Astute Solutions Knowledge Management Capabilities

Best-in-class companies are implementing Intelligent Contact Center solutions to differentiate through service excellence. This is the overarching message in the new AberdeenGroup benchmark report entitled: “The Intelligent Contact Center: Increasing Multi-Channel Visibility“.

The study addresses the reality that the contact center has evolved into a critical interaction point for customers. Companies are striving to gain a competitive edge through customer service. Yet, Aberdeen found that 61 percent of organizations surveyed are challenged to leverage the increasing amounts of data available to the contact center accumulated through customer management systems (CRM, SFA and order fulfillment) and customer interactions (customer data, issues and transactions). This can diminish the customer experience by negatively impacting service speed and reliability.

Best-in-class companies that strive to differentiate themselves through customer service are rolling out Intelligent Contact Centers to address the quality of responses provided to customers. According to the study, an Intelligent Contact Center provides consistent, accurate and timely information in response to customer inquiries via the customer’s chosen medium. It is capable of collecting, analyzing, managing and disseminating data across multiple channels such as phone, email and Web self-service.

Aberdeen cited competitive pressures, the need to improve first contact closure rates and escalating operational costs as the three main drivers among best-in-class companies implementing an Intelligent Contact Center strategy. 97% of these organizations experienced improvement in customer satisfaction within two years of implementing an Intelligent Contact Center. In addition, most have experienced an improvement in cost per contact and first contact closure rate. Conversely, none of the laggard companies experienced an increase in customer satisfaction, and some report that their cost per contact has increased over the same two-year period. This is due largely to the challenge of managing data to effectively meet customer needs with their existing solutions.

“In order to achieve best-in-class status, companies must implement knowledge management solutions. Providing dependable, accurate and well-timed data across channels is critical to enhancing the customer experience,” said Alan Hubbard, SVP, Customer Management Technologies Group at Aberdeen.

The study revealed that best-in-class companies are more than twice as likely to implement knowledge management solutions. Enabling technologies like natural language queries and guided search drive success because customers and agents can retrieve data quickly and reliably across any channel. Companies can deal with customer issues at their point of origin, while increasing agent efficiency and improving customer satisfaction levels.

Through its offerings, which include ePowerCenter and RealDialog, Astute Solutions is meeting the urgent need for driving cost reductions through multi-channel agent success. It is focused on ensuring consistent responses across phone, email, chat, Web and self- service channels.

Tags: Astute Solutions, knowledge, management, capabilities, CRM case studies, CRM news