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How to enhance your contact center operations through Salesforce and Vlocity

salesforce

Despite customers shifting in droves to digital channels, traditional contact center support will stay as a critical service channel. In several contact centers, the capacity to serve customers is severely crippled by agent’s requirement to obtain multiple legacy applications. Also, the current Corona-induced work from home schedules have drastically affected the functioning of contact centers.

In the present ever-evolving marketplace, the contact center has a direct bearing on your turnover. To derive the maximum ROI on processes, technology, and employee performance, several companies are fixated on accomplishing the following within their contact centers:

  • Less issue resolution time
  • Widening self-service choices for customers
  • Minimal admin time for agents
  • Curtailed agent training and onboarding
  • bring down customer attrition
  • Heightened customer spend: lead generation, cross and upsell possibilities
  • High CSAT and NPS scores

Prior to resolving the above, you have to find out your pain points: The challenges or hurdles confronting you, High expenses, fresh agents, customer grievances, and call deflection needs.

To explain success lucidly for your business, you require key performance metrics for the sake of comparison. Have you started to track metrics? Certain traditional metrics such as Net promoter score (NPS), Customer satisfaction (CSAT), Average handle time (AHT), First call resolution (FCR), Call Deflection rate, or Agent Attrition rate will aid you in understanding where you need to focus first.

Once you are aware of what to target, you need tools for the same as well. So, what tools will help you get there?

Adding Vlocity to your Salesforce Org

Salesforce happens to be a little bit more than a CRM — so kindly utilize it likewise. Activate your Org by developing and deploying cloud applications, tools, and services to automate business procedures, and merge with external applications. Having appropriate tools for automation is a must for your contact center to function smoothly and widens your team’s bandwidth to deal with more complex customer-specific concerns.

Salesforce gels perfectly with others. If united with Salesforce, Vlocity can quicken business process transformations focussed on agent and customer experiences. Vlocity also offers innovative solutions for industry and customer modules that can be fully exploited to enhance value. The advantages of Vlocity lies in its framework: Vlocity Cards, OmniScript, Data Integration tools, and innovative industry-centric functionality. These tools are adept at solving any issues plaguing your contact center.

By properly executing Vlocity in your contact center, you can bring down call handle and training times by offering contact center agents a single engagement layer via Vlocity’s Card Framework, Vlocity Actions and Omniscript. Omniscripts denoting guided processes are easily downloadable and customized from the Vlocity Process Library for usual service requests such as intimating a beneficiary, seeking an ID card, address changes, and dozens of others. Guided Processes do away with the need for a different Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) binder as the SOP is encoded into the Omniscript. These processes can be utilized for portals and mobile apps apart from the contact center. By easing the process of merger with external systems via microservices these transactions happen with merely a few clicks and without exiting the Salesforce platform.

Improving customer satisfaction and agents’ AHT

In the past, contact center agents wasted a lot of time going through several applications in order to find and resolve the caller grievances. If a lot of time is wasted in resolving the issue then it can be frustrating for both customers and agents. By utilizing optimally both native Salesforce Service Console and Vlocity cards, every information can be showcased in a single view on an agent’s screen. This results in an improvement in agents’ Average Handle Time and even the time spent on the call comes down, enhancing customer satisfaction and your key CSAT and NPS metrics. Having the right platform, can help you to swiftly and conveniently better your ROI on your people, processes, and technology. However, the benefits go beyond these. Whether you are striving to bring down issue resolution or cut down admin time for agents, these goals aid your team to be involved:

More agency for agents

Agents are very vital to the scheme of any contact center. If your team gets job satisfaction constantly and the feel of empowerment while performing their jobs, then resultantly it brings down agent training, onboarding time, and eventually agent attrition. By having proper tools in place, and the right training at the beginning, your contact center will have more merrier and engaged employees.

