Customers balk at the idea of calling a company for help. They know they’ll be put through a system of automation, and most likely end up talking to someone who isn’t completely able to help them.

They assume this because that is the way it has always been in customer service. Whenever they’ve had to call a company, it is surprising when they have a positive experience. But, your company can be different, and all it takes is a unified technology platform.

Most Systems Are Slow

Current contact center systems are depressingly slow. These systems leave the representative constantly apologizing, putting the customer on extended holds and scrambling to find the answer to a question, when the data isn’t presenting itself.

Too Many Applications

There are usually a number of applications that have to be opened, or running in the background that the representative has to shuffle through to find different pieces of the puzzle for your customer’s issue. As more applications are used, the system slows even more, causing more delays.

Data Collection

During this time the center rep needs to collect as much information as possible from the customer, who may have already spoken to someone else and is frustrated they need to repeat themselves. Shouldn’t there be notes in the system? Why doesn’t it update quickly enough?

Difficult Situations

All of these things add to the problem the customer is already having. They have an issue that caused them to need to call in the first place and now while they are trying to take care of it. During this time they are juggled around, often given the wrong information and sitting on particularly long phone calls.

In the end, the customer gets more upset, the representative is stressed from their job, and if the issue isn’t resolved, the customer does what they can to lash out. Often they lash out through word of mouth complaining, or worse public social media.

Social Media

It used to be that an upset customer might tell a few of their friends, who may or may not be affected by the story. A company wouldn’t necessarily have to worry too much about losing customers, unless they was often the case with customer service calls.

This is no longer the case. Today social media allows people to talk about and search for company stories like these, giving thousands of people access to stories of dissatisfaction around your company and products.

When one story used to make it as far as 10 people, it now can make it as far as thousands, based on how compelling the story is, and how unhappy the customer feels. In the end, one incident can affect hundreds of customers or potential sales, all because your contact center platform is lacking in effectiveness and ease of use for customers and representatives.

Customers Demand Respect

Companies are no longer able to simply ignore the dissatisfaction their customers suffer. Today customers know they can be just as harmful to the company image as the news media or another type of scandal. Customers demand to be treated fairly, sometimes unfairly for your company, but still they demand the respect and consideration they haven’t always been used to.

Fixing the Problem

The good news is that there are technologies (such as iPaas) which are now available to start fixing this problem. Gartner Group defines iPaas as:

“Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) is a suite of cloud services enabling development, execution and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications and data within individual or across multiple organizations."

Every day, we move closer to the ability to integrate all of our contact center systems into an intelligent customer engagement center. There is no longer any excuse, for frustrated agents and unhappy customers.