

These data points help call agents deliver remarkable customer service experiences with personalized conversations. Save time, build trust, and gain deeper insights with each call.

Related: 7 Best Customer Experience Software in 2024: What It Is, Examples, and Pricing

Elevate Your Customer Experience With Nextiva 

Effective customer experience management is a pivotal element of business that small business owners cannot ignore. 

Knowing your customers’ needs and having a deeper understanding of their pain points leads to loyal customers. 

Customer experience management provides business owners with a roadmap to delivering an unforgettable experience that makes customers feel understood and keeps them returning for more.

In recent years, AI has transformed the customer service experience, introducing smarter chatbots and more personalized service than ever.

Yes, this technology still has a way to go, but it’s anticipated that AI will dominate this arena sooner than we think —  70% of leaders say that expanding AI across the customer experience is a priority for 2024.

You can expect more AI-driven digital transformations to improve the effectiveness of customer touchpoints and personalize services to meet individual customer needs.

The importance of actionable customer data will only amplify as customer expectations grow.

The key to success with your customers and CXM lies in choosing the right tools that provide omnichannel experiences, accurate customer journey mapping, and insightful analytics.

Nextiva’s unified CXM platform empowers leaders to do just that. By offering unified customer data in an omnichannel environment, your customer experience will be unmatched in the marketplace. 

Discover how to create the ultimate customer journey with Nextiva today. 

Related: How to Build a Customer Experience Dashboard (+ Best Practices)

FAQs

When customers have endless choices, how can your brand stand out from competitors? Omnichannel customer support is the key. 

Providing seamless, consistent experiences — especially when your customer switches between phone, email, social media, or live chat — will create loyal customers and brand champions who spread the good word about your business. 

Our guide to omnichannel customer support breaks down the benefits, challenges, and the right tools you need to create a successful strategy to help your business build lifelong relationships with your customers. 

Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Service

Omnichannel customer support offers various advantages. From happy customers to higher sales, implementing omnichannel communication into your contact center is a recipe for success.

Helps provide more personalized experiences 

Customers expect personalized support with each interaction, making that a customer service standard. By unifying customer data across channels, you gain a 360-degree view of their needs and preferences. This valuable information allows you to tailor interactions, provide personalized product recommendations, and build lasting customer relationships.

Improves customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention

When customers need support, they don’t want the added challenge of connecting with your customer service team. A convenient, effortless omnichannel customer support experience allows customers to reach support agents quickly and easily on their preferred channel. This improves customer retention, satisfaction, and loyalty, increasing their chances of sticking with your brand over competitors.

Increases sales and conversions

Seamless omnichannel customer support removes friction from the customer journey. For example, when a customer browsing your website has a question, making it easy for them to switch to live chat for a quick answer can remove the roadblock hindering the purchase. Easy omnichannel communication across customer touchpoints makes the experience smooth, boosting conversions.

Enables better insights into customer behaviors

Tracking interactions and gathering customer data across all channels allows you to uncover valuable insights about customer behaviors and preferences. You can see which channels they prefer, what pain paints or issues they commonly face, and how long they typically wait for support. This creates a data-driven decision-making process that helps you continuously improve your customer service strategy.

Ensures fast, convenient support where customers already are

Customers want support wherever they are, making omnichannel customer support a necessity. They might start their research on social media channels, like Instagram or Facebook, then switch to live chat for a quick question or place a call for more complex issues. An omnichannel approach to customer support ensures that your support team is there at every touchpoint.

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Omnichannel Customer Experience: The Complete Guide

Omnichannel Support vs. Multichannel Support

Both omnichannel and multichannel contact centers offer customers multiple ways to get help. The key differences lie in how these channels work together. 

Multichannel support provides a variety of channel options, like phone, email, or social media, but the data can be siloed. There’s no guarantee of consistency between channels, and agents might not have the full context of past interactions. 

With omnichannel support, all channels work together seamlessly, and customer history and preferences are accessible no matter which channels the customer switches to during the conversation. This creates a more personalized experience and allows agents to provide faster, more effective support.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel

The Challenges of Omnichannel Customer Support (and How to Solve Them)

While omnichannel support offers a plethora of benefits, implementing it smoothly requires overcoming a few hurdles.

Providing consistent experiences across channels

Customers switching between channels expect consistent service and access to their history. The challenge lies in ensuring all agents, regardless of channel, have the information and training to deliver a unified customer experience.

Breaking down data silos across departments

Without the right CRM or customer experience software, customer data can be trapped in silos making collaboration between departments — like sales and support — difficult. Fragmented data between systems makes it difficult to personalize interactions and understand the complete customer journey.

Ensuring seamless handoffs between teams

A seamless handoff is crucial when a customer’s issue needs to be escalated to a manager, transferred to the right department, or from an AI agent to a human agent. Without proper handoffs, information can get lost, increasing customer frustrations.

Omnichannel Customer Support Tools

Providing your team with the right tools is crucial for successful omnichannel support experiences. Here are some key tools to consider in your omnichannel contact center.

AI and automation 

AI chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) can provide 24/7 support, answer common questions, troubleshoot issues, and personalize product recommendations. This frees up agents for complex inquiries while offering customers self-service options, which can reduce wait times and improve overall satisfaction.

Live chat and messaging

Live chat and messaging platforms allow for real-time conversations directly on your website or social media. Customers get immediate assistance from human or conversational AI agents, creating positive customer experiences.