Whittle down complexities

Complexities pertaining to certain products result in longer training times, together with high agent turnover and your expenditure to bring in and retain/retrain agents can mount significantly. By optimizing Vlocity OmniScript, a stable call script can be optimally utilized for every kind of call. The training time needed for fresh agents can come down by several notches. Intuitive tools permitting an agent to control and learn customer interactions on their own assists in cutting down attrition rates and enhances employee satisfaction.When several tools are employed in one comprehensive program, then contact centers can optimally utilize staff across various channels, betters the handling time of customers and reduces training time for employees.

Assures compliance

With regard to contact centers in extremely controlled industries, apart from field tracking offered by Salesforce Shield, Vlocity includes caller verification and interaction logging to the compliance toolset. The Vlocity system even has functionality like innovative elements to carry out caller verification before showcasing the caller’s information. This element can be configured for various types of verification issues. There is even an extra facility for the agent through which he or she can click on an icon to comfortably capture crucial data elements being shared during the call. This gets automatically included in the interaction log.

Turning customers ecstatic

Cutting down customer attrition and maximizing customer self-service potentials happen to be two business drivers that work in tandem to accomplish any goals of the company, keeping customers in good humor. Salesforce Customer Communities makes an engagement platform for customers to communicate unlimitedly with company, at their convenience and leisure. Unifying Communities abilities with Vlocity’s Cards and Omni Scripts, customers get increased opportunities for self-service features and call deflection, which enables your agents to focus more on core activities related to customers.

Incorporating email or text to offer dynamic notification to involve your customers can significantly enhance NPS, especially notifications regarding crucial milestones in old transactions. Giving proactive information to your customers also serves the purpose of a call deflection mechanism. For key or long-running transactions, you can involve your customers by optimizing nurture campaigns. Each of these happen to be the strength of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Add more value to your contact center

It’s common knowledge that contact centers happen to be a tough working environment. Bettering agent toolkits to effectively tackle, deflect, and resolve customer calls is a continuous procedure. Integrating Salesforce and Vlocity in order to offer clarity over the customer and relevant data points, permits agents to concentrate more on customer issues than the procedures needed to do so. By properly utilizing Salesforce and Vlocity capacities, your company can enhance customer retention, eliminate the requirement for legacy interfaces, maximize customer satisfaction, cut down AHT and training time, and offer a holistic view of your customer to all agents. Our incisive sub-industry focus, together with success related to Salesforce and Vlocity, make us better placed to offer additional value to your contact center operations.

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The future of cloud computing apps in the face of challenges

mobile app development company

The high penetration of smartphones and internet connection has facilitated app developers and consumers to save data and communicate with the same in several ways. The provision of unlimited storage and the infinite processing capacity via cloud has proved to be a boon for techies as well as non technical personnels. Despite many companies moving to the cloud computing domain there are some who are shying away from incorporating the cloud in their mobile app development process. Native apps had been the rule till now, but the latest innovations in app development have put focus on mobile cloud computing.

According to Cisco’s research, the popularity of mobile cloud apps is bound to peak in 2019. As per their Global Cloud Index, the company said that cloud apps would accelerate 92 percent of the worldwide mobile data traffic by the conclusion of the year.

With cloud technology increasing its footprints globally, companies can only succeed by integrating cloud computing with mobile apps.

As the majority of the mobile cloud computing or MCC conversations get cramped with technical jargon, we start by dealing with the critical terms in the mobile cloud apps universe.

What do you mean by Cloud Computing?

The concept of cloud computing is constantly evolving in line with its characteristics, offerings, service, and deployment models. Basically, cloud computing can be defined as an on-demand network access to a host of resources sans any communications with the service provider.

In simple terms, cloud computing assures swift and convenient availability of a portion of important resources to clients who have to pay according to the usage. The shared resources such as mobile apps, software, and other services are offered to smartphone and desktop users according to demand.

Also, cloud computing permits users to maneuver their calculating ability based on their needs for a particular task at a certain time. Users will not have to think about the processing power or storage and derive the desired results devoid of compromising upon the quality.

