A contact center uses a unified team of agents to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, including phone, email, live chat, and social media. It leverages technology and analytics to ensure efficient support and high-quality communication, fostering growth and customer satisfaction.
Contact centers have become vital resources in bridging the gap between businesses and their customers, serving as the frontline in the dynamic landscape of customer service. They are also continuously evolving to meet the changing needs of businesses. Today, these hubs do more than simply answering calls; they embody the shift towards an integrated approach in managing customer interactions across various platforms. By facilitating seamless communication through all available channels, contact centers are essential for helping organizations understand and meet their customers’ needs.
In terms of strategic importance, contact centers are pivotal in gathering insights, resolving issues, and fostering long-term relationships with users. As businesses strive to adapt to the digital age, the decision to manage these centers in-house or outsource them becomes a significant consideration. This choice impacts operational costs, customer interactions quality, security, compliance, and control over the information shared during these engagements.
Simply put, a properly implemented contact center enhances the overall value of the contact experience—both for customers and for the organizations that depend on them.
Deciding between an internal and external contact center is a critical business choice, influenced by factors such as cost, expertise, and the level of control over customer interactions.
Internal (or in-house) contact centers are operated by the company's own staff, ensuring that agents are deeply familiar with the organization's products, culture, and values. This alignment can lead to a more personalized service experience, as in-house representatives have direct access to company resources and can often resolve issues more quickly and while keeping within established brand guidelines. Additionally, maintaining an internal center allows companies to have full control over training, protocols, and security—crucial for industries with stringent compliance and privacy requirements.
External contact centers are managed by third-party providers. They offer scalability and cost efficiency, particularly for companies without the resources to maintain in-house contact centers. Outsourcing can provide access to a wider pool of expertise and advanced technologies without as much of an investment upfront. However, this approach may come with other challenges, such as ensuring the external agents fully understand the company's products and are maintaining its service standards. There's also the matter of data security and customer privacy, which requires thorough vetting of the outsourcing partner's practices.
When someone uses the term “contact center,” they’re often picturing a
bustling room filled with agents and ringing telephones. But while
contact centers likewise handle inbound and outbound calls, they take
things much further than the archetypal call centers people tend to
compare them to.
The truth is that contact center and call center are not synonymous. Yes, they are both primary contact points between businesses and their customers, but their major distinctions lie in the overall experience they provide and the channels they incorporate.
A call center is essentially a department that handles customer telephone calls. These calls may be outbound (usually reaching out to customers in an attempt to generate sales or solicit feedback) or inbound (answering customer questions, offering support, or taking orders). Call centers have been a staple of B2C communication since at least the 1960s, and traditionally rely on on-premises hardware and telecommunication infrastructure to effectively distribute high call volumes across available support and service agents.
Contact centers are also responsible for addressing inbound and outbound calls, but they expand to include all other communications as well. Contact centers take an omnichannel approach, incorporating not only voice communication, but also live web chats, text messaging, messenger apps, email, video chat, social media, and are even involved in managing virtual agents and chatbots.
But perhaps the biggest difference is the focus on the customer experience; contact centers rely on advanced software solutions to offer a degree of customer personalization that simply is not possible with traditional call centers. Simply put, omnichannel contact centers help transform the customer experience, allowing customers to move freely between channels and agents without any interruption of service.
Contact centers are a natural evolution from call centers, taking an omnichannel approach and applying it to these essential interactions.
The transition from call centers to contact centers was one born out of necessity. As businesses began to make the switch to digital communication at the close of the last century, customers were left with a lot of questions and concerns. Naturally, their preferred course of action to find answers was to rely on a familiar technology: the telephone.
But as more and more customers began reaching out to businesses, it became apparent that traditional call centers simply did not have the bandwidth to handle the flood of new contacts. At the same time, increased competition meant that businesses were in need of key differentiators, particularly where customer convenience was concerned. In response to these demands, organizations began to create and post email addresses and forms on websites that customers could use to reach out, but soon found that the influx of emails was nearly as difficult to manage as the calls.
To provide a more-prompt service for customers, businesses started creating knowledge bases and FAQ pages. This evolved into more in-depth self-service options and customer online portals. Chat products were added, offering real agent interactions without demanding nearly as much of a time investment for either agents or customers. Eventually, social media became an option for customers who wish for a more-direct, and more-public forum for addressing concerns and interacting with their chosen brands. Now, modern messaging apps are surging in popularity, providing rich functionality for convenient, meaningful one-to-one conversations.
