Prioritizing CX and AX: How Dynamic Routing Can Benefit Your Contact Center

Despite the rise in popularity of other customer communication channels such as social media and live chat, contact centers are more essential than ever before.

Voice chat is still one of the most popular ways for customers to contact a business, as speaking to a human agent is often the easiest way to resolve a query. While new solutions such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) aim to make contact centers more efficient and cost-effective, they often can end up hampering the quality of customer experience (CX) as well. IVR can get in the way of customers reaching human agents, leading to frustration.

It is also important to prioritize your contact center’s agent experience (AX). As shown by Mercier’s US Contact Center & Customer Compensation Survey , there is a 27% turnover rate among entry-level customer agents, suggesting that many aren’t supported sufficiently to feel confident in performing their job. It is important to have systems in place that will help set them up to succeed.

Dynamic Routing (DR) is an effective way to ensure your contact center can flourish, featuring technological solutions that can have a considerable impact on CX and AX. Read on to discover more.

It streamlines the process for agents

One issue that agents often face in contact centers is the sheer number of systems and menus they need to navigate. If your interface doesn’t feel unified, then traversing it can take up a significant amount of an employee’s time, detracting from the time they spend in customer conversations.

DR can help you overcome this problem using unique features such as screen pops – which automatically displays caller information on the agent’s screen, allowing essential information to be given in a non-intrusive manner. Automating processes that customer agents would normally have to carry out manually can help lower stress and improve productivity.

It allows experts to thrive

Another benefit for DR is that it allows experts to excel in the contact center. When IVR reroutes a customer to an agent, it normally does so on a basic level. It rarely considers employees’ specific areas of expertise, simply choosing the first person that is available. Because of this, there is a high chance that the customer will have to be redirected again after speaking to the agent.

DR keeps track of each of your agents’ skills and knowledge areas, ensuring that they are sent the callers they are best qualified to handle. This allows agents to talk about topics they are experts on, ensuring they never feel out of their depth, leading to an increase in positive and productive conversations.

It places the focus on conversations

By removing the previously mentioned obstacles – complicated interfaces and inefficient routing – DR allows customer agents to focus on the most important aspect of their role: having great conversations. As this is the main focus of an agent’s role, and is what customers primarily hope to receive when calling a contact center, it’s not difficult to see how DR can help your employees reach their full potential.

It removes the automated maze

Navigating the IVR maze can be a frustrating experience for customers and can put people off your brand before they even speak to an agent. When people think about voice chat negatively, IVR is often what first comes to mind – waiting patiently as an automated voice reads through a number of options, none of them quite matching your query.

Because this has become such a common experience for consumers when it comes to contact centers, implementing DR is an easy way to stand out from the competition. With the help of its automatic routing, your contact center will come across as a breath of fresh air.

It allows customers to speak to the right person

Research shows that customers believe an employee not being knowledgeable about the product or service they wish to discuss is a key sign of poor customer service.

DR’s intelligent routing allows it to avoid this issue, ensuring customers are always speaking to the person best-qualified to help them available. This could simply be someone who speaks the same language, or who they’ve spoken to in the past, but can go a long way to improving your business’s CX.

Final thoughts

Though IVR technology may seem like an effective way to save your customers time and reduce costs, it is likely to damage your contact center’s performance. By complicating rather than streamlining the process for customers and agents, it will have a negative effect on CX and AX.

DR is able to avoid the issues that dominate IVR systems. By making use of innovative features such as screen pops and automatic routing, it allows both customers and agents to have a more pleasant experience. There is no better contact center solution for improving CX and AX than NewVoiceMedia’s Dynamic Routing.