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WebRTC: The Contributions It Can Make to Your Contact Center

Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) is likely to be an important technology for your contact center. WebRTC provides rich, real-time communication applications that can improve service quality while reducing the cost of delivering customer service. WebRTC can be used as part of a contact center’s customer engagement strategy to provide multi-channel communication sessions that are executed within a Web browser. Essentially, WebRTC will allow your customers to click on a Web browser link and instantly establish a live voice or video communication session with an agent. It can also be used to establish a point-to-point connection to facilitate an instant message (IM), chat session or to collaborate with a contact center agent.

Unlike other contact center communication services and Web-based applications, WebRTC can be incorporated into customer service strategies without major system development efforts. This is because WebRTC does not require new infrastructure, or the installation of special clients on desktops or consumer devices. WebRTC is designed to function across multiple browsers, platforms and computing devices, making it ideal for today’s mobile servicing environment.

Why WebRTC is Important to the Contact Center

The emergence of full real-time collaboration features within unified communications (UC) and contact center solutions provides significant advantages to customer service organizations. Below are a few potential contributions WebRTC can make to contact centers:

  • Full collaboration services, voice, video, presence, IM and conferencing, directly within a Web browser, without third-party communication applications
  • A peer-to-peer architecture, which allows organizations to create multi-channel contact center environments that require no telephony infrastructure
  • Ability for customers to use their preferred communication channel to engage a contact center, as well as the option to switch from one channel to another during the interaction
  • Customer service applications that can be deployed on mobile devices (phones and tablets) with WebRTC technology, allowing users to click a single button and directly establish a communications session with an agent (also enables contextual data from the mobile application to be passed to the agent’s servicing applications)
  • Ability for Web interactions to be routed and prioritized to specific queues based on the context of the interaction (using information collected in the Web session, such as account numbers, authorization, passwords and completed activities, to be used to route interactions)
  • Potential reduction of carrier costs by enabling customers to click-to-call directly from the website (this decreases the amount of contact center traffic routed over the public switched telephone network (PSTN))
  • Ability for companies to develop menu-driven customer servicing solutions, such as visual IVR applications that can be rendered on multiple consumer devices
  • Ability for organizations to capture and analyze end-to-end Web-based interactions, to produce a more complete picture of the customer journey
  • Differentiation of the customer experience by providing them with the session recording and complete text transcription of the WebRTC interaction for their records
  • Inherent voice and video encryption and authentication through the use of secure real-time protocol (SRTP) (typically used to secure interactions that traverse the public Internet and Wi-Fi networks)

Over the past 12 – 18 months, WebRTC has shown great promise in cost effectively extending traditional communications channels within contact centers. The adoption of WebRTC is being fueled by the growth of multi-channel consumer devices with Internet accessibility. This is driving enterprises to provide mobile and Web-based applications that seamlessly establish real-time, rich communication sessions to their contact centers. Although WebRTC is still in the early adoption stage, it has the ability to contribute to the contact center environment by improving multi-channel communications, reducing costs, and improving the overall customer experience. DMG encourages organizations searching for ways to differentiate their servicing options to explore the possible benefits of adopting WebRTC technology into their servicing strategy.

We at DMG are always available to help. Please reach out to us with any questions you may have, or to learn how to make WebRTC technology work for your organization.

Ask the Experts

Question:
Our leadership wants better first contact resolution (FCR), but the problem is bigger than the contact center. Where do we start?

Answer:
While FCR is often dependent on the interrelationship between the back office and/or field operations, improvement must start in the contact center. Before engaging other areas of the enterprise, it’s essential to ensure contact center practices facilitate positive FCR outcomes. Below are a few recommendations for improving FCR in the contact center:
Empower agents – ensure your agents have the ability to immediately authorize and enter credits or discounts (up to a certain dollar amount), schedule appointments, provision products and services, and possibly transfer calls outside of the contact center

Supply product information – provide an easily accessible and up-to-date repository of product information

Provide floor support – assign peer mentors or dedicated supervisors who are readily available to assist agents and answer their questions

Staff an escalation queue – choose highly experienced team leads and supervisors or managers who are empowered to make decisions in real time to staff an escalation queue
Once your contact center is set up to better support FCR, it’s time to involve the back office in the resolution process. Obtain leadership buy-in to create a “customer journey task force,” and invite participants from the various back-office operating departments, field service, sales, marketing, etc. to participate. Establish a task force mission, which should be to break down internal “walls” that prevent timely resolution of customer issues. (It is often a good idea to involve managers and supervisors who are actively engaged in day-to-day activities to participate on the task force.) Once the task force is established, identify the “low-hanging fruit” to make quick and meaningful changes. Look for opportunities for improvement both outside and inside the contact center, as practices in one part of the business often unknowingly impede FCR in another area, and can easily be changed, once identified…

Have a question for the DMG Experts? Ask Us!

DMG Consulting LLC is a leading independent research, advisory and consulting firm specializing in unified communications, contact centers, back-office and real-time analytics. Learn more at www.dmgconsult.com.