As AI’s presence in our daily applications increases, the technology keeps getting smarter. Consider chatbots, for example. When they were first introduced, they responded based on how they were programmed for predefined inputs. 

Chatbots in 2024, however, use AI to understand and respond to any message that comes in, just like humans. Chatbots are perfectly capable of simulating human conversations with the help of conversational AI. 

Tech geeks can quickly tell the difference between chatbots and conversational AI. However, many people see them as similar and often use them interchangeably. 

Conversational AI and Chatbots: What Are They?

Simply put, chatbots are the most popular application of conversational AI. Let’s dive deeper to explore more about why they’re different. 

Conversational AI

Conversational AI is an umbrella term for technologies that help computers converse like humans. Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) assist conversational AI in helping computers understand and respond to customer queries while learning from every interaction. 

Conversational AI is still in its initial stage; in the future, it might have a human-like consciousness that would solve a broad range of problems. However, at present, it’s highly beneficial in:

• Increasing work productivity: Many contact centers use conversational AI software to make their agents more productive. The technology answers FAQs, cross-sells products, or gives simple advice while agents focus on the critical issues on their plates, delivering faster resolution. 
• Improving accessibility: Conversational AI applications use text-to-speech technology to dictate or translate the output into the required language easily, reducing entry barriers for users who work with assistive technology. 
• Automating workflows: Customer-facing teams can use conversational AI’s workflow automation while onboarding or between sales and service handoffs. Some businesses also leverage conversational AI as voice assistants in their interactive voice response systems, where they route calls based on customer responses and agents’ availability and skill set. 

Conversational AI simplifies the way people interact with devices and interfaces. On the business front, it helps companies reduce the time and effort of using contact centers to address repetitive queries. It makes them more efficient and productive in handling larger customer or prospect interaction volumes with limited resources. 

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What Is Conversational AI and How Does It Work?

Chatbots

Chatbots are computer programs that simulate conversations with humans through messages or voice commands. There are two types of chatbots: rule-based and AI-powered. 

Rule-based chatbots, also known as decision-tree bots, leverage a series of defined rules to interact with users. They solve common problems, and their rules are aligned with delivering the best solutions to those problems. These bots map conversational patterns like a flow chart. They’re designed by predicting the conversational flow the bot would have and how it would respond to it. These bots work within the scenarios you train them for. 

AI-powered chatbots, on the other hand, understand a query’s context using NLP and respond accordingly. These AI agents have natural language understanding and natural language generation functionality that help them create responses. The agents leverage ML to improve with every interaction, helping them deliver more thoughtful answers as they mature. 

Below are some ways chatbots help businesses:

• Support customers: Contact or call center teams have more time to address critical issues when text-based conversational AI chatbots address customers’ simple, repetitive queries. It reduces wait times while improving the overall customer experience. 
• Generate leads: Users can leverage chatbots for lead generation. A chatbot becomes a text-based virtual agent that helps prospects on your website get answers to their queries. The chatbot can help a prospect set up a demo or navigate to specific content that can best address their queries. 
• Perform simple tasks: Chatbots help customers in e-commerce know their order status, schedule appointments in the healthcare sector, or deliver credit card bills in the finance industry. When they go beyond simple tasks and perform activities like reminding you about a coming deadline, chatbots transform themselves into intelligent virtual assistants. 

You might see a thin line between conversational AI platforms and chatbots. Think of chatbots as one type of conversational interface where bots receive and respond to user questions using AI, simulating human interactions. However, this is also true in the case of AI chatbots. Rule-based chatbots are completely different from conversational AI. 

Key Differences Between Conversational AI and Chatbots

Take a look at these differing aspects of both technologies:

Complexity

Conversational AI technology is much more complex compared to traditional chatbots. The former uses ML to simulate conversations similar to interactions in human language.

On the other hand, rule-based bots rely on preprogrammed responses to respond to customers. 

Understanding

Conversational AI apps can easily detect the user intent behind a query and adapt their responses accordingly. As AI systems deliver and improve their understanding of user inputs with time, they deliver a better user experience. 

In contrast, rule-based chatbots might struggle with complicated questions or deviations from scripted interactions. In such cases, chatbots hand over the conversation to a human agent who can better assist the customer. 

However, when these handovers don’t happen seamlessly, it creates a poor customer experience. 

Learning

Conversational AI learns from previous user interactions and improves over time using its ML capabilities. This helps the chatbot adapt to users’ messages as it has more interactions. 

However, if you’re working with a traditional chatbot, you’ll have to make manual updates to help the bot improve its responses. 

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Strengths and Weaknesses of Conversational AI Solutions and Chatbots

Below are some of the strengths and weaknesses of the two technologies that should help you choose the best solution for your needs: 

Strengths of conversational AI

Conversational AI solutions simulate natural and engaging human-like conversations. When you integrate conversational AI solutions with your CRM or customer data platforms, they create highly personalized responses based on previous conversations. 

The technology is capable of handling complex questions and requests. However, when complexity goes beyond the scope of conversational AI, it allows the user to talk to a human agent. These applications make the transition seamless so customers don’t experience recognizable interruptions in conversations. 

Moreover, conversational AI agents improve with time through ML, helping them better navigate customers’ complex requests. 

Weaknesses of conversational AI

Conversational AI requires a significant upfront investment to develop and train. Some third-party applications can shorten this period, but it depends on budget constraints. 

However, these investments have more returns when you consider how the conversational AI agent can automate complex inquiries and more complicated workflows for you. The return on investment will manifest in the increased efficiency and productivity of your customer-facing teams. 

Conversely, conversational AI might not be suitable for all types of interactions. For example, if you have set conversational flows that you want to automate, a rule-based chatbot will better suit your use cases and help you maintain control over budgets. 

Strengths of chatbots

In some use cases, traditional chatbots are better than conversational AI chatbots. They have unique benefits such as ease of setup and cost-effectiveness. You can trust them to handle routine tasks for you or respond to common FAQ from customers or employees. 

Users can easily add these chatbots to websites, messaging applications, and other channels to improve customer service efficiency. 

If your support teams don’t usually receive complex requests to address or want to automate responses to only specific topics, chatbots will be a suitable option for your use case. 

Weaknesses of chatbots

Chatbots have a limited understanding of user intent, leading to frustrating experiences for users when they input complex questions. The responses from a rule-based chatbot might feel repetitive and impersonal, making it a less engaging and monotonous interaction for customers. 

Basic chatbot software programs learn manually, making real-time adaptation based on live interactions difficult. 

If you’re seeking a chatbot for customer support use cases, it’s advisable to go with AI chat support. Predicting the complexity of requests you’ll get when delivering an omnichannel conversational experience is tricky.

How to choose the best platform for your business

You should consider a few things when choosing the best platform to use in a business: 

• Complexity: If you deal with simple and repetitive inquiries, it’s best to use a simple chatbot. However, as the complexities of your inquiries increase, so does the need for conversational AI to support customers with more personalization. 
• Budget: Determine how much you are willing to spend. Conversational AI will require a significant upfront investment. 
• Scalability: Consider how your needs might change in the near future. Think about your expansion plans and how you anticipate your customer base to grow. Account for the complexities that can arise in the future, like payment policies for different geographies or return policies for different categories of products you might add. Conversational AI scales well as the business grows.

As AI evolves, we’ll likely see hyper-personalization of interactions becoming an expectation of your customers. Conversational AI will help you cater to this and have a future-proof solution for your business. 

Power Your Customer Conversations With Nextiva

Both conversational AI and chatbots have different strengths and weaknesses depending on their use cases in a business. You can choose the solution that best aligns with your company’s needs based on your use case. 

Ideally, you should choose a solution that delivers the best conversational AI and chatbot capabilities. Such a solution will be future-proof when your company grows and customer expectations of AI bots change over time. 

Nextiva delivers the best of conversational AI and chatbots to power your customer interactions at scale.

Plenty of great options exist for companies looking for a new contact center solution. In fact, there are so many that it can be hard to narrow down the options. So, which ones have the features, scalability, and functionality your business needs?

To help make your decision easier, we’ve taken 20 of the top call center service providers for US-based businesses and broken down their strengths, limitations, features, and overall rankings. Take a look, and see what call center companies best fit your business.

