The past couple of weeks have been a time of transition for businesses as they adjust to working from home and navigate the new normal that we are living in. It is essential that businesses are able to communicate and collaborate with one another efficiently during this time. As we all learn how to adjust to the changes happening around us, Opex Technologies is here to support our customers. We have put together a blog series highlighting some of our providers that are offering key technology solutions that can help empower businesses during this difficult time.
This week’s featured provider in our blog series, “Technology Bringing Us Together”, is NICE inContact. Named a Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS, NICE inContact provides an exceptional cloud customer experience platform. They recently shared a blog post written by Brian Mistretta that explains how the cloud contact center is helping businesses adapt to COVID-19, specifically government agencies. Read the article below in addition to the special offerings that NICE inContact is providing for it’s customers.
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How the Cloud Contact Center is Helping Businesses Adapt to COVID-19
We have each watched the unthinkable unfold across our country in the last few weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered every aspect of our lives. For government agencies, the stakes have never been higher. Agencies responsible for providing essential services to citizens have been forced to take drastic action in order to continue to provide those services while protecting employees that are fielding an exponential increase in call volumes. There are no shortage of headlines highlighting the unprecedented steps that agencies are taking to respond to the impacts the pandemic has had on their contact center operations, or the fallout for agencies that are struggling to adopt new measures.
Our nation’s federal, state, and local governments have always provided a failover safety net to each other in times of crisis. What’s become most familiar to us over the last many years have largely been weather related events like floods, tornados, hurricanes and wildfires. In each of these scenarios the crisis is limited to a specific region or state, leaving other state agencies to help deliver essential services to the ground swell of citizens in the region that are woefully in need.
The problem is, what do you do when every federal, state and city agency is impacted by an unplanned event? While the answer is not simple, one thing that can be done in this time of unprecedented crisis is to turn to technology (I know, I know, it sounds cliché.) But consider this, the pandemic crisis is forcing agency leaders to rethink their existing technology stack when it comes to their contact centers. For years, many have adopted a short-sighted “if its not broke, don’t fix it” mentality. This pandemic, however, is proving why that strategy is deeply flawed.
For agencies that are still running legacy, premise-based systems, the struggle is real. Moving employees remotely requires training, VPN licenses and lack of visibility. On top of that, consider that agency contact centers are already stretched thin on resources and are now contending with the specter of the few resources they have becoming sick and infected. Make no mistake. THIS. IS. HARD. What’s even harder are the stories in the headlines of citizens desperately trying to reach out for support only failing to make a connection.
It’s no secret that over the last several years, NICE inContact has spent a considerable amount of time espousing the importance of cloud contact center platforms to government agencies. To summarize the dozens of whitepapers, webinars, infographics and briefs we’ve authored over the years; a cloud contact drives three key capabilities over legacy premise-based systems that will help agencies in this crisis.
Cloud contact centers allow you to:
- Scale infrastructure to align with the demands placed on your agency whether they are anticipated (like annual tax questions) or something unplanned (like a flash flood or tornado.)
- Activate new features and channels with greater ease and speed than legacy premise-based systems (think – AI, chatbots, digital channels, Workforce Optimization and Management) to improve communication and more importantly, the user experience for citizens.
- Easily shift onsite contact center agents remotely, protecting them while still ensuring that you are able to provide critical services to your citizens during an unplanned event (blizzard, flood or most notably, our current pandemic).
Cloud contact centers bring agencies the speed, scalability and feature set to help agents handle greater call volumes and solve citizen issues faster and most importantly, it keeps your agents safe and healthy, while still providing support to citizens. The technology is in place to make that happen.
The Opex Technologies team has a portfolio of providers much like NICE inContact that can help your business or agency shift to a cloud contact center. Feel free to reach out to a member of the Opex Team for more information or an assessment.
NICE inContact COVID-19 Offerings: Move to CXone@home at No Charge and in 48-hours
Whether you are still looking for options to move all agents home or are dealing with daily disruptions due to on-premises systems not built for remote work, NICE inContact is here to help.
For a limited time, NICE inContact is offering you CXone@home – a no charge option to use NICE inContact CXone, an enterprise-grade cloud contact center platform. Keep your agents safe and your customers satisfied. Plus, with a complete suite of integrated workforce optimization (WFO) capabilities, you can restore your full business operations remotely within days.
- Up and running in 48 hours
- No charge for CXone cloud software for 45 days*
- No commitment, no contract
- CXone Call Center Bundle: Minimum 25 seats, no maximum
- ACD/IVR
- Audio recording
- Integrated softphone for B-leg (agent)
- Call forwarding for A-leg (customer)
- 5 GB active storage and 3 voice ports per agent
- Free unlimited voice ports for 211/311/similar emergency service providers
- 99.99% availability
*Nominal one-time activation fee applies
For a list of special promotions, subsidies and discounts available for Non-Profit, SLED and K-12 customers, please reach out to a member of the Opex team.