Omnichannel contact center software

The right customer service contact center consolidates customer interactions from all channels — like phone, email, live chat, or social media — into a single workspace. Agents can access customer history, manage tickets efficiently, and collaborate seamlessly across teams, leading to faster resolutions and improved agent productivity.

Reporting and analytics

Advanced reporting tools provide valuable insights into customer behavior and support performance. By tracking metrics like resolution rates and customer satisfaction across channels, businesses can identify areas for improvement and optimize their omnichannel strategy, ensuring they’re meeting customer needs and maximizing the return on their investment.

Omnichannel Support Examples and Use Cases 

Businesses across industries can enhance customer experiences and internal operations using omnichannel communication solutions. For example, the Florida Panthers, an NHL team, upgraded to Nextiva’s platform to engage fans across various channels and improve internal workflows, overcoming the limitations of their old system. 

Believe, Ltd. needed an omnichannel customer support platform that could unify communications across their four global brands. Their legacy customer support system couldn’t meet their business needs, causing delays, manual ticket processing, and providing inaccurate data. 

Switching to Nextiva’s platform streamlined their operations by consolidating over 50 support channels into one central dashboard, automating responses, and prioritizing complex requests. This improved productivity, enabled 24/7 support, and allowed the team to focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences. 

Best Practices to Maximize Your Omnichannel Customer Support Strategy

Implementing a successful omnichannel customer support strategy can be easier than you think. Here are some best practices to get you started:

Target one business use case at a time

Consider starting with a specific area where omnichannel support can have the biggest impact. This could be a high-volume channel like social media customer support or an internal department like your IT help desk. By focusing on a single use case, you can streamline the implementation process, gather valuable learnings, and demonstrate the benefits of omnichannel support within your organization. 

Use omnichannel support software

Investing in the right software is crucial. Omnichannel contact center platforms consolidate customer interactions across all channels into a single workspace. This empowers agents with a complete view of customer history, simplifies ticket management, and facilitates seamless collaboration across teams. This translates to faster resolutions for customers and increased agent productivity.

Collect and implement customer feedback

Your customers are the ultimate source of insight. Regularly gather feedback through surveys or polls to understand their preferred channels, satisfaction levels, and areas for improvement. Actively listen to their input and use it to refine your omnichannel strategy. Demonstrating that you value customer feedback fosters trust and loyalty.

Prioritize the right channels

Not all channels are created equal. Identify which channels your customers use most frequently and tailor your strategy accordingly. Analyze the types of inquiries received through each channel and allocate resources accordingly.

For example, live chat might be ideal for real-time troubleshooting, while email could be better suited for detailed explanations or complex issues. By prioritizing the right channels, you ensure that you’re present where your customers need you most.

Related Article

How to Create an Omnichannel Customer Engagement Strategy

Consolidate Support Channels With Nextiva

Customers expect a seamless and connected experience across all touchpoints. By implementing an omnichannel customer support strategy, you can empower your agents, improve customer satisfaction, and boost your bottom line.

Nextiva’s AI-powered contact center solutions can help you consolidate your support channels, gain valuable insights, and personalize the customer journey. Let Nextiva help you unlock the full potential of omnichannel customer support today.

Omnichannel Customer Support FAQs

If you want to dive deeper into the world of omnichannel support, look no further. Here are some answers to frequently asked questions.

What Is 24/7 Customer Support?

24/7 customer support is a service model where businesses provide round-the-clock assistance to their customers, 365 days a year. This approach ensures that help is always available, regardless of time zones or holidays.

Why does it matter for your business?

Consider the potential revenue lost when a customer can’t reach you during a critical moment. That’s a risk many businesses can’t afford to take. With 24/7 support, you essentially maintain constant availability for your customers.

Customers are no longer confined to traditional business hours. They engage with products and services at all hours. By offering 24/7 customer service, you don’t just meet expectations but position your business as customer-centric.

91% of customers say they’re more likely to make another purchase after a great customer service experience. That’s a significant opportunity for increased sales and customer retention.

Benefits of 24/7 Customer Support

24/7 customer support isn’t just about being available round the clock — it’s about creating a business model that drives customer loyalty, satisfaction, and business growth while balancing your employee well-being.

The commitment to support 24/7 offers several key advantages:

📈 Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty

24/7 customer care is your always-open front door. When customers know they can reach you anytime, it creates a sense of security and trust. They’re not left hanging if they encounter an issue at 11 PM or on a holiday.

Offering 24/7 customer service translates directly into higher satisfaction rates. Good support impacts your bottom line.

Satisfied customers become your brand advocates. They recommend your business to others, effectively becoming an extension of your marketing team — at no extra cost.

💼 Improved brand image and reputation

Your business reputation and brand image speak volumes about your service. Offering 24/7 service sends a powerful message: “We care about our customers, no matter what time it is.”

This commitment doesn’t go unnoticed. It gives you a competitive advantage, differentiating you from competitors offering limited support hours. In fact, 68% of customers say a positive experience over a particular messaging channel significantly improved their brand loyalty.

Every interaction is an opportunity to shape your brand’s reputation in a digital space. A single positive late-night support experience can turn into a glowing review that attracts new customers.

Related Article

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📉 Reduced customer churn and increased customer lifetime value

Customer churn is a silent killer for businesses. But 24/7 customer support can effectively mitigate churn.