Nextiva

G2 rating: 4.5/5 (3,150 reviews)

Located in Scottsdale, Arizona, with over 1,000 employees, Nextiva is a major player in the telecommunications and contact center space. Nextiva offers cloud-based communications and collaboration, unified communications as a service (UCaaS), and VoIP phone systems for small businesses and large enterprises.

Customers love Nextiva for its ease of use, wide array of high-quality contact center and communications features, and top-tier customer care. Nextiva pricing starts at $18.95 per user per month, making it a competitively priced option.

Nextiva’s AI-powered analytics and automation features include virtual assistants, call analytics, and advanced interactive voice response (IVR) with conversational AI. Additionally, Nextiva’s platform integrates with top customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics.

Genesys

G2 rating: 4.3/5 (1,346 reviews)

Genesys, located in Menlo Park, California, is one of the largest contact center companies. It has over 5,000 employees and is a leader in high-end omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions, with pricing beginning at $75 per user per month.

One of Genesys’ biggest selling points is its focus on journey orchestration and experience as a service. The goal is to make the customer journey smooth and painless and provide an empathetic customer experience.

Genesys offers a cloud contact center with a wide range of features. These include omnichannel customer engagement tools, AI-driven analytics, workforce optimization tools, and integrations with CRM platforms, such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and Freshdesk.

Five9

G2 rating: 4.0/5 (389 reviews)

Five9, headquartered in San Ramon, California, is a cloud-based contact center solution provider with over 1,000 employees. It boasts end-to-end digital engagement, analytics, and workforce optimization, which helps it stand as a leading CCaaS provider.

Five9’s cloud contact center has several useful capabilities, including intelligent routing, predictive dialing, and robust reporting and analytics. It also offers AI-driven automation to enhance agent productivity, such as conversational and generative AI chatbot solutions and interaction summarization.

NICE CXone

G2 rating: 4.3/5 (1,599 reviews)

NICE, located in Hoboken, New Jersey, is a customer experience AI platform and CCaaS provider with over 3,000 employees. The NICE CXone cloud contact center platform is designed to streamline contact center operations and create a quality user experience.

NICE CXone uses AI-powered tools to improve customer interactions, with Enlighten Copilot assisting call center agents and Enlighten Autopilot facilitating customer self-service. Its contact center platform also includes workforce optimization tools, omnichannel routing, and analytics and performance management to keep contact centers running at their best.

Zendesk

G2 rating: 4.3/5 (5,858 reviews)

Based in San Francisco, California, Zendesk is a CRM vendor that recently added CCaaS capabilities. It provides companies with messaging, workforce engagement, AI and automation tools, and more.

Zendesk is known for its CRM capabilities and integrated customer support solutions, including multichannel communication, customizable workflows, and robust analytics.

Recently, Zendesk launched several AI-powered automation features, including AI agents for customer support services, Agent Copilot to assist contact center agents, and AI-powered workforce engagement management.

Talkdesk

G2 rating: 4.4/5 (2,212 reviews)

Talkdesk, which is located in San Francisco, California, is a global cloud contact center provider with over 2,000 employees. Talkdesk provides contact centers for a wide range of vertical markets, including health care and financial services.

Talkdesk offers a cloud-native contact center with AI-enhanced features, using AI for omnichannel engagement, self-service, analytics, and more. It also provides omnichannel support to help customers across all touchpoints, real-time reporting and analytics, and workforce management tools to keep employees engaged and efficient.

RingCentral

G2 rating: 4.0/5 (132 reviews)

RingCentral, headquartered in Belmont, California, is a UCaaS and CCaaS provider with over 3,000 employees. Its offerings include RingCX, an AI-first contact center designed for voice, chat, and digital communication channels, and RingCentral Contact Center, a more advanced and customizable contact center solution.

RingCentral is known for its omnichannel contact center, which integrates with many popular business apps, such as Microsoft Teams and WhatsApp. The company also offers real-time analytics and reporting to provide a full view of the contact center environment.

RingCentral has been focusing on adding AI and machine learning capabilities to its platform and providing AI-based workforce engagement and support before, during, and after calls.

8×8

G2 rating: 4.0/5 (192 reviews)

8×8, located in Campbell, California, is a contact center and cloud communications company with over 1,500 employees. Its offerings are built primarily for midsized businesses and include cloud-based voice, video, contact center, and unified communications.

8×8’s contact center solution includes integrated voice, video, chat, and omnichannel routing. It also has AI-driven analytics, including speech analytics and workforce optimization tools, to help keep contact centers fully staffed and employees properly scheduled.

Avaya

G2 rating: 4.1/5 (177 reviews)

Avaya, headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey, is a contact center provider with around 8,000 employees. It offers cloud, hybrid, and on-premises contact center solution options, so organizations can choose the model that best suits their business.

Avaya’s contact center solution, the Avaya Experience Platform, is an omnichannel offering that enables agents to help customers on their channel of choice — voice, video, chat, email, social media, and so on.

It’s available as a private cloud, public cloud, or on-premises solution and offers advanced analytics, workforce engagement management, and AI automation and orchestration tools.

Cisco Contact Center

G2 rating: 4.4/5 (Express) and 4.1/5 (Enterprise)

With over 79,000 employees, Cisco is one of the biggest companies on this list. Located in San Jose, California, Cisco offers a unified contact center in cloud or on-premises solutions.

Cisco’s contact center offerings include Webex Contact Center, Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise. Of those, only Webex Contact Center is cloud-based. The others are on-premises solutions for companies with different contact center needs.

All of Cisco’s offerings include integrated AI and machine learning capabilities as well as advanced security features. The company also has omnichannel contact center capabilities, so businesses can meet their customers wherever they are.

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Freshdesk

G2 rating: 4.1/5 (136 reviews)

Freshdesk is a product from Freshworks, a customer service and CRM software company located in San Mateo, California, with over 4,000 employees.

Freshdesk Contact Center is an all-in-one contact center solution designed to make calls from within Freshdesk and convert calls to tickets. It integrates seamlessly with the other Freshworks solutions, including its CRM platform, and includes AI-powered chatbots, omnichannel support, and reporting and analytics tools to help improve productivity.

Salesforce Service Cloud

G2 rating: 4.3/5 (3,803 reviews)

Salesforce is best known for its CRM software, but it also has its own customer support platform. Salesforce Service Cloud is an AI-powered workspace designed to support customers across email, phone chat, messaging, self-service, and more while routing work to the best team member for the job.

Salesforce, which is located in San Francisco, California, is a large organization with over 70,000 employees. Salesforce Service Cloud natively integrates with Salesforce CRM and provides comprehensive analytics and workforce management tools alongside its omnichannel customer support features.

Vonage Contact Center

G2 rating: 4.1/5 (64 reviews)

Vonage, located in Holmdel, New Jersey, offers an integrated UCaaS and CCaaS solution. Vonage’s contact center platform is a cloud-based omnichannel solution that leverages AI for self-service, agent assistance, postcall analytics, and more.

Vonage Contact Center is also known for its advanced analytics and reporting as well as its Agent UX features designed to gamify the contact center experience. It also integrates with CRM solutions and platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.

Alvaria (Formerly Aspect Via)

G2 rating: 4.2/5 (260 reviews)

Located in Westford, Massachusetts, Alvaria is an omnichannel call center software company with over 1,800 employees. Its cloud call center solution, formerly Aspect Via, boasts easy deployment and scalability to support growing businesses.

Like many others on this list, Alvaria’s solution offers performance analytics, workforce management, and omnichannel customer engagement features. These include supervisor tools like call recording and customizable interaction scoring, analytics built on real-time data, and postcontact surveys to measure customer satisfaction.

LiveAgent

G2 rating: 4.5/5 (1,489 reviews)

LiveAgent is a smaller company with around 100 employees that’s located in New York City. It offers an all-in-one help desk solution, including omnichannel support.

LiveAgent’s call center services include tools for help desks, live chat, ticketing, social media, and self-service options. It also has comprehensive reporting and analytics and a wide array of integrations, including WhatsApp, Slack, WordPress, Shopify, and Mailchimp.

UJET

G2 rating: 4.7/5 (972 reviews)

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, UJET is another smaller company. It has around 300 employees.

UJET offers a cloud-native contact center with omnichannel communications. Its AI and automation features include virtual agents and agent assist, and it integrates with CRM systems like Salesforce, Kustomer, and Zendesk. Additionally, UJET offers real-time analytics and reporting to help supervisors stay alert and ready to help agents at a moment’s notice.

