Do you know what’s great? Giving customers the freedom to choose how they want to communicate with you. One sends an e-mail. Another calls the helpline. A third stops by a branch. A fourth prefers to “chat” to artificial intelligence. And do you know what’s alarming about it? Very often it is the same person trying out various channels in sequence – but your systems simply have no idea. And yet context is absolutely crucial in customer care. Want to know what to do about it? Let yourself be inspired by the story of one of our clients, as shared by our contact centre expert, Marcel Vejmelka.
Our client operates in a sector in which they handle a high volume of customer interactions every single day. It does not matter whether they run an insurance company, a bank, a wholesale business or a railway station. What matters is that their communication channels are exceptionally busy. Most interactions are resolved at first contact. However, a significant proportion require repeated communication, often taking place across different platforms. That is why the client built a robust on-premises contact centre solution integrated into relevant company systems. But that was not enough.
Over time, a problem emerged. It was not about the ability of human agents to handle repeated interactions, but about putting those interactions into context. When a customer request landed “on their desk”, they could resolve it. They had integrations and access to ERP/CRM data. What they lacked was the communication history: Who had the customer spoken to before them? How had they already tried to resolve their issue? And why had they ended up here? With some effort, those answers could be discovered by digging through log databases and tickets. But that is an inefficient solution, costing time and effort – especially when a voicebot is part of the process. The voicebot lacked access to internal data and communication history, so it could not respond appropriately.
At this point, the client concluded that they needed help. Based on their experience, they more or less knew what they were looking for. Within Soitron Group, we reviewed their requirements and proposed a solution built on “second-level” data integration. The result was an application that became a cornerstone of customer communication and one of their key business systems. It unifies all communication channels: voice, e-mail, voicebot and chatbot.
Each interaction is recorded within its respective channel and remains fully traceable. The application also features what we call a “peephole”: through it, agents can see communication that preceded or followed their interaction with the customer. Imagine that a customer calls the helpline, where a voicebot attempts to resolve their request. The issue cannot be solved, so the interaction is escalated to a live agent. In the original system, the agent had no idea why the customer had “fallen through” to them. They would have to ask the same questions the voicebot had already asked – undesirable and unprofessional. In the new application, the customer reaches the agent’s queue together with the full context of the preceding interaction. The agent therefore understands the situation straight away and can focus on resolving the issue rather than asking, “How can I help you today?” For later analysis or audits, the entire interaction is displayed as a single multichannel thread. Access to this function may be restricted to selected staff with the appropriate permissions.
Naturally, a system designed in this way must be secure. Together with our client, we addressed a strict security policy. It includes role-based access. Some users have full visibility of everything happening within the contact centre. Others may only see that a call recording or transcript exists without being able to view its content. All “peephole” views are logged, making it easy to track who accessed which information.
The system continues to evolve and expand. The next step in its development is GDPR-compliant automation. The aim is to automate data deletion. Once the statutory retention period for communication related to a particular administrative task expires, the system will notify the administrator that, for example, a call or e-mail is scheduled for deletion. In the same way, the system will allow the removal of specific communication at the customer’s request, unless prevented by law.
The next phase will involve integrating escalation to the back office – typically retention, fulfilment or legal departments. Although it is “only” a contact centre system, it has already established itself as a reliable and trusted source of information across the entire company. And its new functionality will elevate it even further.
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