The pandemic had contact centres nearly collapsing for a minute there. The overwhelming surge of activity they’ve been experiencing is a direct consequence of face-to-face communication with clients becoming extremely limited or straight-out prohibited – resulting in contact centres becoming “the new face of the business.” With great power comes great responsibility – and customers’ service expectations are rising accordingly. This is where the recent Five9 integrations with Microsoft Teams and Zoom Phone, allowing real-time agent-expert consultation, come in.
I spoke with Julian Tiongson, Product Marketing Manager at Five9, to get a deeper understanding of the company’s most recently-released integration of the two – the one with MS Teams.
What does it do? How does it work? And how, exactly, can contact centres use it to provide a seamless customer service experience and increase agent productivity?
Real-Time Access to Experts
Let’s start with “what does it do,” then.
Simply put: the integration with Teams breaks down barriers between the contact centre and the rest of the organisation. How? By connecting agents to company SMEs (Subject Matters Experts) directly.
How does it work?
Normally, if an agent lacks the information to answer a customer query – they’d have to place them on hold or call them back at a later time. With the Five9-Teams integration, agents can actually see the presence status of company experts, enabling them to collaborate with them in real-time. This means agents have the ability to call, conference, or transfer in an expert to handle customer interactions in one single UI (User Interface).
What Are the Benefits for the Contact Center?
Traditionally, agents worked with two separate applications: one to handle contact centre inquiries, and another to collaborate with internal SMEs. The applications working independently from one another made it difficult to see which experts are currently available.
Having real-time access to experts through the very same platform being used to communicate with clients means agents no longer have to switch between applications to find an expert. This also means they don’t need to place customers on hold for extended periods of time.
Using a simple click-to-dial functionality, the Teams integration allows agents to contact experts within seconds. This allows them to focus on what matters the most: the customer.
Happy Customers
Five9 tell me they’ve already received a large amount of positive feedback on the Teams integration from users.
ProSites, the company’s latest customers, testified that the Five9-MS Teams integration helped it win real-time sales and provide immediate support to new and existing clients. ProSites provides online marketing solutions for dental, medical and accounting professionals.
“With the Five9 integration with Microsoft Teams, we were able to put our customers and prospects in touch with our subject matter experts and account managers immediately; directly enhancing the overall customer experience,” said Keith Washington, VP of Products, ProSites.
“We’ve been able to spend less time searching for the right expert and refocus our attention to providing the right answers to customers real-time”
Keeping customers happy and loyal to the brand is a significant goal for companies, especially as competition increase. The Five9-Teams integration reduces handle times, creating a better customer experience and protecting against customers going to the competing brand while waiting for a call back.