A seamless customer journey is the primary goal of the omnichannel contact center. Fielding customer questions, providing support, managing sales assistance—these are all part of that objective. Effective contact centers provide the right resources, data, and context to ensure consistency and continuity of communication across the entire customer lifecycle. This provides businesses with a number of advantages, including the following:
By ensuring that all relevant data and customer context is easily available regardless of which communication channel was used, omnichannel contact centers drastically reduce the time needed for agents to fulfill requests. With a single platform for all customer interactions, support personnel can view contact history, access best practices, and touch base with other agents who might be involved.
Businesses that are only tracking call-center interactions are likely leaving a large portion of their customer communications unaccounted for. Omnichannel contact center platforms incorporate analytics and reporting for all digital channels, empowering decision makers with a holistic, big-picture view. Contact stats will reflect telephone, email, social media, messenger app, and any other medium customers may use.
Although customer satisfaction is dependent on a variety of factors, an effective contact center helps promote a more-positive experience by giving customers the freedom to communicate via the channels they are most comfortable with. Coupled with reliable service levels, organizations can establish a stable route to help promote customer satisfaction.
Often, it takes more than a single agent to resolve a concern, troubleshoot a solution, or answer a question to the satisfaction of the customer. Omnichannel platforms give contact centers a single, centralized location where representatives can coordinate their efforts using built-in collaboration tools.
Omnichannel establishes customer service as the main focus of contact centers. By unifying channels and personalizing the customer experience, agents are better positioned to build a customer-centric mindset.
As previously stated, contact centers have significantly expanded in terms of their capabilities. This has opened new doors, allowing organizations to integrate contact centers into supporting a range of business needs. Among the most essential contact center uses cases are:
Contact centers are instrumental in outbound sales and lead generation, engaging potential customers through personalized communication. By leveraging customer data, agents can identify and reach out to leads with tailored offers, increasing the likelihood of conversion. This proactive approach allows businesses to expand their customer base, introduce new products, and re-engage inactive customers. Advanced analytics make it possible for contact centers to constantly refine their strategies, targeting the most promising prospects to maximize efficiency and results.
Serving as a vital resource for internal and external users facing technical issues, the IT helpdesk within a contact center is a cornerstone for maintaining operational continuity. Agents equipped with in-depth knowledge of the company's IT infrastructure provide real-time assistance. Helpdesk software is instrumental in troubleshooting problems ranging from simple user errors to complex system outages. This ensures business processes remain uninterrupted—enhancing user satisfaction by minimizing downtime.
By the time a customer reaches out to voice their problems, they’re likely already frustrated. Ensure positive a more positive customer experience by taking a proactive approach, anticipating and addressing customer needs before they escalate. Contact centers can play a key role in this strategy by monitoring customer behavior and feedback across channels to identify growing concerns. By reaching out to customers with solutions before they even have to ask for help, businesses can improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and overall enjoyment. This forward-thinking approach transforms the contact center from a reactive service point to a proactive customer engagement hub.
Incorporating AI-powered self-service options, such as ServiceNow's Generative AI (GenAI) solutions, contact centers are revolutionizing the way customer inquiries are handled. These intelligent technologies can understand and resolve customer requests autonomously, providing instant responses to common questions and freeing up human agents for more complex issues. Taken even furtehr, AI-driven insights can guide continuous improvement of services—personalizing interactions and predicting future customer needs. This integration of technology elevates the customer experience while significantly enhancing operational efficiency.
A well-equipped contact center can transform customer interactions into valuable insights. Unfortunately, not all contact center solutions are created equal. Here, we take a look at some of the critical features that distinguish top-quality contact centers capable of providing a truly comprehensive approach to customer communication and service management:
ACD systems define efficient contact centers, guiding inbound calls to the most suitable agent based on predefined criteria. This technology ensures that customer inquiries are addressed by agents with the right skills and knowledge, reducing wait times and improving resolution rates. This feature plays into complex routing strategies, including customer self-selection options and priority queuing.
The integration of live chat and chatbots into contact centers offers customers immediate access to support without the need to pick up a phone (or draft out an email). Live chat connects customers with human agents in real time, facilitating quick resolutions. For issues that do not require human agents, chatbots provide automated responses to common queries, enabling 24/7 service availability. Together, these tools improve efficiency and offer a route for faster resolutions and reduced customer effort.