When you resolve issues quickly, customers are less likely to get frustrated and look for alternatives. Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one, so why not invest in 24/7 support instead?

Preventing churn doesn’t just save acquisition costs, it increases the lifetime value of each customer, which, over time, boosts your revenue.

Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%.

⏳Faster issue resolution and improved efficiency

24/7 support allows you to address issues as they arise, preventing small problems from snowballing into bigger ones.

The real-time response capability reduces your average resolution time. It also prevents the Monday morning backlog that many businesses face after a weekend of accumulated customer inquiries.

Moreover, spreading your support 24/7 lets you handle more inquiries with the same number of staff, which improves operational efficiency.

🌐 Ability to cater to a global customer base

Your next big customer could be halfway across the globe. 24/7 customer service eliminates time zone barriers, allowing you to serve customers wherever they are, whenever they need you.

Global accessibility is critical for businesses looking to expand internationally. It shows that you’re committed to serving a global market, helping you win and retain international customers.

According to (CSA Research), 74% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from a company that provides service in their language. With 24/7 support, you can staff your customer support team with multilingual support agents across different time zones, catering to a global audience.

Key Components of Effective 24/7 Customer Service

Omnichannel communication and self-service

A robust 24/7 support system caters to diverse customer preferences and offers omnichannel customer support. This means integrating multiple channels — phone, live chat, email, social media, and SMS — into a seamless communication network.

Customers should be able to start a conversation on one channel and continue it on another without losing context. Alongside these, self-service options are crucial.

A comprehensive knowledge base, community forums, and AI-powered chatbots empower customers to find solutions independently, reducing the load on your customer service team.

Intelligent ticketing and workforce management

A 24/7 help desk integrated with sophisticated workforce management tools goes a long way. Your ticketing system should automatically assign and prioritize support tickets and inquiries, track response times, and maintain a comprehensive history of customer interactions.

Pair this with workforce management tools that forecast call volumes, manage shift rotations, and track productivity across different time slots.

These systems work in tandem to staff you adequately at all hours without overstretching your team, improving your workflows, and maintaining service quality around the clock.

Data-driven quality assurance and continuous improvement

Enhancing the quality of support means a stronger focus on data analytics and quality assurance. Implementing robust analytics lets you track peak hours, common issues, customer satisfaction scores, and agent performance metrics across all shifts.

You can use this data to refine your processes and identify areas for improvement. Couple this with a comprehensive training program and regular quality checks and you ensure consistent service quality, regardless of the time of day.

You also need clear escalation protocols for complex issues to address critical problems 24/7. A feedback loop that collects insights from both customers and support staff is key to continuously refining and enhancing your support system.

Related Article

Managing Customer Feedback: Why It Matters & Top Strategies

How To Implement a 24/7 Support System

Implementing 24/7 support is a journey, not a destination. You’ll across many challenges and it requires ongoing commitment. But, the payoff in customer satisfaction and loyalty is worth investing in.

With a well-implemented support strategy, you can better meet and exceed customer expectations. Here’s how to get started:

1. Assess your needs and choose the right technology

Before diving into 24/7 customer support, take a good look at your current setup. What are your busiest hours? Where are your customers? What issues do they face? This information is your roadmap.

Then, gear up with the right tech. You’ll need:

• A robust ticketing system or 24/7 help desk software to manage inquiries
• Live chat software for real-time communication and live support
• A comprehensive knowledge base for self-service and troubleshooting
• AI-powered chatbots to handle simple queries 24/7
• Cloud-based contact center software for phone support
• CRM integration for a 360-degree view of customer interactions
• Analytics and reporting tools for data-driven decisions

Rather than investing in too many disparate systems, invest in a unified digital customer service tool that offers everything in one platform.

Cloud-based customer service solutions allow for remote work, making 24/7 coverage easier. CRM integration provides context for personalized support, while analytics tools help you continuously improve your support services.

Customers love self-service options, so make sure your tech supports this too. A good tech stack is versatile and reliable, no matter the hour.

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2. Develop a staffing strategy and prioritize employee well-being

Staffing is often the trickiest part of 24/7 support. You might hire dedicated night staff, implement rotating shifts, outsource to a different time zone, or mix these approaches.

Whatever you choose, make sure your team is well-trained and aligned with your values.

Don’t forget about employee well-being. Odd hours can be tough, so offer competitive pay for night shifts, comprehensive health benefits, and create a supportive work environment. Happy employees lead to happy customers, it’s that simple.

3. Create clear processes and start with a pilot program

Consistency is key. Develop standard procedures for common issues, escalation protocols for complex problems, and communication guidelines to maintain a consistent brand voice. Your 3 AM team should provide the same level of service as your 3 PM team.

Don’t flip the switch to 24/7 overnight. Start with a pilot program — may be extended hours or weekend support. This allows you to iron out problems before going fully round-the-clock.

Related Article

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4. Implement performance metrics and gather customer feedback

What gets measured gets managed. Track key customer service metrics like first-contact resolution, average handling time, customer satisfaction scores, and resolution rates. Use these to refine your support system.

Also, gather feedback from both customers and employees regularly to make data-driven improvements. Have a continuous improvement engine running in the background.

5. Bank on automation and plan for scalability

Use AI-powered chatbots to handle simple queries, freeing up your human agents for complex issues. Customer service automation should enhance, not replace, human support.

