Choosing the best contact center software is crucial for any manufacturer. Every customer interaction can enhance your business’s operational excellence and agility. At 8x8, we understand that the right contact center solution can streamline your operations by connecting your workforce and, in turn, delivering a consistent customer experience. Here are six key factors to consider when making this important decision.

1. Customer experience management

Look for ways to enhance customer interactions by integrating skills-based inbound voice routing to match customers and distributors with the best available agent. Connect your agents to expert colleagues with intricate knowledge of specific products to offer both swift advice and accurate query resolution.

Customer experience management supports multi-channel engagement, giving agents a 360° view of customer interactions across voice, chat, email, SMS, and social media. Agent Workspace and Supervisor Workspace offer tailored, performance-centric interfaces with a collection of tools to deliver intelligent assistance and insightful reports.

Features that allow agent-customer co-browsing allow agents to help guide the customer to the best product to suit their needs, while queued and web callbacks reduce their wait time.

2. Employee engagement

A user-friendly interface is crucial for efficient agent daily operations and training. Intuitive functions such as speech analytics, quality management, and knowledgebase assistance reduce the learning curve for agents, enabling them to provide accurate, consistent information and support to your partners. Supervisors are armed with the tools they need to coach and upskill their agents based on every customer interaction.

3. Analytics and reporting

Comprehensive analytics and reporting tools are essential for understanding customer behavior and agent performance. These tools should offer customizable reports and real-time insights, empowering your team to make data-driven decisions and continually enhance your contact center operations. With 8x8’s advanced analytics, you can gain actionable insights that drive continuous improvement from the top floor to the shop floor.

Advanced analytics, quality management, speech analytics, post-call surveys, native CRM (customer relationship management) integration, a comprehensive knowledge base, and effective workforce management collectively optimize both customer and employee experiences, driving higher satisfaction and engagement.

4. Integration capabilities

Seamless integration with your existing operational tech stack is vital for a smooth workflow. Your contact center software should provide a unified view of customer interactions and be compatible with order and inventory management systems and CRMs. 8x8’s integration capabilities ensure that your contact center can expand and operate efficiently within your existing infrastructure to drive operational excellence.

5. Scalability

It goes without saying that your ideal contact center solution is scalable and can grow with your business. As your company evolves, your software should adapt to increasing needs, whether that means adding more global support entities and agents or enhancing capabilities. 8x8 offers scalable solutions that allow you to start with a lower entry cost and expand as needed, ensuring your contact center keeps pace with your business growth.

6. Security and reliability

Protecting customer data—as well as your own—is vital to your organization’s reputation and ongoing success. Don’t settle for a new contact center solution that doesn’t maintain or enhance system security. Compliance, in a highly-regulated environment including GDPR and ISO certifications, is essential for manufacturers handling customer data on a daily basis.

8x8 Contact Center is designed with robust data security measures and is fully compliant, providing peace of mind for businesses of any size. With a platform-wide 99.999% uptime SLA, 8x8 provides the reliability, security, and scalability required to support mission critical communications for even world-class manufacturers.

Make an informed decision

Choosing the best contact center solution for your business requires a thoughtful evaluation of the factors above. By prioritizing these elements, you can invest in a solution that not only meets your current business needs, but also positions your contact center for future success.

The best cloud contact centers for manufacturers offer a range of transformative capabilities that help to increase revenue opportunities by delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Download the 8x8 Contact Center Buyer's Checklist for Manufacturers to benchmark important features against your own requirements.