3CLogic

G2 rating: 4.3/5 (34 reviews)

3CLogic is also a smaller organization with around 100 employees. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, it offers AI-powered CX cloud contact center solutions designed to improve customer service and customer relationships.

Like other options on this list, 3CLogic has omnichannel routing, comprehensive analytics, and integrations with different CRM systems. These include task automation via conversational AI and self-service portals, intelligent routing (including VIP routing), and automated QA processes that monitor customer sentiment, best practice adherence, and keyword usage.

Sharpen

G2 rating: 3.8/5 (36 reviews)

Sharpen, which has over 100 employees, is a CCaaS provider located in Indianapolis, Indiana. It offers a cloud-native contact center with omnichannel capabilities that’s designed to simplify the contact center experience for more efficient call resolutions.

Sharpen’s contact center includes AI and automation tools designed to eliminate routine tasks and create a personalized customer experience. As with other contact centers on this list, it includes omnichannel capabilities, real-time analytics, and CRM integrations to help make each interaction more efficient and lead to a positive resolution.

Dialpad

G2 rating: 4.3/5 (245 reviews)

Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Dialpad is an AI-powered cloud communications company with over 700 employees. It offers both UCaaS and CCaaS with voice, video, and messaging integrations.

The AI capabilities of Dialpad AI Contact Center include real-time transcriptions, agent assist tools that automatically provide input and suggestions during calls, and sentiment analysis.

It also integrates with popular business apps, including Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Outlook, Zapier, and Salesforce.

CallTrackingMetrics

G2 rating: 4.5/5 (686 reviews)

CallTrackingMetrics, located in Severna Park, Maryland, is a conversation analytics solutions company with around 100 employees. It provides no-code integrations with popular business apps and is designed to help marketing and sales teams.

As the name suggests, CallTrackingMetrics specializes in call tracking and analytics. Like other providers on this list, it also offers AI and automation features and workforce management tools.

What to Look for in a Contact Center Provider

Looking at the list of CCaaS providers, you can see certain recurring elements. Many contact center vendors are investing in AI, providing multichannel or omnichannel communications, integrating with CRM platforms, and offering robust analytics.

However, to understand which contact center vendor is right for you, you should look a bit closer to see where each one truly stands out.

Features

The first thing to look for in a contact center solution is features that can improve your contact center operations.

Important features include:

• Omnichannel capabilities that enable your agents to support customers over voice, email, chat, social media, and more
• Automatic call distribution to efficiently route calls to available agents and reduce wait times
• IVR menus to give callers self-service options
• Call recording and analytics to improve quality monitoring and oversight
• Reporting and dashboards that let supervisors track performance metrics

Scalability

If you have a growing business, you need a contact center that can scale with you. Consider how easy it is to scale the contact center, and decide if it can keep up with your company’s growth and call volume.

For instance, cloud platforms don’t require any additional hardware or equipment, which makes them significantly easier to scale than on-premises solutions. So, if you’re looking for a flexible, scalable solution, a cloud option will be your best bet.

Security 

When handling important customer information or other sensitive information, you need to ensure its security. Check that the contact center provides robust data security measures and meets all major security standards.

This is particularly important in regulated industries and fields with specific security requirements, such as HIPAA compliance rules for health care companies. You’ll need to make sure the contact center platform meets those particular compliance requirements.

Integrations

Most contact center platforms offer integrations with popular CRM applications, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Consider all the tools and apps your contact center agents use daily, from calendars to email apps to payment processing.

Integrating your contact center with these apps will help improve efficiency and reduce the need for agents to constantly switch from one screen to another.

Contact center integrations can help agents instantly sync data, access information, log phone calls, and more, so you’ll want a platform that integrates with your workers’ tools and applications.

Ease of use

No matter how many features a contact center platform has, it won’t do your agents any good if it’s not user-friendly. Ease of use is an essential aspect of any contact center solution, as it ensures agents can do their jobs quickly and efficiently.

The right contact center solution offers a simple and intuitive dashboard interface, making it easy for agents to access the features and tools they need and reducing the time they spend switching between tabs and searching for tools. An easy-to-use system also impacts agent training and onboarding, enabling agents to get up and running quickly.

Pricing

Contact centers are essential for everything from lead generation and market research to technical support and telemarketing. However, businesses have budgets to think about, so it’s important to consider how much you’re spending and what you’re getting for it.

The various contact center solutions on the market all have different price points, with more feature-rich platforms costing more. Many platforms have optional add-ons, which can increase their cost far outside your projected budget if you’re not careful.

This is why you must look for a solution with a transparent pricing model that fits your budget. A predictable recurring cost can help ensure your contact center stays within your price range with no nasty surprises or hidden fees.

Related: How to Improve Your Contact Center Workforce Management

Why Businesses Choose Nextiva 

Even with all the contact center vendors out there, one name stands above the rest: Nextiva.

Nextiva offers a top-ranked AI-powered contact center solution that’s flexible, scalable, and powerful. Its inbound and outbound call center tools with blended omnichannel communications capabilities allow your agents to manage customer inquiries on any channel, including phone, SMS, email, and social media.

Additionally, Nextiva provides a wide range of services designed to improve efficiency, save money, and boost customer satisfaction. These include workforce optimization, skills-based routing, unified reporting across channels, and quality monitoring and coaching tools.

Of course, Nextiva’s AI features also help agents and customers alike. Nextiva’s contact center can improve efficiency and satisfaction with automatic transcription and summary tools, task automation, speech-enabled IVR that can act as a virtual receptionist, dynamic scripting, and much more.

If you want to improve your contact center workforce management, you should know that the modern customer demands quick and efficient contact center service across multiple channels.

In fact, over half of retail customers with urgent issues prefer phone support, and most call centers aim to answer 80% of calls within 20 seconds. Around 62% of Millennials and 75% of Gen-Z customers prefer self-service options, even when human customer support is available.

With nearly half of users contacting a brand on social media expecting a response within 60 minutes, it’s clear that optimizing your workforce across all channels is vital to meet customer expectations, which is where Contact Center Workforce Management (WFM) comes into play.

Here, we discuss Contact Center WFM in detail, diving into the best ways for you to improve your WFM and deliver outstanding customer experience.

What Is Contact Center Workforce Management?

Contact Center Workforce Management (WFM) is an approach to aligning your staff and resources to meet your business objectives. You do this by optimizing scheduling and performance based on several critical factors to ensure that your contact center runs smoothly and efficiently, such as:

• Agent availability: Agent availability means having the right number of agents available at the right times to handle customer inquiries and support requests. Accurately forecasting contact volume based on historical data ensures you have enough staff to meet demand without overstaffing and incurring unnecessary costs.
• Forecasted contact volume: By analyzing past data and trends, you can predict how many customer interactions you’ll have in the future. This allows you to plan ahead and adjust your staffing levels accordingly. Forecasting helps you avoid understaffing, which can lead to long wait times and frustrated customers, as well as overstaffing, which can result in wasted resources and increased labor costs.
• Revenue targets: By strategically scheduling your top-performing agents during peak hours or for high-value interactions, you can maximize your revenue potential. This may involve considering factors such as agent skills, experience, and performance metrics when creating schedules.

The ultimate goal of Contact Center WFM is to make sure that you have the right number of agents with the right skills available at the right time to handle customer interactions efficiently and effectively. This means striking a balance between meeting customer needs and expectations while also optimizing your workforce to control costs and maximize productivity.

How Contact Center WFM Works

So, how does Contact Center workforce management actually work? Let’s break it down into its key components:

Forecasting

Forecasting is the foundation of successful WFM. It involves analyzing historical data to predict future customer interactions accurately. By examining past call volumes, email inquiries, chat sessions, and other contact types, you can identify patterns and trends that help you anticipate future demand.

Effective forecasting takes into account various factors, such as:

• Seasonality: Consider how your contact volume fluctuates during different times of the year, such as holidays or peak sales periods.
• Business changes: Account for any planned promotions, product launches, or other initiatives that may impact customer contacts.
• External factors: Monitor external events, such as weather conditions or economic changes, that may influence customer behavior.

By creating accurate forecasts, you can ensure that you have the right number of agents available to handle the expected volume of customer interactions.

Scheduling

Once you have your forecasts in place, the next step is to create schedules that optimize your workforce resources. Agent scheduling involves assigning agents to specific shifts and tasks based on their skills, availability, and the anticipated workload.