As your business grows, so will your support needs. Design your system with scalability in mind from the start. You want a strong foundation that can support future additions.

Tips & Best Practices for 24/7 Customer Service

Ready to implement 24/7 customer support? Here are some tips and best practices to keep your customer service flowing smoothly:

• Offer training that sticks: Train your team to mix up scenarios, focus on problem-solving, and encourage teamwork to keep your agents on their toes.
• Track metrics that matter: Go beyond basic numbers. Track how your agents feel, set goals for different communication channels, and map out the entire customer journey to identify areas for improvement.
• Create a happy team and happy customers: Show your agents some love. Offer incentives for tough shifts, prioritize work-life balance, and empower them to solve problems without unnecessary escalation.
• Prepare for peak hours: Be proactive. Use downtime to identify at-risk customers and consider outsourcing for unexpected surges. Gamification can also add a fun twist to busy periods.
• Use the right tech the right way: Let AI chatbots handle routine stuff while your team tackles complex issues. Offer seamless transitions between communication channels and keep your knowledge base clean with real-time updates.
• Integrate your systems: Connect your systems. Pre-fill customer information, use a unified ticketing system, and leverage API integrations to give your team a complete picture of each customer.
• Drive with data: Use data to predict staffing needs, identify trends, and experiment with different approaches to constantly improve your customer support.

The Future of 24/7 Customer Support

24/7 support is shaping up to be more proactive, personalized, and technologically advanced. Here’s a quick look at emerging trends:

1. Predictive support: Using AI and machine learning to anticipate and address customer issues before they occur, reducing support volume and improving satisfaction.
2. Video support: Enabling face-to-face interactions for complex issues, adding a personal touch to remote assistance, and improving problem resolution.
3. Augmented reality assistance: Overlaying visual instructions onto a customer’s environment, making complex procedures easier to follow and enhancing remote support capabilities.
4. Personalization at scale: Leveraging AI and data analytics to provide tailored support experiences for each customer, even as the business grows.

These trends are already transforming 24/7 customer service from being merely available to being intelligently responsive, offering the right help at the right time in the most effective way. Businesses that adopt these innovations will well-position themselves to meet changing customer expectations.

Related Article

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If you don’t have 24/7 support, you’re already behind.

Business leaders shouldn’t contemplate the cost of 24/7 support but rather the cost of not providing it. Simply put, providing round-the-clock support is the cost of doing business.

Customers won’t wait for your business hours to get help — they’ll simply go to a competitor. You’re just one Google search away from losing the next sale, which could be worth thousands.

As CX leaders take on a holistic approach to improve customer experience, the fundamentals still matter. Listen to your customers, follow the data, and provide several ways to get live help.

And don’t limit yourself to call centers, either. Unified customer support tools enable you to surpass customer expectations. Plus, you won’t need a massive IT support budget to use them.

When you know your customer’s needs, you can adopt a 24/7 support operation to help customers, partners, and employees at any hour.

Today’s businesses use enterprise-grade contact center services to equip their support and sales teams to handle high call volumes. 

One of the noteworthy contact center providers is Cisco’s Webex Contact Center. It packs a serious punch with advanced features and scalability. But the big question is, “What’s the price tag, and does it really move the needle on ROI?”

Here, we break it all down and look into Webex’s pricing particulars. By the end of this blog, you’ll know if its cost aligns with your budget realities and if there’s a better solution for you.

Cisco Webex Contact Center Pricing Explained

Though Cisco posts some of its other collaboration offerings’ pricing online, it keeps Webex Contact Center’s pricing undisclosed. You’ll need to jump through some hoops — filling out demo request forms and speaking to the company’s sales team — before it discloses any hard numbers.

No public pricing

For some businesses, this lack of transparent pricing from the get-go is a drawback. How can you properly evaluate whether Webex fits your budget if the baseline costs are ambiguous? Smaller teams and start-ups, in particular, may be wary of any solution with opaque pricing.

The upside is that Webex Contact Call Center pricing scales based on your business size and specific needs. 

Key factors that will impact your final quote include:

• The number of agents you need concurrent user licenses for
• Cell center features and capabilities required for your contact routing, workforce management, call recording, and analytics
• Implementation complexity based on existing systems or telephony that needs integration

To give you a rough ballpark figure, a 2022 report said Webex’s Cloud Contact Center pricing was structured something like this:

• Licensing: $150/agent/month
• IVR port license: $150/port/month
• PSTN cost: $12/agent/month
• Installation and onboarding: $75,000
• Support: $3,000/month

For a 40-agent contact center, this comes to around $260,000 for the first year of Webex’s service, or around $190,000 annually, not including installation fees.

Add-ons can increase costs

Cisco offers some notable Webex Contact Center add-on products that can quickly increase your monthly spend beyond its baseline pricing:

• Workforce optimization ($40+/user/month): This suite includes workforce management tools for scheduling shifts, forecasting demands, and managing performance. It also has quality management for monitoring service levels.
• Webex calling integration (from $8/user/month): For an additional fee, you can integrate Webex Contact Center with Cisco’s cloud-based calling solution to enable voice capabilities.
• Digital engagement (usage-based billing): Rather than billing per user, this add-on for advanced digital channels like proactive outbound messaging is billed based on your actual usage volume.

These additional products significantly amplify Webex’s functionality. But they also increase your total price tag — potentially by hundreds or even thousands of dollars monthly depending on your business size. Before signing on the dotted line, you’ll need to carefully evaluate whether the incremental benefits each add-on offers your organization justify the extra investment.

