Customer Engagement in the Contact Center

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many technologies and global trends have come to a head, including two right in Lifesize’s wheelhouse. Video is now everywhere, providing a comfortable work communication medium that is relied on for all manner of business-critical use cases, competitive differentiation and even new revenue streams. In parallel, contact centers have never played a more essential role in engaging with customers and making sure service, support and customer experiences are entirely effective and positive.

Today, we are enhancing contact center agents’ ability to fully engage with customers by bringing video to the cloud contact center. CxEngage Video introduces native, on-demand HD video interactions to contact center agents’ arsenals, presenting them with a communication channel that can “show” routes to resolution of customer issues or questions through rich visuals, rather than resorting to “telling” via verbal or written description. One of our customers, Michael Pace, director of global member services at Virgin Pulse, sums up CxEngage Video’s headline benefits nicely:

“Effective communication is critical to delivering exceptional customer care and resolving issues quickly. Adding video capabilities to agents’ toolkits is a significant advantage. No other communication medium comes close in being able to provide the same level of personal connection, detail and customer service. Introducing video will allow contact centers to resolve calls more quickly and efficiently, positively impacting the customer experience, agent productivity and the bottom line.”

You can imagine scenarios where healthcare providers can extend their care beyond hospital walls, diagnosing based on visible symptoms and patient state or remotely supporting the use of life-saving medical devices. Anytime the alternative would be “rolling a truck” – from public utilities and cable providers to appliance repair – companies can turn to CxEngage Video to conduct pre-visit technician assessments or, better yet, walk the customer through real-time, self-service resolution of the issue. Retailers can also leverage CxEngage Video to answer questions about products in a showroom setting, providing customers a live look at products to ensure they meet requirements before purchase and shipment.

CxEngage Video makes any of these applications (and many more) an immediate reality. Behind those customer experience possibilities are capabilities and benefits that allow CxEngage Video to set a new bar for contact center interactions and engagement.

Quality, Flexibility and Reliability When It Matters

CxEngage Video is built atop Lifesize’s industry-leading HD cloud video conferencing service. Crisp, flawless quality is absolutely imperative when handling telehealth, insurance claim or highly technical support calls, for example, and CxEngage Video delivers this without the need for specialized equipment. Simple screen and document sharing are also available during the video conversation, whenever the situation calls for documentation or a tutorial. When video and screen sharing are involved, communication is more direct, and more customer calls get resolved more efficiently and effectively.

These video interactions are generated right within the CxEngage agent interface and can be joined by the customer through a web browser on virtually any mobile or desktop device. Meeting customers where they want to interact – both in terms of video being an increasingly preferred communication medium with brands and on consumers’ preferred devices – is a core tenet of CxEngage Video. Leveraging the Lifesize Go video solution delivers both, without requiring additional downloads, subscriptions or accounts for agents or customers.

Lastly, but just as importantly, video must work as consistently as any other contact center channel. Particularly when customer call volumes spike unpredictably, contact center leaders need to be confident in the reliability of the video component. Lifesize maintains that reliability on every call, allowing agents to effortlessly pivot to video when the situation calls for it.

True Omnichannel Customer Experiences

When we talk about true omnichannel experiences, it’s not just making various channels – phone, email, chat, SMS and social media – available for customer interactions. It’s about enabling the seamless integration, handoff and unified view of customers across and between all those channels.

We developed CxEngage Video to work natively within the CxEngage platform, allowing agents to suggest a Lifesize call and easily pivot to video within seconds from any of those other channels, without navigating to a new application, window or platform or asking the customer to take extraordinary measures to keep their service experience going. Voice and text paths as well as quality management recordings also continue uninterrupted, completing the true omnichannel contact center circuit.

Agent Engagement and Analytics Continuity

A key consideration and set of solutions at play in any modern contact center is that of workforce engagement management (WEM) or workforce optimization (WFO). If video capabilities aren’t properly integrated into a CCaaS platform, both agent engagement and the reporting and analytics measuring agent productivity break down.

In many contact center/video partnerships that involve disparate platforms or vendors, once the customer interaction leaves the contact center platform, there’s no way for contact center management to know whether an agent is busy or to measure and ensure they are actively engaged with customers. Reporting and analytics continuity is integral to not only demonstrating speed and efficacy of customer call resolution, but also to justifying contact center technology investments. With CxEngage Video’s single-platform approach, leaders can maintain full view of what’s going on in their contact center at all times and collect the data that will help them succeed in the long term.

We’re proud of the top-quality, reliable, seamless experiences and reporting and analytics continuity that CxEngage Video offers, and we’re beyond excited to work with our customers to unearth new ways to engage customers and agents through video in the contact center. To learn more, reach out or read today’s press release.