During your scheduling process, consider the following factors:

• Agent skills: Identify the specific skills and knowledge required for each type of customer interaction and ensure that the right agents are scheduled for the appropriate tasks. For example, if you have a high volume of technical support inquiries, schedule agents with strong technical knowledge during those peak times. Your WFM team must reflect your customer needs, and WFM software solutions help give you this insight.
• Availability preferences: Consider agent preferences for shift times, days off, and break periods. When possible, accommodating these preferences can improve agent satisfaction and reduce turnover.
• Service level agreements (SLAs): Ensure that your schedules align with your SLAs, which define the expected response times and resolution targets for customer interactions. For instance, if your SLA requires 80% of inbound calls to be answered within 20 seconds, your schedules should reflect the necessary staffing levels to meet that goal.

Optimized schedules balance meeting customer needs, optimizing agent workflows, and controlling operational costs.

Intraday Management

Even with the most accurate forecasts and well-planned schedules, unexpected events can disrupt your contact center operations. Intraday management involves monitoring real-time performance and making adjustments as needed to ensure that you meet your bottom-line service level objectives.

Some common intraday management activities include:

• Monitoring call volume and other key metrics in real-time to identify any deviations from the forecast.
• Adjusting agent breaks and lunches to ensure adequate coverage during peak periods.
• Redeploying agents from one channel to another to handle unexpected spikes in volume.
• Offering voluntary time off or overtime to agents based on real-time staffing needs.

By proactively managing your contact center operations throughout the day, you can maintain a high level of service quality and responsiveness while also meeting employee satisfaction goals.

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Performance Management

Contact Center WFM goes beyond ensuring that the right number of agents are available at the right times. It also involves managing and optimizing agent performance to deliver the best customer experience.

Performance management in a contact center typically includes:

• Setting clear performance goals and expectations for agents based on their roles and skill levels.
• Monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) such as average handle time, first-call resolution rate, and customer satisfaction scores.
• Providing regular feedback and coaching to agents to help them develop their skills and improve employee engagement and your employee experience.
• Identifying top performers among your contact center agents and recognizing their achievements to boost morale and motivation.
• Implementing training and development programs to enhance agent knowledge and capabilities.

By continuously monitoring and managing agent performance, you can ensure that your contact center consistently delivers high-quality customer service, like Nextiva:

Reporting & analytics

You need access to comprehensive reporting and analytics to make informed decisions and continuously improve your call center workforce management processes. By collecting and analyzing data from various sources, such as your automatic call distributor (ACD), customer relationship management (CRM) system, and quality monitoring tools, you can gain valuable insights into your contact center performance.

Some key areas to focus on in your reporting and analytics include:

• Forecast accuracy: Compare your forecasted contact volume and handle times to actual results to identify areas for improvement.
• Schedule adherence: Monitor how well agents adhere to their scheduled shifts and identify any patterns of absenteeism or tardiness.
• KPI trends: Track key performance metrics over time to identify trends and opportunities for optimization.
• Customer feedback: Analyze customer satisfaction surveys and other feedback channels to gauge the effectiveness of your WFM strategies in delivering a positive, unified customer experience.

Contact Center vs. Call Center WFM

You may be wondering how Contact Center WFM differs from traditional Call Center WFM. 

While there is some overlap, there are also key differences:

As you can see, Contact Center WFM takes a more holistic view of customer interactions, while Call Center WFM is more narrowly focused.

Benefits of a Unified WFM Solution

So, why should you consider a unified Contact Center WFM solution? There are several key benefits:

Improved efficiency

You can streamline processes and centralize data management by managing all your customer interactions through a single platform. This eliminates the need to toggle between multiple systems and reduces the risk of errors or missed information.

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Enhanced visibility

A unified WFM solution provides a bird’s-eye view of your entire contact center operation. You can easily see how all your channels are performing and identify areas for improvement.

Optimized resource allocation

With a unified platform, you can schedule the right agents with the right skills across all channels. This helps optimize your resources and ensures customers receive the best possible service.

Reduced costs

Implementing a unified WFM solution can help reduce costs by eliminating the need for multiple systems and licenses. You can manage your entire operation more efficiently with a single platform.

Improved agent experience

A unified WFM solution provides a consistent omnichannel experience for your agents, regardless of which channel they’re working on. This can help improve agent satisfaction and retention by providing clear expectations and performance management across the board.

Making Contact Center WFM Work for You

As you can see, Contact Center WFM software is a powerful tool for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your customer service operation. By forecasting accurately, scheduling optimally, managing in real-time, and tracking performance, these workforce management tools help ensure you provide the best possible service to your customers.

Implementing a strong WFM strategy can help you:

• Reduce wait times: By ensuring the right number of agents are available at the right times, you can minimize customer wait times and improve satisfaction.
• Improve resolution: By having the right agents handle the right interactions, you can improve first-call resolution rates and reduce the need for follow-ups.
• Boost operational efficiency: Forecasting and scheduling automation through call center software will save time and resources, allowing your team to reduce queues, and focus on serving customers.

And with a unified workforce management software like Nextiva’s, you can accomplish all of this and more. Our all-in-one communication solution includes built-in WFM tools to help you optimize your contact center operation. From intuitive scheduling to real-time analytics, Nextiva provides everything you need to manage your workforce effectively.

So why wait? Start optimizing your Contact Center WFM today and see the difference it can make for your business. With the right strategies and tools in place, you can provide exceptional service to your customers while boosting efficiency and reducing costs.

Modernize your team with Nextiva’s Workforce Engagement Management solution: One platform for customer and employee satisfaction.

Related: Mastering Workforce Management in Your Call Center

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from customer service software, which can help facilitate customer interactions, streamline customer service from the support side, and provide invaluable insights to improve the customer experience.

And because every business is unique, it’s important to consider your specific needs when choosing customer service software. In this post, we’ll go over common types of customer support software and how to choose one that’s right for you.

What Is Customer Service Software?

Customer service software is a tool or set of tools designed to help businesses manage and improve their interactions with customers. It includes a variety of different tools — including help desk software and customer experience software — all of which seek to help businesses provide better quality support to their customers.

Common use cases typically involve handling customer inquiries, resolving customer issues, and facilitating customer communication across multiple channels.

Functions of Customer Service Software

While multiple types of customer service platforms are available, most tools offer a few core functions.These include the following:

• Ticket management: Track and manage customer requests and issues through a ticketing system, ensuring no queries go unresolved and that concerns are addressed promptly.
• Access to customer data: View customer history, including customer conversations, to offer more personalized experiences and improved solutions to potential concerns.
• Omnichannel support: Integrate with multiple communication channels, including email, live chat software, social media, phone calls, and SMS messaging, so customer service agents can support all types of customers, regardless of how they make contact.
• Knowledge base: Create a centralized repository of information where customers and support agents can find answers to common questions and solutions to recurring problems. Some brands create dedicated internal and external FAQs to streamline support requests.
• Automation: Leverage automation for routine tasks such as ticket assignments, response templates, and follow-up reminders to increase efficiency, streamline repetitive tasks, and improve resolution times.
• Analytics and reporting: Use various essential metrics, such as response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), to gain real-time insights into support performance and create data-driven strategies to improve team performance. 
• Customer feedback: Collect and analyze client feedback to help your business better understand customer needs and improve service quality accordingly.
• Collaboration tools: Facilitate internal communication and collaboration among support team members for more thorough and effective problem resolution, ensuring team members are on the same page and no customer slips through the cracks.

7 Features to Look for When Choosing Customer Service Software

When choosing customer support software, it’s essential to look for a solution that aligns with your exact needs, provides a strong experience for your customer support agents and customers, and meets the key criteria below.

1. Business size and needs

When assessing customer service solutions, it’s important to choose a platform that can accommodate both your current and future business.

Ensure the software can grow with your business, offering advanced features that you may need later and the option to handle increased customer volume and additional agents.

Look for a customizable solution that allows you to adapt the product to fit your workflows and processes.

2. Integration capabilities

Your new customer support software should integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack, including your customer relationship management (CRM) platform, enterprise resource planning platform, and other essential business systems to ensure a smooth flow of information.

Consider the ease of integrating with third-party apps that your business already uses, including marketing automation tools and e-commerce platforms.