Related Article

How Much Does VoIP Cost? [2024 Pricing Guide]

Other Factors When Considering Webex Contact Center

Of course, no software-buying decision should be based on pricing alone. Let’s look at some other key considerations around the overall experience and value proposition.

Feature innovation

Webex’s suite of features includes Webex Meetings and Webex Calling for inbound and outbound calls. Webex also offers connectivity products such as webinar screen sharing and events management, contact center software, and workspace solutions like voicemail.

However, some users have cited concerns that Cisco Webex isn’t quite on the cutting edge when it comes to rolling out innovative new features and solutions.

Cloud contact center solution competitors like Nextiva, Five9, RingCentral, and Genesys are more modern. The competitors’ offerings are far more advanced, with capabilities like AI, collaborative document-sharing between agents, and tools to improve agent interactions.

If being on the forefront of new contact center technology is a huge priority, you may want to keep an eye on how Webex’s road map and innovation pipeline stack up going forward.

AI/ML integration

Another area where Webex has historically lagged is in AI and ML integration. To be fair, this contact center solution has started implementing some very basic AI functions like intelligent virtual agents and assistants and predictive modeling. But the capabilities are still relatively limited compared with more AI-driven platforms.

If you’re looking to be an early adopter of sophisticated AI within your contact center, Webex may not quite check all those boxes yet compared with other, more disruptive solutions that have invested in ML innovation.

Flexibility and integration

Webex offers strong CRM flexibility and integration. However, user reviews suggest that the platform could improve in its flexibility and the depth of its integration capabilities.

Webex supports a range of on-premises communication channels beyond just business voice — messaging, SMS, video, email, self-service, and collaboration tools. That said, some feedback does suggest that the process of actually deploying new integrations and workflows workflows could be easier. More seamless integration without heavy customization and coding would create a smoother experience.

So, while Webex can do this, there’s still room for improvement in simplifying the setup process and reducing friction points.

User interface and usability

Some user reviews note Webex’s overall interface and ease of use fall short compared with more modern alternatives. The reviewers claim the learning curve is steep, especially for nontechnical staff simply looking to quickly find info and efficiently handle customer cases. Too many disparate features and functionalities are buried in layers of menus.

An overhauled user interface focused on simplicity and intuitiveness could go a long way. Streamlining the agent desktop and the Webex app into a more user-friendly experience would prevent headaches and ensure teams can be productive from day one rather than mired in training.

Why Contact Centers Prefer Nextiva

When you stack up all these factors of cost, innovation, AI integration, flexibility, and usability, it’s no wonder that Nextiva frequently comes out on top for many businesses.

Here’s why Nextiva’s solution often wins out over Webex.

Simple, intuitive user experience

Whereas some knock Webex for being overly complex and clunky, Nextiva’s contact center is universally praised for its simple, modern user interface and ease of use. Visualizations are clear, navigation is intuitive, and nontechnical employees can be up and running quickly without extensive training.

Features are powerful yet streamlined — there’s no bloat to overcomplicate the agent desktop experience. Everything agents need for efficient call handling and case management is surfaced intelligently. No digging through disparate menus and layers of options is necessary just to do basic tasks.

Out-of-the-box integration with key apps

Like Webex, Nextiva integrates with many popular business applications and CRM software right out of the box. But the implementation is often simpler and more turnkey. In particular, Nextiva’s seamless integration with Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics, and other foundational platforms gets high marks.

Rather than complex coding requirements, Nextiva uses low-code integration and recipes to more easily map data flows and workflows between all your systems. The result is quicker deployments without extensive development and testing cycles. You get functionality like click-to-dial, screen pops, real-time syncing and more for streamlining agent efficiency.

Transparent, affordable pricing

One of Nextiva’s biggest advantages over a platform like Webex is its simple, affordable, and transparent pricing across all tiers. All pricing, features, and add-ons are clearly listed up front on its website. You don’t waste time filling out forms and waiting endlessly for custom quotes.

Nextiva’s pricing for a full-featured omnichannel CCaaS platform starts at just $99/user monthly. That’s a considerably lower entry point than Webex’s, as the limited public data on its pricing indicates. 

Even Nextiva’s premium Enterprise UCaaS package, with unlimited participants on voice and video conferencing, call recording, AI voicemail transcription, and single sign-on features, maxes out at $32.95/user/month. That’s highly competitive when you consider Webex’s complicated add-on fees for items like calling integration.

For budget-conscious teams, Nextiva is the much more cost-effective, transparent option — especially for smaller businesses that can’t afford to play opaque enterprise-pricing games.

Award-winning customer support

Beyond pricing and usability advantages, Nextiva frequently gets top marks for its exceptional customer support and service experience. Its support team is available 24/7 over phone, chat, and email to provide timely assistance.

This level of always-on, omnichannel support proves crucial when it comes to a mission-critical platform like your contact center solution. If issues like downtime or system failures occur, you need super-responsive support to resolve problems quickly.

Nextiva has won numerous awards for its support experience, including:

• Stevie Award for Customer Service
• Top-rated product from TrustRadius
• FrontRunner 2024 provider from Software Advice

With so many independent reviewers and analysts validating Nextiva’s service quality, you can deploy it with confidence.

The Verdict: Should You Choose Webex Contact Center?

