5 Essential Features for Your Virtual Contact Center

Over the past few weeks, we’ve introduced you to virtual contact centers and explored the benefits they provide to customers. For part three of the series, let’s take a look at the 5 3CX features that will elevate your clients’ virtual call center to the next level.

1. The 3CX Web Client: Your Virtual Contact Center Hub

The beauty of virtual contact centers is that agents can work from wherever they are, with very little setup time required when transitioning from the office to working remotely. Agents can simply log in to their browser-based web client and access 3CX’s full suite of communications tools.  It’s one easy to use interface for all their needs.

The 3CX Web Client enables agents to:

• Take inbound calls, callbacks and outbound calls from their call queues just as they would in the office.
• Access live chats via their extension.
• Attend meetings with call center supervisors via video conferencing.

2. Digital receptionist: Never miss an Opportunity Again

An effective IVR is the backbone of your virtual contact center. Implemented correctly, it can reduce administration time for call center agents, improve service levels and lower overheads. Ultimately, the role of the IVR to eliminate call waste and consequently free agents to focus on customer experience.  3CX’s IVR is available for all 3 license editions at no additional cost.

Use our IVR to:

• Automatically route customers to the correct department.
• Initiate phone surveys.
• Enable callbacks.
• Customize your music on hold.

3. Call Queues: Streamline your CX

A contact center exists to boost revenue. Whether that’s by increasing sales or offering support, there’s no doubt that your customers want their service levels to be as high as possible. The key to facilitating this lies in a well thought out queuing strategy. A call queue places callers in a line to be served, much like waiting to be served in a store. Customers wait, listen to your music on hold and are then serviced by an agent as soon as one becomes available. For a virtual contact center, call queues are an integral part of the system, after all, you can’t retrieve a call from a colleague like you might in the office.

3CX call queues are flexible and can be adapted to your customers’ needs:

• Professional licenses include 13 polling strategies including prioritized hunts, hunt by threes and round robins.
• Enterprise licenses add skills-based routing to direct customers to highly skilled agents first.

4. Real-time Wallboard: Drive Performance and Engagement

Wallboards have been an integral part of call centers and contact centers since the inception of the industry and virtual contact centers are no exception. From the ‘green screens’ of the past to today’s HD displays, the wallboard has always given contact center managers a powerful platform with which to manage their operations and drive performance. 3CXs wallboard shows real-time statistics for all the call queues agents and managers are members of. You can even leave motivational messages to push your virtual team towards their next goal.

Wallboard statistics include:

• Number of answered and missed calls.
• The number of requested callbacks.
• Average talk time.
• Agents busy.
• Average waiting time.

5. Reports and Analytics: Monitor Activity and Optimise Your Call Center

One of the most attractive things about virtual call centers is that hiring managers are no longer limited to a specific geography when recruiting new agents. If demand spikes, temps can be brought in instantly or work can be outsourced overseas to cover multiple time zones. However, this enhanced flexibility can leave management feeling nervous, as they’re no longer able to oversee performance directly. That’s where 3CX’s reporting and analytics tools come in. With over 30 customizable reports, our reports give queue managers the peace of mind they need to focus.

3CX reports include:

• Agent performance and productivity monitoring.
• Comprehensive quality of service reports to monitor customer satisfaction.
• Call cost and sip trunk reports to manage charges.