In psychology, a first impression is the event when one person first encounters another person and forms a mental image of that person.
The same is true in business, which is why organisations have become cognisant of the significance of that first contact, says Russell Mirams, Account and Partner Manager at Luware, a Microsoft Teams focused customer service SaaS provider.
“There is an increasing amount of companies replacing the job title of their receptionist with ‘Director of First Impression’. This is to acknowledge that the front desk employee has a crucial role to play in the public relations and marketing of the business.
Those first contacts are not limited to the people that walk through your door but also extend to the many people that call your company via phone, adding the need to have an excellent first impression of your business.
What callers to a business or organisation definitely do not want is to be passed from person to person and having to repeat their requests at every transfer point. They want information and fast query resolution – and they want those needs satisfied by the first person they speak to.
The Luware Attendant Console for Microsoft Teams has been designed to achieve this goal and provide management teams with the ability to understand what the call volumes and wait times are, so they can address the staffing requirements correctly for this critical customer facing role.
Furthermore, the Attendant Console provides the tools to manage customer experience for the caller at any time of the day, covering the quality of greetings, the experience whilst waiting, and the efficiency of the transfers”, says Miriams
However, the ‘Operator’ role is not tied to a physical desk or position, but instead the role becomes a flexible point or number of points, in the organisation.
Many organisations have moved from having dedicated operator roles to having customer service teams handling the calls, all trying to improve first call resolution, reduce the transfers and build the core knowledge pool. Even if they achieve 80% first call resolution, 20% still need to be transferred. This is a challenge for the traditional Operator role, as well as for many contact centre agents managing customer escalations. Hence the ‘Attendant Console’ solution is also offered as a ‘Switchboard’ to these key Microsoft Teams users.
Knowing where calls should best be transferred is augmented by the Attendant Console where users are presented with favourite and frequently used transfer destinations. Transfer success and is greatly enhanced by the Microsoft Teams presence status which indicates if the colleague is available. With access to staff diaries even meeting schedules and organisation charts can be previewed.
Mirams concluded,
“Deployment and user training for the Attendant Console is provided by Luware with typical user profiles being from SME to Enterprise and in most business sectors”
“The Attendant Console is a key component of the Luware portfolio of Microsoft Unified Communications solutions, for organisations that want to extend the functionality of their Microsoft Teams deployment, with sophisticated applications that enable their customer service excellence goals to be achieved by creating first impressions that count.”