At the end of the day, there’s no definitive answer on whether Webex Contact Center pricing delivers sufficient value for every business. It truly depends on your specific requirements, budget, and priorities around innovation.

For larger enterprises with sizable budgets and very complex, robust contact center needs, Webex’s depth of features and scalability could justify the investment. Open integration capabilities for CRM software, support for essentially all digital channels, workforce optimization, advanced analytics, and global reach make Webex compelling, particularly if you’re already utilizing Cisco Webex’s broader collaboration ecosystem.

However, for small businesses valuing simplicity and transparency, Nextiva provides a superior price-to-value ratio. Its straightforward pricing with no hidden fees, combined with an incredibly user-friendly experience and award-winning support, makes it tough to beat.

You get all the core functionality for efficient routing and stellar customer interactions — voice, chat, SMS, social channels, self-service, IVR systems, and analytics. You also get tight integration with leading CRM systems and business apps. The monthly cost is very reasonable, with no nickel-and-diming through complicated add-ons or custom-pricing games.

The choice really comes down to your priorities around depth of features versus cost-effectiveness. Whichever provider you prefer, the key is carefully mapping out all requirements now and into the future. Opt for the best solution to empower your teams while fitting your budget.

Related: Cisco Contact Center: Is UCCX Right for Your Business?

Ready to see if Nextiva is the right fit for elevating your customer experience? Book a personalized demo of its straightforward contact center platform to get started. 👇

Customer service has evolved from traditional channels like phone calls and emails and now includes support directly on social media. Social media customer service enables real-time engagement, personalized support, and the potential to convert frustrated posts into loyal customers. 

Managing multiple social media platforms and responding quickly doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Our guide to social media customer service software details how to transform your social media presence into a dynamic customer service hub, making it easier to handle conversations and provide exceptional support. Ready to embrace the power of social media customer service? Let’s explore how the right tools can help you create a winning strategy.

1. Nextiva

Best for most businesses

Nextiva’s social media management platform integrates marketing, engagement, and customer support across various social media channels into one unified dashboard. It supports platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube, with Pinterest coming soon. 

Key features include scheduling and publishing posts, real-time interaction and engagement, and advanced analytics for monitoring social media performance. The platform also offers workflows and automation tools such as an all-in-one inbox, advanced filtering, social tagging, intelligent routing, performance monitoring, and competitor listening. These capabilities help streamline social media management, improve customer interactions, and enhance overall social media presence.

Features 

• All-in-one omnichannel Inbox: View and manage incoming customer reviews in real time from various channels in a unified interface.
• Social tagging and monitoring: Create custom tags to categorize reviews and track keywords across social channels for efficient search and analysis.
• Competitor and social listening: Track brand mentions, conversations, and competitor performance across social media platforms, forums, blogs, and custom sources to stay informed about customer sentiment, industry trends, and areas for improvement.
• Case automation and escalations: Ensure customers never fall through the cracks using automation to elevate issues to senior support reps and managers with complete visibility.

Pricing

Nextiva offers various packages for businesses of all sizes, ranging from standard plans for small businesses to custom plans with all the bells and whistles.   

• Standard: $149 + $99 for each additional user per month, billed annually
• Growth: $149 + $99 for each additional user per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: Custom pricing that includes white-glove service

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2. Sprout Social

Best for mid-sized businesses

Sprout Social provides a unified platform for managing cross-channel customer care on social media. Its centralized workspace puts customer interactions into a single dashboard, allowing agents to monitor and respond without switching interfaces. With tools for social listening, post management, automation, and sentiment analysis, Sprout Social helps businesses effectively engage with their audience and measure performance.

Features 

• Social media publishing: Plan, organize, and deliver social content and campaigns with cross-network scheduling
• Conversation management: Track campaign performance and identify, personalize, and respond to incoming direct messages (DMs)
• Reporting and analytics: Evaluate outcomes with access to social data and customizable reporting tools

Pricing

Sprout Social features pricing for four different plans: 

• Standard: $199 per user per month, billed annually
• Professional: $299 per user per month, billed annually
• Advanced: $399 per user per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: Contact Sprout Social for a custom quote

3. Hootsuite

Best for scheduling and collaboration

Hootsuite is a social media management platform offering a unified dashboard for scheduling posts, interacting with users, and analyzing performance across multiple platforms. Its centralized workspace and integration options allow businesses to connect their CRM systems, marketing tools, and other essential software. Hootsuite’s automation features enable scheduling posts, setting up automated responses, and auto-assigning messages to team members.

Features 

• Centralized dashboard: Manage all your social media accounts from one central dashboard. This includes scheduling posts, responding to comments and messages, and tracking performance. 
• Social media engagement: Respond to comments and messages from various platforms within the Hootsuite interface.
• AI-powered features: Hootsuite’s social media AI writer can help draft content and suggest hashtags.

Pricing

Hootsuite offers three plans: a one-person subscription, team, and customizable enterprise options. 

• Professional: $99 per month (one user), billed annually
• Team: $249 per month (three users), billed annually
• Enterprise: Contact Hootsuite for a custom quote

4. Salesforce Service Cloud

Best for enterprises

Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer service solution that helps businesses with social media management. While Salesforce is primarily recognized for its sales CRM tool, Service Cloud offers omnichannel customer support capabilities that extend to social media channels.