Customer relationship management (CRM) can provide additionally context for contact centers, supplying important customer information that may be used to further inform agents and offer deeper insights. Customer service management (CSM) is a more advanced solution. CSM brings together customers, customer service representatives, middle-office staff, operations teams, back-office departments, and IT experts, coordinating and orchestrating their actions with the hared goal of rapidly resolving even the most complex problems. Unlike traditional CRM that's primarily sales focused, CSM encompasses a broader spectrum of customer service operations, including issue resolution, service requests, and customer feedback across all communication channels.
Businesses that intend to understand and enhance the customer journey must build their contact center strategies on a foundation of analytics. Customer experience analytics offer insights into the entire history of customer interactions, identifying areas for improvement. Conversational analytics delve into the specifics of communication, analyzing sentiment, word choice, and call quality to refine agent performance and customer satisfaction initiatives.
Providing agents with instant access to a well-organized knowledge base empowers them to deliver accurate and consistent responses. Customers also benefit from self-service options—they can easily find answers to frequent questions without needing to contact support. This dual approach improves efficiency and fosters a satisfying sense of independence among internal and external users.
Continuous improvement in service quality is achieved through diligent monitoring. Quality monitoring tools evaluate agent interactions, ensuring adherence to protocols and identifying coaching opportunities. This process enhances individual agent performance and contributes to the service standard of the contact center.
In many ways, social media is the new phone call, and has become an indispensable channel for customer service. Integrating social media platforms enables businesses to interact with customers where they are most active. Social media is a reliable channel for offering support and engaging in conversations. This approach broadens the reach of customer service efforts, enhancing the brand's presence and responsiveness in the areas that see the most customer engagement.
By forecasting call volumes and scheduling agents accordingly, contact centers can maintain optimal service levels even during peak times. Workforce management is a strategic planning tool that helps ensure that available agents and other resources are utilized effectively, preventing both overstaffing and service delays.
Today’s contact centers need to be able to handle massive influxes of customer interactions while still offering seamless support and service across every available channel. ServiceNow makes this possible.
Workspaces
Workspaces provides a single desktop allowing agents to manage customer interactions on any channel. From one place, agents can see complete omnichannel customer history, take phone calls, respond to live chats, join messaging conversations from Facebook Messenger and other popular apps, respond to emails or web forms, etc. ServiceNow Workspaces brings everything together, so agents can quickly and efficiently serve their customers.
Customer Central
Part of Workspaces, Customer Central is a ready-to-use view of all relevant customer information. Customer Central is fully customizable, allowing organizations to incorporate data from various non-standard sources, and integrates with components such as churn risk, customer health score, recent transactions, and more.
Playbooks and guided decisions
ServiceNow CSM connects agents to middle- and back-office teams. Employ detailed playbooks to help guide agents through cases spanning multiple teams, ensuring that everyone involved is on the same page. Gain access to reliable next actions, so that no agent is ever left wondering what to do next to move a case forward.
Self-service options
Empower agents with assistance from advanced AI-driven chatbots. Address common customer concerns fluidly and naturally, automate recurring requests, and free up agents to spend more time on more intensive tasks. Additionally, build self-service portals where customers can access relevant information, open new cases, check on the status of existing cases, review past cases and interactions, and access other self-service options.
Service Catalog
Take self-service further with the ServiceNow Service Catalog. Powered by behind-the-scenes workflow, simple forms allow customers to create service requests and route them directly to the relevant department. Agents can also submit service catalog requests to automate work on behalf of customers. Service Catalog offers visibility and flexibility—requests can be monitored, reassigned, and analyzed for performance improvements.
Outsourced Customer Service
Despite the possibility of improved cost effectiveness, many organizations avoid external call centers out of concerns related to training, privacy standards, and collaboration. ServiceNow provides the solution; maintain data privacy standards by working within a single, secure platform, regardless of where the agents are located. Easily route cases between internal and external teams, effectively onboard the out-sorcerer's agents and managers, and accurately define data accessibility for all outsourced agents.
Flow Designer
Automating customer requests demands powerful tools. Flow Designer uses natural language and built-in ServiceNow components to integrate business processes with external systems using a single design environment. This gives contact centers an easy and effective process for automating customer requests.
Integration Hub
The ServiceNow Integration Hub empowers contact centers to connect external platforms and cross-company workflows. This simplifies otherwise-complex automations and allows for improved alignment among employees, for better insight into vital workflows.
ServiceNow CSM is the industry leading solution to optimizing modern contact centers. Built on the Now Platform, ServiceNow CSM connects teams, boosts agent efficiency, expands customer self-service, and gives organizations everything they need to more proactively address customer issues in a seamless, consistent way.
Turn your contact center into a powerful tool for improved customer experience, with ServiceNow. Demo CSM today!