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By Adriaan van Staden, Head of Sales and Partner Technology Strategy at SelectONE CX

The global COVID-19 pandemic has altered the way the world lives and works, and has forever changed the way customers and employees view communication and engagement.

Since the start of the pandemic, digital adoption and usage rates have soared as consumers increasingly shopped, engaged and socialised online from the relative safety of their homes. Two powerful trends to emerge from the social distancing and lockdown restrictions relate to evolving consumer expectations around engagement and the need to accommodate a hybrid workforce.

Now, more than ever, customers want to engage on their terms, using their preferred channel in the moment. In fact, consumers don’t think about channels anymore. They simply want personalised service and a great brand experience, with the ability to seamlessly interact across voice and digital platforms without a loss of relevance or context in their engagements.

These transformative trends have elevated the need to deliver exceptional customer service and memorable experiences at every touchpoint along the customer journey. These strategic objectives have forced companies across industries to modernise their CX strategy by embracing contact centre solutions that support omnichannel engagement.

The changing contact centre

The need to transition the contact centre from a predominantly on-site operation to a mix of on-site and remote agents in response to the pandemic has also necessitated an overhaul of dated and inflexible on-premise solutions.

Legacy contact centre systems cannot support remote workforces but with hybrid workplace models here to stay, companies require enabling solutions that don’t compromise the employee and customer experiences.

Moving with the times

In response to these industry demands, SelectONE CX has partnered with Talkdesk – the first managed services provider to offer the globally-acclaimed Talkdesk CX Cloud™ solution to the local market, backed by full implementation and support capabilities.

Talkdesk is a global CX leader that offers an intelligent contact centre solution that empowers customer-obsessed companies to competently address these challenges.

Global industry benchmarking authority Gartner ranked Talkdesk as a market leader in its highly respected annual Contact Centre as a Service sector audit. Talkdesk was one of only three vendors to rank in Gartner’s proprietary Magic Quadrant rating system.

As Talkdesk’s contact centre technology solution is delivered from the cloud, it is simple and easy for companies to transition from their existing on-site system.

There is no need for complex coding or reprogramming. It is a simple plug-and-play implementation. And this modular solution is highly configurable, with options for deeper customisation where required.

The ability to make changes with clicks, not code, creates adaptable and agile contact centres that can evolve as business needs change. This functionality is one of the many reasons why we chose Talkdesk as our lead software partner, along with the company’s customer satisfaction scores that are consistently higher than its competitors.

Cloud-based solutions also offer the ability to ramp up capacity on-demand as business needs change, and agents can access the solution from any internet-enabled device via an easy-to-use and intuitive app.

The platform allows agents to seamlessly engage with customers via their preferred voice or digital channel, including popular messaging apps, SMS, social media channels, and chatbots, to deliver quality interactions. AI-supported customer digital and voice self-service options leverage a Virtual Agent to reduce wait times and streamline operations while lowering costs. And agent assistance from AI helps inform engagements in real-time to ensure customers never have to repeat information.

Talkdesk’s speed of innovation and global footprint reflects its commitment to ensuring that businesses can deliver better CX through any channel, which results in higher customer satisfaction to build brand loyalty and boost customer retention.

The Talkdesk CX Cloud™ platform meets the CX demands of businesses across multiple sectors, including healthcare and insurance, and is ideal for contact centres of any size. This advanced contact centre solution will effectively address customer and workforce engagement, employee collaboration, and analytics and insights requirements with this single, affordable, unified hosted platform.

The solution’s ability to easily integrate with other systems, including leading enterprise ERP and CRM solutions like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, expands the comprehensive out-of-the-box functionality. In addition, the Talkdesk AppConnect marketplace offers one-click access to various other productivity apps that help manage, coach and develop agents to further improve CX and optimise operational efficiency in the contact centre.

Pairing an industry-leading technology solution like Talkdesk with trained and competent agents, while collaborating with a consulting technology partner that has the expertise to optimise your contact centre, will unlock the full value of your investment, and transform the customer experience.