Remember that some platforms will offer set integrations, and some may offer standard integrations while also allowing customers to use their API for custom data syncing and workflow processes with tools that aren’t yet supported.

3. User experience

You want your customer service solution to be exceptionally easy to use for everyone involved. The interface should be intuitive and easy for agents and customers, minimizing the learning curve. Agents will be able to address customer queries effortlessly, and customers will get support faster.

Because onboarding can be a big undertaking, even with an intuitive tool, assessing the quality of training resources and customer support offered by the software vendor is essential. You want to ensure that your entire team can become proficient quickly.

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4. Functionality

Functionality is essential when choosing a customer service platform. While many platforms may have similar features, the devil is in the details.

Core features should include ticketing, reporting and analytics, streamlined communication, and knowledge base tools.

Depending on your business needs, you may also opt for more advanced features like AI-driven chatbots, advanced analytics, and mobile support.

We strongly recommend making a list of tools that your customer support team needs and features that they may benefit from. Be proactive and consider what you need both now and in the future so you can choose a provider that can scale up in functionality and volume if needed.

5. Cost

Cost can be a make-it-or-break-it factor for many businesses when choosing any kind of software. There are a few factors to consider here:

• Pricing model: Understand the pricing structure and ensure it aligns with your budget. Popular pricing structures may include subscription-based, per-user, or per-feature pricing.
• Pricing for needed features: When comparing different providers, look at what’s included in their pricing. Ensure you’ll be able to access the features you need, and at the scale you need, at a price point in your budget.
• Total cost of ownership: Consider the initial price and any additional expenses related to training, implementation, and ongoing maintenance. For example, some platforms may have a one-time activation or setup fee or require one-time purchases for add-on features.

Some platforms may have confusing pricing. Assessing customer reviews on websites like G2 or Capterra can easily reveal if a company’s pricing isn’t transparent.

6. Security and compliance

A critical part of customer service management is security and compliance, even if it’s sometimes overlooked. This typically includes two key components.

The first is data protection. You want to ensure that the software you choose adheres to industry data security and customer privacy standards. There should be features in place designed to protect sensitive customer information.

You also want to check that your software complies with all relevant federal, local, and industry regulations and standards. Examples may include GDPR for businesses with European customers or HIPAA for businesses in the healthcare industry.

7. Customer reviews and vendor reputation

While you should seek detailed, up-to-date information from the provider regarding current features and pricing, you should also consider customer reviews.

Look for reviews and testimonials from other businesses in your industry to gauge the software’s functionality, reliability, usability, and performance. A provider may assure you that onboarding is easy, but customer reviews will be more truthful about the learning curve and onboarding processes.

Assess the vendor’s track record, looking at their historical performance, customer base, and overall reputation on the market. Ideally, look for reviews within the past year; a lot can change quickly for software businesses.

6 Popular Customer Service Software Solutions

Looking for a new cloud-based customer service solution for your business? Let’s discuss some of the best customer service software options in 2024.

1. Nextiva

Nextiva provides a comprehensive suite of communication tools for a unified customer experience, creating an all-in-one solution for businesses of all sizes. It offers a flexible and scalable contact center solution that prioritizes a 360-degree customer view for personalized support experiences.

Key features include:

• CRM integrations
• Omnichannel support
• Conversational AI
• Customer conversation history
• Smart chatbots
• Automated outbound campaign functionality
• Auto-transcription for agent calls
• Customizable interaction scripting
• Intelligent ticket routing to connect customers to the agent best suited to help them
• Advanced analytics for small to large businesses

Nextiva offers options for small businesses and customer service call centers, allowing you to scale up and down significantly over time as needed.  The company also has transparent pricing, dedicated customer support, and exceptional reliability.

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2. Zendesk

Zendesk is known for its robust ticketing system and comprehensive analytics. It’s a popular help desk software solution that can streamline customer support ticket resolution.

It offers the following features:

• Live chat support software
• Self-service portal and knowledge base
• AI-based customer resolution features
• Personalized messaging
• Pre-built analytics dashboards

Zendesk also has a sales product, and existing customers should note that both products must be purchased separately.

3. Freshdesk

Freshwork’s Freshdesk offers a user-friendly interface and streamlines repetitive tasks using customer service automation.

Key features include:

• A unified workspace
• Self-service customer portals for FAQs
• AI-powered automations and workflows
• Machine-learning insights
• No-code bots

4. Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce’s Service Cloud is a popular customer support tool for existing Salesforce customers. It integrates seamlessly with the company’s other products, and it provides advanced AI features.

Some standout features include:

• Intelligent omnichannel routing
• Einstein bots to assist waiting customers
• Generative AI-powered replies
• A straightforward knowledge base
• “Swarm” in Slack for improved team collaboration

5. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot’s Service Hub — like Salesforce’s — is a great choice for the company’s existing customers. It integrates well with HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and operations hubs, making it easy for customers to create a unified experience.

Some key features of HubSpot’s Service Hub include:

• Ticketing
• Team email, with email templates
• Live chat and phone support
• Ticket creation bots
• Meeting scheduling

6. Zoho Desk

Last but not least, we have Zoho Desk, which integrates seamlessly with Zoho’s CRM. Its customer support system makes heavy use of generative and automation-driven AI.

Key features include the following:

• Omnichannel support
• Self-service portals
• Guided conversations
• Service level agreements
• Ticket prioritization systems
• Advanced reply editors and AI-generative responses

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Customer Service Teams Love Nextiva

If you’re looking for the right customer service software for your business, take a close look at your existing customer experience. What are you doing well? Where are things falling short? How could your agents be better supported to assist your customers better?

Make a list of all the key features you need and the ones you’d like. These features should help improve customer interactions by offering more personalized conversations, cross-platform support, and streamlined resolution times.

Contact centers that field customer service interactions should look closely at Nextiva’s contact center software, which is designed to facilitate customer communication, boost team collaboration, and improve the overall customer experience.

Related: How Social Media Customer Service Platforms Help Your Business

Customer success isn’t just about helping customers when things go wrong. It’s about ensuring they get the most out of what you offer and become real brand advocates.

When customers win, you win. That’s why building a strong customer success process is so important — understanding your customers, building great relationships, and being there for them at every step.

Everyone benefits when you focus on your customers’ goals and find ways to help them succeed. Let’s see how.

What Is Customer Success?

Customer success is a methodology that maximizes the value customers derive from a product or service. It’s a proactive approach to identifying customer needs, addressing pain points, and building long-term relationships.

Unlike customer support, which is reactive, customer success is proactive and focuses on prevention rather than cure. Also, unlike a customer lifecycle covering all aspects of a customer journey, customer success is narrowly focused on retention and advocacy.

Here’s a more granular overview of a customer success process:

Why Do You Need a Customer Success Process?

A customer success plan is essential for building long-term, profitable customer relationships. It ensures your customers achieve their goals while driving growth for your business.

Here’s why:

• Improved customer satisfaction: Proactive support and personalized attention lead to happier customers.
• Increased customer retention: By addressing customer needs and preventing churn, businesses can retain customers for longer.
• Higher customer lifetime value (CLTV): Upselling, cross-selling, and customer expansion drive increased revenue.
• Stronger customer advocacy: Delighted customers become brand ambassadors, leading to referrals and positive word-of-mouth.
• Optimized resource allocation: Data-driven insights help prioritize efforts and maximize team efficiency.
• Scalability: A defined customer success process can be adapted to support business growth.

A well-planned and clear customer success process benefits both customer experience and your bottom line.

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How To Build a Customer Success Process

Creating a customer success process flow requires careful planning and execution. Here’s how you can get started.

1. Define your goals and customers

Understanding your customers’ definition of success is paramount. Identify the desired outcomes they hope to achieve through your product or service.

If you’re a marketing automation platform like HubSpot, customer success might mean generating more qualified leads, increasing conversion rates, or improving campaign ROI.

Also, align your customers’ goals with your company’s objectives. For example, if revenue growth is a priority, customer success strategies might focus on upselling or cross-selling opportunities.

To measure progress effectively, select key metrics that accurately reflect both customer satisfaction and business performance.

For a SaaS company, metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), customer lifetime value (CLTV), feature adoption rate, and churn rate can provide valuable insights into customer sentiment, product usage, and business health.

