The contact manager is a vital customer service function that helps companies retain their customers, increase loyalty, and build their brand. To do this, agents must be equipped with the right tools to make every interaction as easy and seamless as possible for the customer. But making the business case for an identity-driven contact management tool can be tough.

Identity-driven contact management software helps contact centers streamline the process of taking customer calls, chats, and emails by providing agents with readily available customer data and analytics so they can provide personalized, engaging interactions.

One of the biggest benefits of contact management software is its ability to connect customer identity across multiple channels in real time, allowing agents to recognize customers’ preferences from previous interactions, such as whether they prefer voice, email, or digital support while reducing frustration on both sides.

It’s critical for management to ensure that agents have the right tools to properly manage customer information so that they can conduct quality interactions. Simplified workflows, access to data, and real-time updates are all factors that contribute to an enhanced agent experience and an improved customer journey. 

In this blog post, we’ll explore why contact management software is the heartbeat of the contact center. 

The role of contact management software

Contact management software is a tool used as a contact manager. It’s frequently employed by contact centers to manage their customers’ information. Most platforms share similar features such as:

• Customer data storage and organization
• Interaction history
• Data and analytic reports
• Communication integrations 
• Sales functions
• Marketing automations. 

These features make it possible for agents to provide a wide variety of customer support actions. Data storage is required to keep customer information safe and accessible so that companies know how to help their clients. Information such as a customer’s name, address, phone number, and email address are basic pieces of data that help ensure companies can communicate with their customers. Interaction history is also a useful feature found in contact management software. Interaction history gives agents an overview of a customer’s past communication with the company. This provides better context for agents during each call by providing insight into things such as previous escalations, sales history, or technical problems. Customers are then given a more customized experience as a result. 

The contact manager also functions as a data report tool. Many provide contact center leadership with access to critical data derived from customer and agent interactions. The tools also often provide agents with their own statistics that allow them to measure and track their performance. Communication integrations are also common in contact management software. This makes agent workflows easier by allowing them to contact customers through their accounts, giving them a holistic overview of the customer’s profile. 

Sales functions are another common feature in contact management software. Agents can track sales history, manage sales campaigns, and process payments. Marketing automation is a feature most contact managers provide, allowing agents to send out scheduled email campaigns to a targeted list of clients.

Contact manager & the LiveVox Contact Center CRM

LiveVox’s highly advanced contact management tool, the LiveVox CRM, provides contact centers with features that are tailored to the unique needs within the industry. For example, LiveVox provides clients with quarterly upgrades, which is important for an industry that faces ongoing changes in regulations. Agents are able to provide a full-service customer support experience through a single pane of glass; there’s no need to toggle between numerous screens. This can bog down the agent and provide a sub-par customer experience. 

When it comes to contact management, the LiveVox CRM remains at the top. Unlike more traditional contact management platforms, the LiveVox CRM tool can re-associate Contact IDs to call unliked to existing accounts. This helps prevent the needless recreation of the same account, which can cause major confusion. 

The LiveVox platform also provides omnichannel communication abilities. The CRM allows agents to interact with customers not only through phone, but through email and SMS as well. Now, as many customers prefer text to talking on the phone, the SMS feature within the platform gives agents a significant advantage when trying to reach customers. In addition, all communication history, regardless of channel, stays recorded in the system. Agents can go back and look at previous conversations to gain better context of each interaction. This also provides them the opportunity to personalize each conversation with every customer. 

Consent tracking is another LiveVox CRM feature. The informative and thorough customer directory lists customer contact preferences. This helps ensure that agents mitigate risk as they perform outbound activities. Agents can also customize the layout of their CRM. Since many agents hold different roles, each one can customize their dashboards however they’d like. LiveVox has always prided itself in providing customers with the utmost level of security by ensuring that all precautionary actions are actively in motion. Sensitive data risk exposure is a liability, so we created the LiveVox CRM with call and screen recording features that help enforce compliance. 

Ticketing is another component of the LiveVox CRM. Ticketing is an integral part of tech support duties. Tickets give IT agents an explanation to a customer’s problem before they make a call back to help them troubleshoot. LiveVox also allows customers to create customized tickets that may be better suited to their particular industry.

LiveVox also gives team management critical insight into agent performance. The CRM provides agents with a view of ticket history. If a customer calls in regarding tech support issues, the answering agent can easily refer back to the ticketing history for prominent notes. 
Implementing the LiveVox Unified CRM can better prepare contact center agents to offer customers a better experience. Learn more about the way LiveVox’s CRM can improve your customer satisfaction levels on our blog.