The choice of the right call center software  for your company is a very important step to help you improve the customer service that you offer  -and subsequently, make your business grow in the long term. Customer experience is one of the most relevant factors in business when it comes to ensuring that potential clients remain loyal to your brand, and therefore you must offer the best service to them in all the steps of the business process -including phone calls.

A call center software has the function of managing and administering the incoming and outgoing calls of the company, either from customers, suppliers or between employees within the same company -in the same way as traditional  call centers used to do. Any company that wants to manage the volume of calls they receive or emit to users, must use a software call center equipped with the latest technology to cover all these needs, because the business communications system is one of the fundamental aspects that companies must take care of, especially if they want to maintain a good reputation towards the customer. 

Today, the cloud has changed the way call centers work. Versions of cloud-focused software are a revolution that attracts small businesses as well as higher capacity traditional call centers. However, there are many things to consider for an entrepreneur who wants to enter this field. The most important task is to remain competitive, which is not the case for everyone. The choice of software can be made according to the functionalities that the company needs, but there are also essential options to ensure the productivity and viability of the call center. There are several effective strategies in terms of productivity. Since it is difficult to know which of these strategies is the most appropriate., it is important to consider the results you want to achieve and make sure your call center software has the all the features you need -being easy to use, intuitive and comprehensive are key factors- to help you grow your business. Here are 5 important features that your call center software must include if you want to offer the best customer service to your clients.

Automatic call distributor

The Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is an essential functionality in a call center, since it manages incoming calls and transfers them correctly. Calls are counted and managed according to predefined instructions based on the caller ID, an external database or any other rule. Automatic distribution ensures fast call processing and customer satisfaction. The ACD also makes it possible to make outgoing calls, transfer calls to another extension and put user data together in different groups, which is a vital function for the smooth running of a call center.

Predictive Dialer

In general, call centers work through two types of call campaigns: Inbound and outbound campaigns. A predictive dialer is an outbound calling system that automatically dials numbers from a list of numbers for either sales or portfolio retrieval purposes. This is an important feature because it is more efficient than dialing in the traditional way. This allows you to identify busy, unanswered or disconnected numbers before the call is assigned to an agent. The predictive dialer allows multiple numbers to be dialed at the same time, increasing productivity.

Interactive Voice Response

An IVR is a technology that allows the caller to get an answer or service by using voice commands or DTMF tones, the already well known “menu options”. Because this function helps consumers and customers to know the products, services and solutions offered, it can be considered one of the most important features within a Call Center. The IVR is used to manage a large volume of calls and optimizes the response given to customers without using the human resources of the company, for example, a customer consulting the expiration date of a policy or the summary of movements of his credit card.

Routing According to Skills

Skills-based routing is the enhanced version of the ACD. With agent-based routing, customer calls are redirected to the most competent agent to meet the specific demand. It can be a matter of language, specialty, or any other specific skill of an agent. It is a vital feature to improve the customer-agent relationship.

Call Queues

From an agent’s point of view, it is important to know which call to deal with first. The “call queues” function allows agents to route calls to an intelligent queue. In addition, many call centers allow their agents to work remotely. Agents can stay connected to the call queue and when a large number of calls arrive simultaneously, this feature allows each agent to remain silent and filter important calls for priority processing.