Don’t forget to segment your customers. Segmenting your customer base based on factors like industry, company size, or purchasing behavior enables a more tailored approach to customer success. A CRM platform can easily segment customers by company size (small business, enterprise), industry (tech, healthcare), or use case (sales, marketing).

Recognizing the distinct needs of different customer segments allows for focused strategies and improved customer satisfaction.

2. Map the customer journey and build your team

Visualize the customer’s experience from initial awareness to long-term advocacy. Identifying key touchpoints, pain points, and moments of truth enables you to pinpoint areas where the customer success team can optimize the customer experience and mitigate potential challenges.

To effectively support customers throughout their journey, assemble a customer success team with diverse skill sets. Let’s explore different team structures and when to use each:

• Dedicated Customer Success Managers (CSMs):
  • Each customer is assigned a specific CSM
  • Example: Used by enterprise SaaS companies and sales teams like Salesforce for their largest accounts.
• Pooled CSMs:
  • A team of CSMs collectively manages a group of customers
  • Example: Suitable for mid-market companies like Hubspot with a large customer base.
• Segmented CSMs:
  • CSMs specialize in specific industries or product lines
  • Example: Used by companies like Adobe with diverse product offerings (Creative Cloud, Document Cloud).
• Tiered Customer Success and Account Management:
  • Different levels of customer support based on customer value or needs
  • Example: Used by cloud storage providers like Dropbox to offer varying levels of support based on subscription tiers.

When building your team, prioritize individuals with strong interpersonal and problem-solving abilities, coupled with empathy and in-depth product knowledge. The capacity to build rapport and effective communication are fundamental for building trust and long-term customer relationships.

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3. Use technology and create playbooks

Invest in customer success platforms equipped with functionalities such as customer health scoring, case management, knowledge bases, and analytics. These proactively identify at-risk customers, streamline support processes, and extract valuable customer insights.

Customer service tools like Nextiva come packed with automation and intelligent AI features to automate the gruntwork and free up your team to focus on value-adding tasks.

Data-driven decision-making is also essential. Use customer analytics to better understand customer behavior, product usage patterns, and customer satisfaction. These insights help optimize customer success strategies and effectively allocate business resources.

To standardize processes, develop comprehensive playbooks outlining procedures for common customer interactions, such as onboarding, renewals, and troubleshooting. Playbooks empower the customer success team with best practices and ensure a consistent customer experience.

4. Implement, monitor, and improve

Communicate the new process to your team. Provide thorough training to ensure everyone understands and adopts your processes.

Next, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. These metrics will help you track progress toward your customer success goals.

Improvement is an ongoing process. Regularly review your customer success metrics to identify trends and areas that need enhancement.

Collect feedback from both customers and employees — they often have valuable insights into what’s working well and what could be better. Use this information to make informed adjustments to your strategy.

5. Build a strong company culture

Add company culture to the mix.

Zappos, an American online shoe and clothing retailer, is a great example to learn from. They’ve made customer happiness a core value of their organization. They invest significantly in employee training and allow their customer success representatives to go above and beyond in resolving issues.

Incorporate a customer-first mindset into your company culture to see similar benefits. Your employees will be more engaged, and customers will appreciate the extra effort.

Customer needs and market conditions change over time, so be prepared to adapt your strategy as necessary. Stay responsive to the changes and keep your customer success efforts effective and relevant.

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How To Measure Your Customer Success Performance

Measuring customer success helps gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and the likelihood that they recommend your product or service, so you can make improvements and grow your business. Let’s start with the key metrics you need to track.

Key customer success metrics

To measure customer success, you’ll want to keep an eye on these key metrics:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely customers are to recommend your business to others. A low NPS score often correlates with higher churn rates.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): How happy customers are with a specific interaction. High CSAT scores often correlate with increased customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth referrals
• Customer Effort Score (CES): How easy it is for customers to do business with you.
• Customer Health Score: The overall score of how well your customers are doing with your product or service.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Predicts how much money a customer will spend with your business over time. Increasing CLTV often leads to improved profitability and sustainable growth.
• Customer Churn Rate: The percentage of customers who stop doing business with you. Reducing churn directly impacts revenue stability and growth potential.
• Customer Retention Rate: The percentage of customers who continue doing business with you.
• Product Adoption Rate: How quickly customers start using new features or products. Higher adoption rates typically lead to increased customer retention and expansion opportunities.

To really understand your customers, start by asking them what they think. Send out surveys, chat with them directly, or just ask for feedback. Then, keep a close eye on those numbers we talked about earlier — NPS, CSAT, and the rest.

Figure out what makes your customers tick. Divide them into groups based on what they need and how they act. Decide what it means to create successful customers who’re delighted with your product.

Look for customer success tools that can help you keep track of all this information and find patterns.

Once you have a good picture of your customers, use what you learn to make things better. Improve your products, how you treat customers, and their experience.

It’s important to see the big picture too. Figure out how your customer’s journey goes from start to finish. Make sure your support team is fast and helpful. And always look for ways to improve your product based on how people use it.

Customer success isn’t a one-and-done deal. Keep checking those numbers and making adjustments as you go. The goal is to keep your customers happy and coming back for more.

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Building a Customer Success Strategy

Take your customer success process and weave it into your entire business approach. Here’s how to club a customer success process with your larger strategy:

📝 Develop a robust customer onboarding process

Onboarding is your customer’s first experience of your product or service, so it’s crucial to make it count. A smooth onboarding process sets the tone for the entire customer relationship. It’s not just about showing them how to use your product but helping them see the value right from the start.

Consider creating a personalized onboarding plan for each customer, based on their specific needs and goals. This might include one-on-one sessions, video tutorials, or interactive guides. The key is to make the process as frictionless as possible, so customers can start seeing results quickly.

Here’s an example of a quick video from Nextiva for its customers to quickly overview the platform.

📚 Educate customers

This goes beyond just onboarding. It’s an ongoing process that helps customers continue to get value from your product over time. This could involve creating a knowledge base, hosting regular webinars, or sending out tip-filled newsletters. The goal is to empower your customers to become product experts in their own right.

Also, reach out to customers where they prefer (via call, social media, email, or messaging)

Think about creating different educational tracks for different types of users or use cases. Some customers might want deep dives into advanced features, while others might prefer quick tips and tricks. Offer a variety of educational resources to cater to different learning styles and needs.

🤝 Nurture customer relationships

This is where the “success” in customer success first appears. Regular, personalized communication goes beyond solving problems. Understanding your customers’ evolving needs and goals and showing them how your product can help them achieve those goals.

Conduct regular check-ins, send relevant industry insights, and celebrate their milestones with them. The key is to make each customer feel valued and understood. Businesses aren’t just competing on product features — they’re competing on customer relationships.

☎️ Offer excellent customer support

Support is the safety net of your customer success strategy. When issues arise (and they will), your customer success team needs to be ready to swoop in with timely and effective solutions. Great support turns potentially negative experiences into positive ones.

Consider implementing a tiered support system, where more complex issues can be escalated to specialized CS team members via support tickets. Also, think about proactive support like reaching out to customers when you notice they haven’t been using certain features, or when you’ve released updates that might affect their workflow.

❌ Prevent customer churn

You need to stay one step ahead of potential issues that cause a customer to leave. Use data and analytics to identify warning signs like decreased product usage, low customer engagement with your communications, or poor satisfaction scores.

Once you’ve identified at-risk customers, have a plan in place to re-engage them. Reach out with personalized offers, provide additional training, or adjust their service plan to better meet their needs. Retaining existing customers is any day less hectic than acquiring new customers and saves on customer acquisition costs.

Integrating these elements into your customer success strategy will help you to create a comprehensive customer success process that supports customers at every stage of their journey with your product.

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Customer Success Best Practices

Successful companies share similar approaches to keeping customers happy and loyal. Let’s break down what they do and the best practices you can follow.

• Put customers at the heart of everything. From hiring employees to making products, the focus is on delivering amazing customer experiences and delivering professional services.
• Always look ahead. Instead of just reacting to problems, they try to predict them. This means using data to spot potential issues and offering solutions before customers even realize they need them.
• Use data to make smart decisions. Numbers don’t lie. Successful companies track how customers feel, what they buy, and when they leave. This information helps them figure out what’s working and what’s not.
• Use technology to help. Customer service tools make customer management easier, automate tasks, analyze data, and give a clear picture of how customers are doing.
• Never stop improving. The best companies always look for ways to do things better. They ask for customer feedback, try new ideas, and learn from their mistakes.