Cloud Mobile App

This happens to be a mobile application functioning and accessed via the cloud. Despite cloud apps and services having native attributes, a huge chunk of the processing happens on a remote cloud server.

Some well-known examples of cloud mobile apps are Dropbox, Asana, and Apple’s iCloud services.

How Cloud Computing impacts Mobile Apps?

The integration of cloud computing in mobile apps has facilitated developers to include innovative features in apps that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. Let us see in what ways cloud computing has impacted mobile apps.

1. Gels with every platform

Cloud computing technology brought down the requirement for creating separate apps for diverse OS platforms. Dissimilar to native apps, cloud mobile apps have high compatibility across several platforms, which cuts down development cost as well as time.

Cloud computing technology also enables developers to create a single app and launch it in one go across platforms such as Android and iOS. As the app is available on the cloud in place of a platform, users won’t have any access issues provided they have a good internet connection.

2. Cut down expenses

The development expenditure regarding a native mobile app differs as per the features, design, and whole complexity of the app. But it is not exactly a cost-effective affair.

Cloud apps, however, cut down the app development expenditure as you have to develop just a single app for various platforms. The usage of a sole codebase can be perfect for small businesses or startups who work on tight budgets and they can’t spend huge on a native mobile app for Android and iOS. Several inexperienced developers have the tendency to ignore the ongoing maintenance cost linked with the app. In order for an app to operate smoothly, it requires maintenance and updation to cut down bugs.

3. High scope for scalability

Scalability pertains to capacity of an application to expand its abity and functionalities to satisfy ever-evolving users’ demand.

With regard to native and hybrid apps, the scalability comes at a premium. It can be a bit too expensive even for well-established companies. However with cloud apps, the users will not have the need to instal new features to their device or update their apps regularly to effect changes to the app. This can be done on native apps as well, but the cost and complexity will be on the higher side than cloud mobile apps.

Additionally, the users would also come across several hitches if the developer has not tested the new features thoroughly for bugs. This would prompt users to either uninstall your app, shift to your competitor’s app, or worse, give a poor rating across app stores and social media platforms.

4. Storage Space in Smartphone not required

The data pertaining to a cloud-oriented app is found on a cloud server that is placed remotely and accessed easily via a device aided by an internet connection. Cloud apps also cut down the installation procedures as they operate from a browser.

So with cloud apps, you do not have to scratch your head for storage capacity on the smartphone. In case of a low storage space on a smartphone, the user will not have to make space on the phone to access a cloud-oriented app. Their operation is akin to web-based apps and accessed straight from the central server.

Problems plaguing Cloud Computing in Mobile Apps

The concept of cloud computing in mobile apps revolves around a mobile application in the cloud services by a cloud service provider and then giving it to the end-users having an internet connection. There are some challenges obstructing the usability of cloud-based apps. Here are some significant challenges:

1. Information Security

Security is a huge problem regarding cloud apps as they store and process users’ data. App developing entities have to collaborate with third-party cloud service providers to make sure that all the policies pertaining to user authentication, access control, and general communications security are complied with, and steps have been taken to enforce them.

2. Unstable Internet Access

To access a cloud app without any hiccups, users require a stable internet connection. But the sad reality is that the same is lacking at many places across the world.

Despite the internet services providers offering 4G/LTE services to deal with the connectivity issues, the problem still persists. Without good internet connection cloud services cannot be leveraged to the optimum.

3. Resource gap in Mobile Devices

Despite mobile devices offering the feature of mobility, the same comes at the expense of inferior processing power, memory, and network bandwidth. The gap in resources regarding smartphones is a major stumbling block in adopting cloud-based apps. The divide between desktops and mobile devices has to be narrowed down considerably to smoothly operate high powered cloud-based applications on smartphones.

Finally

The usage of cloud computing in mobile apps is going to get higher in the long run. Advantages such as expandability, compatibility, and commercial viability, give a significant edge to cloud-based mobile apps. But, technology is still taking baby steps.

So, the course it will take in future will only become apparent once companies tackle issues such as data security, confidentiality, and privacy.

