The Benefits Of Terminal Emulation Software: Advice For Contact Center Managers
Contact centers are increasingly complex environments to work in. As well as dealing with calls, emails, instant messages and other types of contact, your contact center agents must often contend with a vast array of information, especially when your business offers an array of old or discontinued products or services that customers may still need support with. Terminal emulation is a type of software that can help your contact center agents manage these challenges. Learn more about some of the possible uses for this type of software, and find out how terminal emulation could make life easier for your contact center agents.
Helps your agents easily harness data from multiple systems
Many companies use computer systems that are old, inefficient and unwieldy. While there are often initiatives to replace these systems, migrating customers between systems is often complex and expensive, so many transformation programs decide to let legacy systems stay in place until you no longer need them. This type of dual running is particularly common for financial institutions.
Dual running of systems can make life difficult for your contact center agents, who may need to flip between systems according to who they speak to. Terminal emulation software creates a single access point for your agents, who can then get access to information from multiple legacy systems without the need to switch between different programs or even machines. This cuts the likely error rate and speeds up call handling time because your agents can quickly deal with a customer's query. In turn, this way of working offers significant possible productivity benefits, and you should need fewer agents to manage call demand.
Gives you the ability to customize queries and searches
It's often difficult for your agents to adjust to different operating systems. For example, one system may use a certain font and color scheme, while another may rely on certain unique keystrokes and commands that make it rather unwieldy compared to newer types of software.
With terminal emulation, you can create customized queries and searches for your agents that look and feel the way you want them to. For example, in a contact center for an insurance company, your people may need to look for details of customer claims for different policies in several systems. With terminal emulation, you can create customized queries that allow agents to search for these details in a single, consistent way.
In turn, this makes it easier to train and coach new agents. The annual staff turnover in a contact center is around 26 percent. For larger contact centers, this can represent a significant training cost and challenge when dealing with new starters. Terminal emulation can make it easier to help new agents cope with the demands of multiple systems. For your training team and coaches, it's also easier to prepare material that uses screenshots from and instructions for one system.
Boosts data security
Data security is often a challenge for contact center managers working with multiple systems, but multiple passwords and authentication processes are often unwieldy for your contact center agents. Terminal emulation can help you get around these problems by offering a single, secure entry point for your contact center agents into all your systems.
Terminal emulation software can strengthen security and save money at the same time. For example, maintaining secure access to multiple systems can create the need for extra hardware, increased office capacity, and additional running costs. Terminal emulation is a more efficient way to manage this need, helping you to save money without compromising on security.
Allows you to scale and adapt
Modern contact centers offer increasingly versatile and flexible working arrangements. Your agents may sometimes need to work from multiple locations, including home, which can add further layers of complexity when it comes to getting access to the systems they need. Terminal emulation software means that you often only need a robust Internet connection to get access to systems, which allows you to increase home-based working.
Terminal emulation software is easy to scale. If your team increases in size, it's easy to quickly deploy this software to more machines, wherever they are. What's more, if you invest in mobility solutions, terminal emulation software can easily support smartphone and tablet PC access. You can even consider BYOD tools (bring your own device) that allow people to access the software from their own computer. If you consider the cost of adapting old systems to cope with new ways of working, you can see why terminal emulation is such an effective alternative.
Terminal emulation software can transform the way your contact center agents work. Talk to an experienced software provider from a company like WAVELINK for more information and advice.