Implementing a customer success program isn’t without its challenges. Pain points like limited budgets and staff, reluctance to engage with customer success, and data quality issues can frequently crop up. However, with the right strategies, you can easily overcome these hurdles.

The Future of Customer Success Is Automated

Customer success is growing rapidly, with automation and advanced customer service tools reshaping business-customer interactions. Here’s how:

• Proactive issue resolution: AI-powered contact center tools can analyze customer data to predict potential problems before they escalate, allowing for timely interventions and enhanced customer satisfaction.
• Personalized customer experiences: Automation enables hyper-targeted customer segmentation and tailored interactions, fostering deeper connections and customer loyalty.
• Efficient task management: Routine tasks like data entry, reporting, and scheduling can be automated, freeing up customer success managers to focus on strategic initiatives and high-value interactions.
• Data-driven insights: Automation can process vast amounts of customer data to get actionable insights, driving informed decision-making and continuous improvement.
• Scalability: Automated processes can handle increased customer volumes without compromising service quality, ensuring business growth is supported by efficient customer success operations.

While automation offers significant benefits, human expertise remains crucial. The future of customer success lies in balancing technology with the human touch, creating efficient yet personalized experiences that foster long-term customer loyalty.

Making Customer Success Count

Executing your customer success strategy begins with the right tools. Give every team member access to real-time account intelligence. A unified customer support platform like Nextiva can make this dream a reality, offering in-app customer success software, from a single unified platform.

Coach your support team on driving these numbers with the right behaviors. Shortcuts and gimmicks don’t scale. Stay attuned to customer needs, especially as the industry moves around you. With the right customer success process, you’ll build a more sustainable, profitable business.

See how Rack Attack upped their customer success process with Nextiva as their business phone system, supporting 40+ locations in North America.

👉 Read the full story here.

Virtual contact centers (VCCs) are fast becoming the preferred setup for distributed teams looking to efficiently scale their contact center operations. They are cheaper to run and easier to scale, allowing you to deliver a consistent experience to a global customer base.

Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, this guide will provide valuable insights to help you make an informed decision when selecting VCC software for your organization.

What Is a Virtual Contact Center?

Virtual contact centers (VCC) are cloud-based customer interaction hubs that can be accessed from any location with an internet connection. They allow agents to handle inquiries and provide support remotely instead of working from a central, on-premises location — offering ultimate flexibility for your contact center operations.

Using VoIP telephony, virtual contact centers empower agents to make calls via their broadband connection instead of a landline service. They also centralize your external communication channels — including phone calls, SMSs, emails, and social media platforms — allowing you to coordinate customer interactions in one place.

Common VCC use cases

Virtual contact centers are useful for many aspects of your organization, including:

• Customer support: VCCs allow agents to provide round-the-clock support through email, chat, phone, and other digital channels without having a physical presence.
• Sales: Your sales teams can use the VCC software to make outbound calls to leads and prospective customers, hopefully leading to conversions.
• Technical support: Technical account managers can leverage virtual contact centers to troubleshoot and resolve customer issues quickly.

Noteworthy Features of a Virtual Contact Centers

Good virtual contact center software offers the following capabilities:

1. Automatic call distribution

A VCC efficiently manages incoming calls by routing them to the best-fit agent based on skill set, call priority, or other predefined criteria.

Automatic call distribution reduces call wait times, making each interaction more effective and ensuring customers receive timely and appropriate support. All these factors result in better customer experiences and a more efficient contact center.

2. Interactive voice response

VCC software uses interactive voice response (IVR) self-service systems to streamline call flows, reduce call handling times, and make agents more productive.

IVR is a computerized phone system that recognizes and responds to voice or keypad inputs. When the system receives an inbound call, it prompts the customer to take specific actions through keypad inputs like “Press ‘1’ for payment issues.”

Sometimes, the IVR will provide automated responses to frequently asked questions. If the call requires a human response, the system automatically routes it to the appropriate department or call center agent.

3. Omnichannel communication

A VCC syncs all your customer communication channels into a central hub, allowing contact center agents to seamlessly handle customer inquiries across different channels from a single interface.

Omnichannel engagement unifies the customer experience regardless of where, when, or how customers interact with your business. For example, let’s say a customer kicked off a conversation on social media and placed a phone call after a few hours. They won’t have to repeat what they already shared on social media because you can track the entire conversation with your VCC software.

4. Call recording and monitoring

VCCs record and monitor calls to accurately track all customer conversations.

Call center managers can use this data to train new agents, evaluate customer interactions for quality assurance, and resolve disputes. Real-time call monitoring also helps supervisors provide immediate support to virtual agents and comply with organizational and regulatory standards.

5. Real-time reporting and analytics

A VCC platform provides real-time insights into key metrics, such as agent performance, call volume, and customer satisfaction. Access to real-time data enables managers to make informed decisions quickly and respond to trends and issues as they arise.

For example, let’s say you notice a lot of inbound calls for payment disputes in the afternoons. In that case, you can assign more virtual agents to that section to provide additional bandwidth for high-volume call times.

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What Are the Benefits of a Virtual Contact Center?

Switching to a VCC can:

1. Reduce your operational costs

Running a physical contact center is very expensive. Apart from the cost of renting office space, you have to spend money on installing equipment and other maintenance costs. With a distributed organization, these costs can quickly rack up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A virtual contact center eliminates all the overhead expenses of a traditional call center, reducing operational costs. You can then invest this money into other strategic initiatives, such as employee well-being packages or customer acquisition campaigns.

2. Help you scale efficiently

Agents can work from anywhere, allowing you to hire from a wider talent pool and quickly scale your team up or down. You can easily leverage a pool of remote agents to handle call volume spikes without the delays associated with hiring and training new staff for an on-site contact center.

3. Improve customer satisfaction

VCCs enable you to provide round-the-clock support, reducing customer wait times. You can tap into different time zones and language skills, provide 24/7 customer service, and expand service capabilities without the need for multiple physical locations.

For example, let’s say you’re a U.S. company with customers in the APAC region. Instead of setting up a physical office, you can hire support agents in the APAC time zone to support these customers via your VCC.

4. Boost agent productivity

VCCs provide remote employees with the tools they need to work efficiently and productively. For example, VCCs use automatic call routing to assign inbound calls to the best-fit agent, reducing idle time and improving resolution rates.

Implementing a VCC also allows for more flexible working hours. Agents can work when they feel most productive, boosting efficiency and output.

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How to Create a Virtual Contact Center

Setting up a virtual contact center is about more than selecting a VCC provider. Sure, that’s very important, but you also need to do some groundwork to help you make the right decision.

1. Identify your business needs

First, you must know the exact problems a VCC will solve for your organization. That way, you don’t waste money and resources on an investment with zero business value.

Review your current contact center setup to identify operational gaps. Then, speak with contact center agents to learn more about their current struggles on the job.

You should also review the business outlook to see where the organization is headed. For example, if the business plans to expand to a new region, a VCC is a good investment, as it allows you to scale your operations to support incoming customers.

Next, create a VCC wish list based on all the information from your research. Write down the number of agents and channels it will support, plus other must-have features that are key to your contact center operations.

2. Research VCC providers

Vet VCC providers based on your wish list. Pay particular attention to:

• Pricing: Ensure that any pricing plans offer the best value for your budget, especially if you’re a small business.
• Integrations: Choose VCC software that integrates with your existing workflows and systems. At the very least, the VCC should support your help desk platform and CRM integration.
• Scalability: The right VCC software scales with your business. That way, you don’t have to migrate service providers when you hit new milestones.
• Security: Choose a VCC provider with standard privacy systems to secure your business and customer information.

It’s also good practice to read reviews on third-party sites like G2 to learn about other customers’ experiences with the VCC provider.

3. Sign up with a provider

Our advice? Never commit to long-term contracts with a tool you haven’t tested. The only way to confirm that a VCC provider is a good fit is to try things out for yourself.

Most VCC providers offer limited free trials, meaning you can test their platforms without making a significant financial investment. Others, like Nextiva, have detailed demos that show precisely how the software works. If a VCC provider doesn’t have a demo or free trial, it might not be the right choice.

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Virtual Contact Center Best Practices

Follow these best practices to make the most out of your VCC:

1. Agent training

Provide agents with the training necessary to use the VCC platform and effectively handle customer interactions.

