Your employees are your biggest asset thanks to Odigo Extended Contact Center™

Transformation is the way to meet changing needs 

According to a 2023 ECCCSE report, many European consumers believe customer service has deteriorated in recent years. Customer expectations, influenced by the repercussions of unfavorable economic and political conditions, have risen faster than the ability of many suppliers to meet them. To bridge the gap and repair opinion, companies in general and contact centers in particular need to put customer experience and satisfaction at the heart of their initiatives. 

Adapting to technology and consumer habits 

The most successful contact centers are those that adjust their strategies in line with technological advances. Once called “call centers” when the only possible channel was the telephone, they became “contact centers” after the advent of e-mail and smartphones. 

Today, the best contact centers take into account not only technological evolution, but also social evolution and consumer habits, to perfect their strategies. Indeed, since the arrival of new communication channels (messaging, social networks…) and particularly recently, with the pandemic, the way customers interact has been turned upside down. 

In the retail sector, for example, the adoption of online shopping habits, accelerated by the pandemic has established new norms that are here to stay. Even customers using physical shops often adopt a hybrid approach, using digital touchpoints to research their purchases first. As ecommerce sales continue to grow there is a digital expectation, but ultimately, as more customer service interactions move from face-to-face touchpoints the burden falls on the contact center. The most effective response to this rising pressure? First contact resolution!  

Expand your contact center 

In a world of lightning-fast communications, where complex and/or urgent requests dominate contact centers need to proactively ensure the right conditions for first contact resolution. Customers want access to the skills and expertise straight away, and organizations can respond by adopting an extended contact center approach. 

Today’s technologies make it possible to avoid failed transfers to experts and cycling through the IVR numerous times, which invariably leads to repeat calls, customer repetition, overly long processing times and disjointed experiences. One such technology is a high-performance routing system that takes into account the skills of each advisor. Establishing these direct links between customers and those with the knowledge to actually resolve a query is crucial.  

Making expertise available to customers 

Time to optimize an already well-established approach 

It’s no surprise that hardworking agents, who interact with customers all-day-long, can’t also be expected to be experts in every sub-area of the business. Even with a great onboarding and up-to-date training, front-line agents often need to call on specialist teams or back-office staff to solve a customer problem. 

According to Metrigly 2023, 47% of companies allow people from outside the contact center to participate in resolving customer queries and 30% of employees help out in times of need. Cooperation and teamwork are highly valued soft skills for personal and professional development, as well as for company growth, provided there are boundaries in place to prevent ‘helping out’ from encroaching on an employee’s primary tasks. 

The Odigo Extended Contact Center™ concept 

The idea of bringing consumers and experts together is nothing new. However, companies need simple effective processes and tools to ensure that these communications take place efficiently and can be monitored.   

This is where Odigo Extended Contact Center™ comes in. It provides problem-specific tools that deliver contact center flexibility, reliability and speed. 

Problem:	Solution:
Agents don’t know who is available to help.	Indicate real-time availability of back-office staff by displaying availability status.
Experts don’t have enough history or context to effectively deal with requests.	Provide access to the customer’s summary and detailed context before the interaction even begins.
Interactions with some employees are not recorded, controlled or stored for data optimization.	Monitor all interactions, including advisor-expert and customer-expert interactions, conducted on the same platform.
Customers are frustrated by slow progress and unclear answers.	Enable faster, more accurate resolution thanks to shared context and direct contact with experts

In addition to the operational benefits, organizations also benefit from improved cost efficiency. The solution itself is pay-per-use basis while IT and call transfer costs are also reduced. 

Odigo combines innovation and ease of use 

Well-designed tools make adoption effortless 

The aim of any new tool should be to facilitate the work of its users, and to offer improvements to workplace wellbeing. Often though organizations end up making a compromise between new functionality and ease of adoption to avoid disrupting employees’ workflows. Odigo Extended Contact Center™ is different. 

Odigo Extended Contact Center™ doesn’t drastically change the way any of your employees work, but it does streamline and facilitate communication between departments, teams and individuals. Your teams will save time, optimize their workloads and gain access to the resources they need. 

The offer also includes specific functionalities for each user profile. You can select the most useful tools for each of your employees, avoiding adding unnecessary complexity to their day-to-day roles or their consoles. 

Main features of the offer

• Configuration and availability: allow experts to define and adjust their availability parameters to ensure flexible management of their accessibility. 

• Advanced customer management: explore the customer portfolio view to access interaction insights and contextual details, and the mini-directory for fast, efficient management of essential contacts. 

• Call allocation and transfer: automate the transfer of calls to specific teams and/or reassign unanswered calls at the click of a button. 

• Analysis and monitoring: analyze call data (handling, processing time, etc.) and other key indicators directly in the unified platform. 

A solution that can be integrated with your UCaaS tools 

Odigo Extended Contact Center™ is a complete tool that can be used on its own, offering a common business application for all employees. The solution also integrates with your existing processes or already established unified communication tools such as Microsoft Teams and RingCentral. Allowing your team to enjoy the benefits of the solution without disrupting established working habits.  

In summary:  

• Adapting to the multiplication of channels, technological advances and the growing complexity of interactions is key to providing customers with the service they need.  

• Offer all your customers the expertise they need. Odigo Extended Contact Center™ provides you with a business application so agents and back-office staff can communicate easily to solve customer problems together. 

• Benefit from an application that’s easy to use and optimizes the workload of both agents and back-office staff while concurrently improving monitoring. 

The benefits to your customers and operational efficiency are clear so get in touch with our team to find out how Odigo Extended Contact Center™ can seamlessly fit into your contact center operations.

Contact our experts