Contact Center Agents

There’s More to Contact Centers Than IVR Technology

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When we talk about contact center assurance, interactive voice response (IVR) technology tends to monopolize the conversation. Almost everyone knows what a nightmare problematic IVR menus can be. If someone is cursing out a company’s customer service, there’s a good chance that IVR is the source of frustration. But there’s so much more to contact centers.

Related: 3 Tips for a Successful IVR Deployment

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Why this matters
What can go wrong?
Test automation tools
End-to-end testing
More on test automation

Why this matters

IVRs don’t exist in a vacuum. They communicate with a myriad of other components that drive a contact center.

Here are some of the typical features within a contact center that comprise the call flow:

  • Computer-telephone integration (CTI)
  • Customer relationship management (CRM) software
  • Live agents
  • Call recording platforms

To make things even more confusing, these components are located all over the place. Some of them are on premise. Others are cloud-based. And they’re scattered throughout the globe.

Therefore, these components must be tested in order to understand the true customer experience.

What can go wrong?

Just because your IVR looks great on paper doesn’t mean that’s how it’ll operate in real world scenarios. If the entire call flow isn’t tested, there’s no shortage of ways things can go sideways:

  • The IVR may route a customer to the correct agent immediately, but that doesn’t matter if the customer service representative isn’t relayed the info. That just wastes the customer’s and agent’s time.
  • The call recording platform can malfunction, putting your organization out of compliance with regulations.
  • If a call’s details don’t make it to the CRM, the customer will get increasingly frustrated — and likely to jump ship.

White Paper: The Critical Importance of True Modeling and Runtime Capabilities to Achieve Adequate Customer Experience Testing

Test automation tools

Testing all the components within a call center seems daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Valid test automation solutions reach out to multiple data sources, making intelligent choices regarding correct behavior and taking corrective action without human intervention.

Methods used to retrieve data may include:

  • Structured query language (SQL) queries
  • Secure shell (SSH) channels
  • WebServices
  • Tool command language (TCL)
  • Technology compatibility kit (TCK)
  • Raw TCP socket communication
  • Synchronous and asynchronous data exchange and data blocking

End-to-end testing

Empirix’s Hammer hybrid cloud platform is the only solution that delivers end-to-end visibility into how customers interact with call centers in realistic scenarios. This gives teams the most accurate data without complex environment configurations or expensive tool charges that previously made multi-region test automation nonviable.

Hammer Hybrid Cloud

A cloud hybrid designed for the real world

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