Most VCC providers have onboarding baked into the software implementation process. But this is hardly enough because it takes time to become proficient in a new system.

Utilize your extensive knowledge base to provide ongoing agent training through group sessions and peer reviews.

2. Performance monitoring

Regularly monitor agent performance and identify areas for improvement. One way to do this is to record real-time agent-customer conversations to see how agents handle these interactions. Then, set up a postmortem to review the call and discuss what the agent can do better next time.

3. Customer satisfaction surveys

Use customer survey software to get feedback from your customers and ensure you’re meeting their expectations. The best way to do this is to administer rating scale surveys at the end of an interaction — like after a phone call — to gather real-time feedback.

Alternatively, you can organize face-to-face customer feedback sessions to gather more qualitative responses. Consider offering incentives to encourage customer participation, and let them know that you appreciate their time.

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Take Nextiva’s Virtual Contact Center for a Spin

Nextiva is the preferred VCC software for growing businesses with high support volumes. With its flexible pricing plans and advanced contact center capabilities, Nextiva is the perfect fit for companies looking to efficiently scale their contact center operations.

Businesses looking for customer experience software often find terms like “omnichannel” and “multichannel” being used interchangeably. But what if they represent fundamentally different approaches?

Spoiler alert: They do. 

While both involve interacting with customers across different channels, the way they do so creates vastly different experiences.

Our guide to omnichannel vs. multichannel marketing explains the similarities and differences between the terms so you can understand which strategy best suits your business needs and — more importantly — helps you deliver an exceptional unified customer experience.

What Is Multichannel?

Multichannel marketing is a strategy that utilizes various online and offline channels — like phone, social media, email, website, and text — to reach and boost customer engagement. Each channel operates independently, offering customers a choice of how they interact with the brand.

How multichannel works

Think of multichannel like a department store with different areas for clothes, housewares, games, and electronics. Customers can visit each section independently to find what they need. Customers can engage with your brand through their preferred channel without navigating all the others.

What Is Omnichannel?

Omnichannel is a customer-centric strategy that provides a seamless and unified experience across all channels. This includes online channels (like websites, mobile apps, email, or social media) or offline channels (such as in-store or phone support).

How omnichannel works

Let’s use the department store analogy from earlier. Imagine browsing the online store’s website, seeing a targeted ad on social media based on your interests, and then walking into the physical store where the staff can access your purchase history to offer personalized recommendations. 

Omnichannel integrates these channels to deliver consistent promotions and share customer data across all touchpoints, delivering a personalized and seamless customer experience regardless of where they interact with the brand.

Key Differences Between Omnichannel and Multichannel

While omnichannel and multichannel marketing strategies allow businesses and customers to connect through various channels, their approaches differ slightly. Here are the key differences between these two strategies.

Focus

Omnichannel marketing strategies prioritize the customer’s journey, focusing on delivering a seamless, personalized customer experience across all channels. By prioritizing the customer’s journey and leveraging data for hyper-personalization, omnichannel marketing builds strong relationships and ensures consistency in customer interactions. This approach is ideal for businesses committed to superior customer experiences and service excellence.

Multichannel marketing focuses on utilizing various channels to maximize reach and engagement. This strategy prioritizes volume over personalization, making it a cost-effective way to attract a wide audience and increase brand awareness. 

Channels

Omnichannel integrates all relevant channels, creating a cohesive and seamless user experience as they switch between them. This includes fully integrated systems across phone, email, chat, SMS, social media, and other platforms, often supported by cloud architecture to quickly integrate new channels.

Multichannel utilizes several channels independently, without necessarily syncing them for a seamless customer journey. It typically focuses on traditional channels, resulting in silos between different modes of communication, and lacks the integrated approach of omnichannel systems.

Experience

Omnichannel creates a smooth and personalized experience by combining all channels, customer history, and data into a consistent, seamless journey. Customers can transition effortlessly between channels, enjoying a cohesive experience.

Multichannel can deliver a disjointed customer experience. This is often because different channels are managed by separate teams — and because the data is siloed, the customer history isn’t updated automatically when switching channels. Interactions happening independently on each channel make it harder for teams to provide consistent customer experiences.

Data

Omnichannel emphasizes collecting and unifying customer data across all channels for a holistic view of the customer journey. This approach provides complete customer history and 360-degree relationship metrics, enabling businesses to predict customer needs and engage proactively across all touchpoints.

Multichannel gathers data separately for each channel, often creating data silos. Metrics are channel-specific, and agents have access only to the customer history within the channel they are handling, which narrows their focus and limits the ability to provide a comprehensive customer experience.

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Technology

Omnichannel requires integrated technology to ensure seamless data flow between channels and provide real-time personalization. This setup often involves cloud-based communication, CRM integration, APIs to connect various platforms, and analytics tools to track customer behavior across channels. The focus is on user-friendly technology for customers and employees, enabling teams to manage and share customer data, interactions, and context in a centralized location.

Multichannel operates with less complex technology, often using separate platforms for each communication channel, such as customer experience software, email marketing software, or social media management tools. Integration between these channels is limited, making the overall technological setup simpler but less cohesive.

Cost

Omnichannel generally involves higher initial costs due to the investment in integrated technology, cloud-based platforms, CRM software, marketing automation tools, and — if needed — integration specialists. However, these upfront expenses can lead to long-term savings and faster ROI by boosting customer satisfaction, loyalty, and conversion rates.

Multichannel has a faster and simpler initial setup, which can result in lower initial costs. This approach typically requires less technology, relying on separate platforms for the website, email marketing, and social media, making it more budget-friendly in the short term.

Multichannel vs. Omnichannel Examples

Check out these examples of multichannel vs. omnichannel in action.

Retail omnichannel vs. multichannel

In a nutshell:

• Omnichannel retail creates a seamless, customer-centric shopping journey, integrating all channels for a unified experience.
• Multichannel retail is product-centric, using various channels independently to maximize sales and reach. 

For example, omnichannel offers unified inventory and customer data, enabling real-time stock checks and personalized promotions. Multichannel often has siloed data and inventory, leading to a less cohesive experience. Ultimately, omnichannel strategies enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, while multichannel approaches are easier to implement and broaden brand awareness.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel marketing and sales

Omnichannel emphasizes a unified sales journey and collecting and unifying customer data across all channels. This allows for a holistic view of customer preferences and buying behavior, enabling data-driven marketing and sales strategies. Multichannel uses various channels to broaden and maximize reach and engagement to promote products or services to a wider target audience.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel in customer support

Customers expect to connect with brands through multiple channels for quick issue resolution. Omnichannel support enhances customer service by providing a seamless experience across integrated channels, allowing customers to switch between messaging, chat, phone, social media, and email without repeating information. 

Cloud-based contact centers with CRM integrations enable agents to access customer data and offer personalized support across various channels. This approach results in an improved customer experience, faster issue resolution, and more personalized support that can help you meet customer service expectations.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel: Which One Should You Pick?

Choosing the omnichannel or multichannel depends on several factors, including business size, budget and resources, and customer journey touchpoints.

• Business size: Large businesses with a substantial customer base often find omnichannel strategies advantageous for creating personalized experiences and leveraging data insights to enhance customer relationships. In contrast, small businesses might prefer starting with multichannel marketing as it enables broader audience reach with a focused approach and lower initial investment.
• Budget and resources: Omnichannel strategies necessitate significant resources for technology integration, data management, and possibly hiring customer-centric personnel, whereas multichannel approaches typically require less initial investment, making them more accessible to resource-constrained businesses.
• Customer journey touchpoints: Omnichannel strategies create a seamless experience for complex customer journeys involving multiple touchpoints, while a multichannel approach using effective channel choices may adequately serve simpler journeys.

The key is understanding your customer journey and prioritizing creating a positive and consistent experience across all touchpoints. As your business grows and resources allow, you can always evolve towards a more omnichannel approach.

Nextiva: Omnichannel Experiences Made Easy

Choosing between omnichannel and multichannel contact centers is easier than you think. Look at your business and consider what you need to deliver top-notch experiences throughout the customer journey.

Nextiva’s customer conversations suite provides an omnichannel experience across voice, video, SMS, live chat, and more, all in one place. And, with a robust integration marketplace, you can customize your platform to meet your business needs. Get started today.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel FAQs

Still have questions? Check out these omnichannel vs. multichannel FAQs to get the information you need.