Every SMB Needs Call Center Features

This blog series from Jon Arnold is great food for thought.  Every sales pitch for UC or hosted PBX to an SMB prospect should stress how the platform’s embedded  contact center features can improve not just productivity, but also customer satisfaction.

Most small business owners do not think they have use for a Call Center. But any business that takes calls from customers can benefit call center features. For example, simply tracking the amount of time that employees spend on the phone with customers instead of performing other duties can be provide illuminating insights about staffing and manpower needs. Call Center utilization reports make this far easier than it may sound. Similarly, offering callers the option to receive an automated callback (a feature named Call Parking with Ringback) during the hours when employees are busy doing other tasks (and therefore unavailable to speak on the phone) can greatly alleviate customer frustration.

As Jon puts it:  the way you think about technologies is more important than the technologies themselves. If you only think of VoIP as cheaper telephony, that’s all it’s going to be. If you think the contact center belongs separate from everything else, you’ll make buying decisions accordingly. There is no shortage of options with today’s technologies, but if your thought process has been static since analog times, then there’s no reason to change the status quo and do something like integrate UC with the contact center.

In case you were wondering, every SkySwitch seat has a rich CCaaS (Call Center as a Service) feature set that can help you close the deal.