In addition to social media, Salesforce includes email, live chat, and self-service channels. It also provides add-ons like field service and AI tools, as well as seamless integration with Salesforce’s CRM for enhanced customer insights.

Features 

• Social media listening and monitoring: This feature tracks brand mentions, industry conversations, and competitor activity across various social media platforms.
• Social media scheduling: This feature enables you to schedule and publish social media content directly from the Salesforce platform, streamlining your workflow.
• Social media analytics: This feature provides insights into the performance of your social media campaigns, including metrics like reach, engagement, and website traffic generated from social media.

Pricing

Salesforce offers a four-tier pricing structure with an add-on for AI chatbot Einstein. Here are the prices:  

• Starter Suite: $25 per user per month, billed annually
• Professional: $80 per user per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: $165 per user per month, billed annually
• Unlimited: $330 per user per month, billed annually
• Einstein 1 Service: $500 per user per month, billed annually

5. Zendesk

Best for customizations

Zendesk is a customer experience platform that provides omnichannel support. Its ticketing systems help manage conversations across various channels, including social media, with options for basic email support on lower-cost plans and expanded support for phone and chat on higher-tier plans. 

Zendesk AI enhances customer and employee experiences by providing instant responses and streamlining workflows. Its analytics suite offers insights into response times and agent performance, enabling businesses to refine their strategies for a seamless customer experience.

Features 

• Zendesk AI for social media: This service provides AI-powered features like chatbots for social media interactions, including troubleshooting, recommendations, and escalation to human agents.
• Omnichannel agent workspace: This integrates social media channels with other communication channels — like email, live chat, and social media — into a unified platform for agents, providing a complete customer history.
• Unified ticketing system: Funnels all customer interactions from various channels into one system for consistent response management.

Pricing

Zendesk offers five different pricing tiers for its customer service suite. 

• Suite Team: $55 per agent per month, billed annually
• Suite Growth: $89 per agent per month, billed annually
• Suite Professional: $115 per agent per month, billed annually
• Suite Enterprise: Contact Zendesk
• Suite Enterprise Plus: Contact Zendesk

6. Freshdesk

Best for ease of use

Social media customer service tools like Freshdesk streamline communication by allowing teams to manage high volumes of social media inquiries across multiple platforms in one place. Freshdesk features self-service options, automated workflows, advanced ticketing, and intelligent routing to streamline workflows. Additionally, Freshdesk’s analytics tools empower agents to resolve issues quickly and gain valuable insights.

Features 

• Centralized social media management: Freshdesk allows businesses to integrate social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, WhatsApp, Instagram, and X into a unified dashboard.
• Automated workflows: Features like automatic ticket creation for incoming social media messages and intelligent routing can streamline workflows.
• Advanced ticketing: Freshdesk converts social media interactions (comments, messages) into tickets within the platform.

Pricing

Freshdesk offers various packages, from free plans with limited features to enterprise plans with advanced features.  

• Free: $0 per month (up to 10 agents), billed annually
• Growth: $15 per agent per month, billed annually
• Pro: $49 per agent per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: $79 per agent per month, billed annually

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7. Zoho Desk

Best for integrations

Zoho Desk has social monitoring tools that track brand mentions across platforms like Facebook, X, and Instagram, centralizing communication for efficient ticket management. Capabilities include scheduling unlimited posts with a user-friendly content calendar, real-time engagement features, and basic analytics for insights into audience behavior and performance.

Additionally, features like automatic ticket assignments, predefined response templates, and workflow automations streamline support processes.

Features 

• Unlimited scheduled posts: Save time by scheduling social media content in advance for optimal reach and consistent posting.
• Social monitoring: Track brand mentions and customer conversations across social media platforms. 
• Analytics: Track metrics like follower growth, engagement rates, and website traffic generated from social media.

Pricing

Zoho Desk offers affordable pricing tiers. Here are their options: 

• Express: $7 per user per month, billed annually
• Standard: $14 per user per month, billed annually
• Professional: $23 per user per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: $40 per user month, billed annually

Zoho Desk also has a free plan for minimal support needs. 

8. LiveAgent

Best for omnichannel ticketing

LiveAgent offers a unified customer support platform that consolidates email, calls, and social media communication into a single dashboard. Its gamification approach makes customer support engaging by rewarding teams for task completion.

The platform integrates with social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, streamlining workflows with automated routing and responses. Additionally, LiveAgent provides valuable insights through robust reporting capabilities and supports team collaboration with integrations like Slack and WhatsApp.

Features 

• Universal inbox: Centralizes all social media inquiries into a single platform for efficient management and omnichannel support.
• Social media integrations: Connects with popular social media platforms to convert messages and mentions into trackable tickets automatically.
• Productivity tools: Templates and canned responses improve efficiency in social media communication.

Pricing

LiveAgent offers a tiered pricing structure with different plans catering to various business needs. Here’s a breakdown of their pricing. 

• Small: $9 per agent per month, billed annually
• Medium: $29 per agent per month, billed annually
• Large: $49 per agent per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: $69 per agent per month, billed annually

9. HubSpot Service Hub

Best for marketing automation

HubSpot offers comprehensive social media customer service tools within their HubSpot Service Hub platform. Core functionalities include a Social Inbox for unified management of social media conversations, conversation management for direct response and resolution, and social monitoring to track brand mentions and industry discussions.

Additional features include ticketing to convert social interactions into trackable tickets, reporting and analytics for performance insights, and automation for tasks like scheduling posts and pre-written responses.

