Contact center CTI is vital to delivering an exceptional customer and agent experience. Here’s what CTI means, and why it’s so beneficial to contact centers.

Computer telephony integration (CTI) is a type of technology that allows a computer to control a telephone. In other words, contact center agents can easily perform all phone functions from their computer—without the phone hardware.

But CTI goes beyond telephony. It also provides agents with real-time information about the caller and their history with your company, arming them with what they need to deliver a personal customer experience.

Here’s how it works.Contact Center CTI

How Contact Center CTI Works

Contact centers operate with a number of business applications, including CRMs, internal and external communication tools, telephony software and more. Contact center CTI is what brings together this entire tech stack. Here’s what happens when a call goes through the system:

  • An incoming call is captured by the contact center telephony switch.
  • Call data interfaces with the CTI platform.
  • Call data is stored, and additional data is retrieved from a database.
  • The CRM system creates a trouble ticket, while the platform sends the call data to the agent taking the call.
  • The agent gets a screen pop and answers the call already knowing the customer, the customers’ sales and service history, and the reason for the call.

It’s that easy. That CTI screen pop prepares your agents with the information they need to know before they say “hello.” The benefits of this feature are undeniable. Here’s why.

3 Benefits of Contact Center CTI

1. Improve Customer Experience

The customer is the heart of the contact center. That’s probably why you’re here. But sometimes, even for reasons out of your control, that service doesn’t go as smooth as you hoped. Consistent poor customer experience will cost your business in the long run.

In fact, roughly 50% of consumers say they would switch service providers due to one bad customer service experiences. With a fully integrated system, you can be more proactive about any issues and ultimately retain more customers.

Having information front and center helps agents be more personable and put the customer first. And when there’s a problem, the agent can be more transparent about the cause of the problem and resolve it more effectively. Customers are people at the end of the day, and people appreciate transparent and tailored service.

2. Improve Agent Experience

Equally as important as customer experience is agent experience. Your team of agents are what stand between your business and a satisfied customer. This is where exceptional service begins. The most successful contact centers invest in their team by equipping and training them on tools that will enhance their job.

This is especially important as turnover rate continues to be a big problem for call centers. To put it in perspective, turnover rate across all sectors hovered around 10% in 2019. Call centers averaged around 30-45 percent.

Agent dissatisfaction can be due to a number of problems, but it all comes down to frustration from feeling unprepared and undervalued.

There are many ways to engage workers and improve company culture, but those solutions ultimately can’t cure the headache of bad technology. Agents who spend most of their time dealing with siloed and ineffective technology are understandably frustrated. Frustration leads to moving on—which means more recruiting and training for you and less time actually doing the work that makes your contact center successful.

This is where contact center CTI comes in. Smooth integrations empower your agents. It gives them all the information they need, so they can make informed decisions, cut down on manual entry and do the job that you hired them to do—which is to make your customers happy and heard.

And the investment pays off. Well-trained agents equipped with CTI can better collaborate with all team members and improve productivity.

3. Get Better ROI

Speaking of return on investment—this is another important benefit for contact centers.

When you work with a contact center CTI solution provider, you win from a cost and timeline perspective. Alternatively, custom integration projects (and some CTI solutions) require a huge up-front cost and extensive implementation timeline—making ROI more difficult to achieve.

So, look for a provider that offers:

  • Zero custom code
  • Prices per seat as a subscription
  • Combines a robust core engine with prebuilt connectors for leading CRMs, telephony systems and other business applications

This pricing structure can save you almost 50 percent compare to a traditional integration over a 3-year period. This helps you achieve ROI faster, allowing you to grow your business, invest in your technology (and people) and grow even more.

Conclusion

Happy customers mean loyal customers. They buy more, leave good reviews and become evangelists for your brand. You get more new customers. And the cycle repeats.

Happy agents do better work, and they stay in their job. That means less money goes to hiring, rehiring and training. You spend more time doing the real work and less time shuffling the deck.

When you implement new systems, you need a solution that’s easy set up and use and easy to use, so you have less downtime, your business can keep taking calls and you get better ROI sooner rather than later.

It’s clear contact center CTI is the way forward for contact centers looking to grow in 2021, so don’t get left behind.

CDC gives contact centers the power and flexibility to integrate their technology stack and reap the benefits above. Contact our team to learn more about our CTI solution.