With integrated recording and reporting capabilities we can now monitor and measure the entire customer journey – not just a customer’s experience engaging with the contact center,” Padayachee says. “And new social media monitoring has improved our response time to these interactions by nearly 50%.”

Smollan cites the collaboration functionality of PureCloud Engage as further improving service. “The Engage collaboration functionality has enhanced information sharing between contact centre agents, thus reducing the time to resolve queries,” Padayachee says. Internal efficiencies have also improved, according to Padayachee. “Engage has given our supervisors new levels of visibility, which has enabled them to manage and allocate contact centre resources more effectively,” she said.

The cloud architecture of the new solution has resulted in additional benefits. “Because of the unique architecture of PureCloud Engage, we now have the flexibility to add seats for particular campaigns as we need them,” Padayachee says. “We also have enhanced cloud-based storage, the option for staff to work from anywhere, and seamless disaster recovery with a business continuity plan.”

The PureCloud Engage deployment was completed within one month. The solution supports Smollan’s 150-seat contact centre, with most agents in Houghton. These agents support campaigns across voice and social media channels.

“While we support voice and social media now, PureCloud Engage lets us quickly and cost-effectively introduce new functionality such as web chat and CRM integrations so in the future we can more effectively assess the entire customer experience,” Padayachee said. “It also lets us configure call flows and other processes on-the- fly so we can instantly adapt to changes in customer behaviour.”

Overall, Smollan cites PureCloud Engage as a customer engagement platform for the future. “Its constant delivery of new omnichannel features and adaptability in every way means the sky is really the limit for how we can use PureCloud Engage to take the customer experience to the next level,” Padayachee concludes.

For more information on how retail IT solutions go to : http://smollan.wpengine.com/retail-solutions/information-and- technology/