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Everything you should be aware of before unleashing your own cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrencies have gained huge traction as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The technologies such as blockchain-based services and app development, crypto-trading platforms have altered the way businesses operated till now.

As the cryptocurrency market takes an upward trajectory many who want to venture into this arena will not find a right time. Presently estimated at USD 1.03 billion, the market for cryptocurrencies is poised to swell to 1.40 billion by 2024. This is basically due to the rise of emerging markets in an increased manner. Countries such as India and China are taking baby steps towards the concept, while developed countries such as the US and Germany have already taken to it like a duck to water.

Unleashing your own cryptocurrency can be accomplished in two ways: Beginning to develop a new currency from ground up, or forking a blockchain and creating a fresh currency from an old one. Let us look into some choices.

Starting From Scratch

Making something from scratch can be extremely bad and the same holds true for cryptocurrency as well. It requires a lot of strategizing, work, and finance to carve out a new legal tender. It is likely to take a big toll on you. In fact, the majority of them fail due to lack of before and after launch public engagement. Let us see how you can achieve from ground up:

Get a good grip on market and competition

An effective idea takes a lot of time. To develop such an idea, people should be aware of the market, existing products, and should have clarity over imminent need. An in depth knowledge about competitors is also very essential.

Legalities

Several countries have embraced cryptocurrencies, but there are others who have not shown enough enthusiasm. In the absence of a good legal framework to control cyber money trade, countries have been reluctant towards it, as they fear misuse. For this reason alone legal research for the target country becomes essential.

White Paper is of paramount significance

A white paper is a vital document that makes everything crystal clear. From the creation of the currency to market assessment, legal options, etc., a white paper bares everything. It is in the best interest of everyone to come out with one soon after the creation of the currency as not only investors go through them even people belonging to the cyber community, like programmers, can refer this and identify potential errors.

Public involvement cannot be ignored

Innovative PR is critical, not just to draw the attention of investors but also to involve customers. Putting money in an organized, informative official website helps a lot.

Foolproof Distribution Plan

An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) needs a flawless, efficient distribution strategy. Pre-sale, general sale, private sale are few of the distribution plans employed on a large basis. The makers need to take a call on the planning aspect in line with their strategy.

Forking An Existing Currency

Forking the active currency is like taking away cryptocurrency from the protocol it is based on, resulting in the birth of a new currency having a fresh protocol. Forking is not easy and can be an excruciating process, but several developers have reportedly used this technique. Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic are few of the shining examples.

Soft Forks

Soft forks are something that gel very well with older variants of the currency also, and computers or nodes which hardly get updated perceive them as valid.

Hard Forks

If a protocol update separates a currency from its previous protocol, a hard fork is accomplished. It triggers an entire new currency having its own protocol.

Reaching Consensus

Hard fork protocol updates require the general agreement of the majority of the community. A good number of members will have to download the update; there are several ways of reaching the consensus, for instance, Proof-of-Work, or Proof-of-Stake.

Hard Forks can be a bit harsh

Post hard forks, one currency used to dominate the other, like that of Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. Further, differences might crop up in the community which can become a bit toxic.

Not being regulated can be a blessing, at times

Whales happen to be traders having a filthy amount of the currency to influence market prices. If Whales come to know about a fork in advance, they will purchase more currency, as there’s a 1:1 distribution ratio after the fork. For obvious reasons, this can be termed insider trading, but due to cryptocurrencies not regulated thus far, this will be permitted.

Concluding thoughts

Despite being a baby in diapers there is immense scope for cryptocurrencies to make a splash in the market in the long run. With liquidity amiss in the market, companies and hedge-funds are increasingly considering this unique option as a safe bet. Currently, it is not properly regulated but seems extremely viable and competitive at the same time. The ideal way to create sensation in the market is by offering a solution-oriented currency that rectifies the defects of other currencies. Therefore, a cryptocurrency creation is very intriguing, however it can be time consuming as well which can benefit you immensely.