All the fanciest contact center technologies are useless if your phones go down or your system gets hacked. Reliability is the cornerstone of every contact center director.
But it’s not as simple as having redundant on-premise equipment anymore. It’s time for enterprises to embrace the new “triple-layered call center hierarchy of reliability,” which addresses your core technology, your security systems, and a dependable workforce.
The Trifecta Elements
The first and foundational element in this triad of success is having a resilient network, i.e., Network Redundancy. There’s nothing scarier than a silent contact center. If your phones go down, you might as well hand in your resignation.
Extreme weather events are only becoming more common, and customer expectations for 24/7/365 service are only going higher. Make sure you have a backup plan (or five) to make sure your calls have alternate routing options when your PSTN hits a snag.
The second key element is fortified security, namely Proactive Security. According to Pindrop’s research, fraud calls increased by 40% in 2022 alone.
We saw what happened when MGM’s and Caesars’ call centers were infiltrated (read the Vox article). Suddenly call center security was on the radar of every executive. In fact, PwC reports that managing cyber risk is a top priority for CEOs, second only to digital and technology risk.
We can no longer leave it to InfoSec to identify every weakness and solution. It’s a contact center leader’s job to contribute to overall security with new tools that protect from fraud and spoofing.
Adding cloud capabilities...also gives you flexibility and agility to respond to cybersecurity threats.
Third, and at the top of the apex, you can make big improvements in operating efficiency when you improve the Agent Experience.
From better schedules to more ergonomic headsets, there are lots of small things you can do to improve agents’ satisfaction. But the biggest gifts are strategic performance metrics, smart filtering, and information tools.
When your agents are supplied with the right tech, your contact center succeeds. Outfitting hybrid and remote agents can be especially challenging, but another plus of cloud-based systems is that they’re built to be location-agnostic.
The Cloud Network Effect
As a contact center pro, this foundational piece will come as no surprise. When you have a reliable network and plenty of plan B (...and on down to Z) options, you’re saving yourself from future headaches. Because it is virtually inevitable that there will be a time when the local network goes down. So having an automatic fallback plan in place ahead of time is key.
Moving to the cloud is not only about preparing for worst-case scenarios, though. You’re also increasing efficiency...
That’s why migrating to the cloud can be such a difference-maker. As of 2023, 37% of enterprises had fully migrated to the cloud according to Thoughtlab: and this trend appears to continue.
Adding cloud capabilities not only gives you resiliency in the face of tech problems and natural disasters, but it also gives you flexibility and agility to respond to cybersecurity threats. And that’s a must for smart risk management.
Plus, emergency calling compliance gets easier when you choose a provider with E-911 capabilities.
Moving to the cloud is not only about preparing for worst-case scenarios, though. You’re also increasing efficiency and giving yourself the chance to plug-and-play with best-in-class contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) platforms.
Whether you’re aiming for a hybrid system with on-premise equipment, or going fully cloud-based, you have more options than ever for creating a streamlined, secure contact center.
Hang Up on Breaches Before They Happen
As we climb higher in the hierarchy of contact center reliability, things get more interesting, because the contact center now sits at the very core of a brand’s security, reputation, and revenue generation.
I hear about contact centers struggling with a double-digit percentage of spam calls on a regular basis. That means agents are actually answering calls to hear about their supposed expiring car warranty over and over, all day long. Only 0.64% of calls may be truly dangerous, but many, many more are a waste of time: and lost revenue according to Pindrop.
If you’re not already, it’s time to start taking advantage of an API that can give you data on these calls, warn you with spoof scores, and filter them out of your agents’ queue.
But it’s not just about cutting down thousands of time-wasting spam calls. It’s now a matter of company security.
There are integrations that will filter all incoming calls and provide spoof and fraud scores so you can reserve your agents’ time for real calls, while greatly reducing the chances of getting voice phishing, or vishing.
Vishing is a big issue. It was the method of attack in both the Caesars and MGM cases. Because this style relies on social engineering, it’s difficult for busy agents to identify fraudsters once they’re on the phone. Automatically filtering calls beforehand helps.
Call verification tools can hit the budget of either a chief technology officer (CTO) or a chief information security officer (CISO), because implementing a fraud filtering system is in the interest of the entire organization. Whereas contact centers used to be self-contained divisions, they now call for cross-functional collaboration at the executive level.
Agents perform best when they get the right customers on the line, and those customers are in the right frame of mind.
Finally, take security to the next level by considering voice authentication tools. Contact centers have been using knowledge-based authentication (KBAs) for many decades now, and it’s time to move beyond asking customers for the name of the street they grew up on.
Here’s why. KBAs are basically security theater; they make it seem like we’re doing something to keep our data secure. Because we all know how easy it is to find enough personal information on a person to pass a KBA screening.
Voice authentication, on the other hand, is a true security measure. And it makes life easier for your callers too. Nobody calls to take an oral exam. If that wasn’t enough motivation to move beyond KBAs, Pindrop found that when you remove one to two questions, you save 13 to 25 seconds per call.
Become Your Agents’ Long-Term Career Plan
Let’s deeper-dive into the agent experience. Cutting spam calls helps keep agents around. Call verification filters make a huge difference. They improve agents’ tickets-per-day metrics, and they make for a more pleasant workday.
Similarly, smart call routing benefits customers but also employees. You can’t blame customers for being frustrated when they’ve been stuck in IVR menus, circling through dead-ends, or worst of all, getting disconnected and having to redial. Agents perform best when they get the right customers on the line, and those customers are in the right frame of mind.
Finally, and let’s face it, employees, like agents, do typically prefer to work-from-home (WFH). Can you blame them? WFH eliminates the costly, draining, time-consuming, and risky commutes, both from accidents and dangerous disease exposures, but also from attacks like in parking lots and transit stops for those on evening and night shifts.
It used to be a hassle to set up agents to WFH. Then JetBlue proved the model with its WFH agents in Utah.
Not only did creating these flexible jobs benefit hard-working employees who needed them, it was a great boon to the company, increasing agent productivity by 25%. And that was 20 years ago: before the advent of today’s advanced cloud-based systems, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic WFH experience.
Now there’s no excuse for maintaining a rigid, in-office contact center workforce. Contact centers can harness best CCaaS providers while tapping specialty tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (also SEE CHART 1).
Are You Ready for Change?
Running a successful contact center used to be about staffing phones, cutting call time, and reducing time to resolution. Those are still important, but there’s a new trifecta of requirements that goes further.
When you stack the value of a great agent experience on top of secure systems and a redundant network, you achieve true reliability. The kind of reliability that catapults your contact center to the forefront of brand preservation: and turns the contact center into a value-creator for the entire enterprise.