Features 

• Post scheduling: Plan and schedule your social media posts in advance so that you can publish them at the best times for your audience.
• Keyword monitoring: Alert your agents in real time when brand mentions (or other  keywords) are used across social media platforms.
• Lead tracking: Attribute business value by tracking the leads and customers that your social media marketing generates.

Pricing

HubSpot features different pricing models for businesses of different needs and sizes. Depending on the plan you choose, HubSpot may require a one-time onboarding fee.

• Marketing Hub Starter: $15 per seat per month, billed annually 
• Starter Customer Platform: $15 per seat per month, billed annually
• Service Hub Professional: $90 per seat per month, billed annually
• Service Hub Enterprise: $130 per seat per month, billed annually

HubSpot Service Hub also offers a free plan with limited tools for up to five users.

10. Front

Best for team collaboration

The social customer service platform from Front features a simple, user-friendly interface. Automated workflows handle routing and ticket handoff, ensuring fair workload distribution. It supports omnichannel communication across various channels, including social media, and empowers agents to provide personalized service through customer history profiles and in-app note-taking. Detailed analytics offer insights into response times, resolution rates, and team performance.

Features 

• Centralized inbox: Manage all customer interactions in a single workspace.
• Omnichannel communication: Seamlessly switch between channels while maintaining context for the customer.
• Customer history profiles: Store past interactions with a customer, regardless of channel for personalized responses and a more consistent customer experience.

Pricing

Front’s pricing plans come in four different packages.

• Starter: $19 per seat per month (up to 10 seats), billed annually
• Growth: $59 per seat per month, billed annually
• Scale: $99 per seat per month, billed annually
• Premier: $229 per seat per month (50 seat minimum), billed annually

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Top Features of Social Customer Service Software

The right social media management platform provides businesses with the customer service tools to handle interactions across various social media channels effectively.

Here are a few valuable features to look for:

• Unified omnichannel dashboard: This central hub displays all your social customer interactions in one place. From a single view, you can quickly manage responses to Facebook messages, Instagram mentions, and online reviews without switching between different platforms.
• Social tagging: Categorize incoming messages with custom social tags based on topic, urgency, or product. This allows for better organization and faster routing to the right agents or departments and optimizes reporting and analysis.
• Intelligent routing: Automatically route incoming customer queries or reviews to the best-suited agent or appropriate department to handle, based on expertise and availability. This ensures faster resolution times and improves productivity and efficiency.
• Performance monitoring: Real-time dashboards help management and stakeholders track metrics like response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores to identify areas for improvement and measure the impact of your customer service teams.
• Social listening: Using social listening tools helps you uncover brand mentions, industry trends, and customer sentiment across the social media landscape beyond just responding to messages. This allows you to proactively address potential issues, engage with customers in conversation threads, collect and implement customer feedback, and gain valuable customer insights.
• Advanced ticketing: An intelligent ticketing system streamlines your customer service workflows by converting social media requests into tickets, tracking their progress, and collaborating with team members for fast, accurate resolutions.

Benefits of Social Support Software

Social media customer support software does more than simply help you respond to customer messages and online reviews. It centralizes customer interactions and streamlines workflows, making it easy to track and engage with customers from one place, no matter the social media channel.

Here are a few key benefits of social media customer service software:

• Respond faster: Social media customer service software helps you respond to all social media messages and reviews from one centralized inbox. It streamlines workflows through categorization, tagging, filtering, and intelligent routing, while AI-powered tools assist agents by surfacing instant information and suggesting responses, reducing research and response time.
• Increase customer retention: In addition to faster customer service and social media support, the software enables proactive interactions, personalized responses, and social listening. It fosters a positive community, encourages brand advocacy, and ensures prompt replies, building trust, creating loyal customers, boosting engagement, and increasing sales.
• Track issues and opportunities in real time: With tools that provide real-time social listening, monitoring, and analysis, you can track brand mentions and custom keywords, analyze customer sentiment, and identify trends, ensuring you’re addressing issues and customer inquiries promptly.

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How to Choose the Best Social Media Customer Service Platform

Providing exceptional customer service on social media requires the right tools. Here’s a guide to help you find the right platform to elevate your social customer interactions:

• Which social media channels will you support? Identify which social media channels your customers prefer. A platform that helps you provide fast, convenient customer service where your customers already are helps build customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• What are your business objectives? Set SMART goals for social media customer service and how you will measure success. That means goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Then, decide if the platform has the features and capabilities to reach your defined objectives and customer service metrics and KPIs — such as faster response times, improved customer sentiment, and increased sales.
• Who will be using your social support tools? Think about your business’s growth plans and choose a platform that can adapt to your evolving needs and changing customer preferences and behaviors. Future-proof your operations with an agile social media customer service software that grows seamlessly with your team and your customer base.

Related: How Social Media Customer Service Platforms Help Your Business

Solve Social Customer Service With Nextiva

Choosing the right social media customer service software is crucial for providing fast, efficient support, enhancing customer engagement, and proactively addressing issues before they begin. 

Nextiva provides an AI-powered reputation management platform that offers an all-in-one inbox with advanced ticketing for real-time interaction across social media channels, intelligent routing for efficient team collaboration, performance monitoring, competitor and social listening, and more. Try Nextiva and enhance your customer experience today.

Social Media Customer Service FAQs

Here are answers to common questions about social media customer service.