Business applications

Business applications play a crucial role in supporting contact centers after calls reach the agents. One commonly known application is customer relationship management (CRM), which manages customer interactions and serves as a storage location for relevant customer data, such as names, addresses, account numbers, and balances. Pega Customer Service can provide CRM functionality, or organizations can use a third-party CRM solution.

Another important application for call centers is call recording, also known as quality assurance. This feature captures voice calls and can include screen captures of the agent's desktop, which enables supervisors to not only hear the audio conversation but also observe the agent's actions. These recordings are stored digitally and later retrieved for quality assurance purposes. Medium-sized and larger contact centers often have dedicated teams focused on ensuring that agents provide appropriate and consistent responses to customer inquiries. This benchmarking of interactions helps maintain consistent quality experiences for customers.

Workforce management (WFM) software is another critical application that helps staff contact centers properly. WFM is not part of the communication stack but is essential behind-the-scenes software for managing contact centers. It helps ensure that agents are available to handle customer inquiries at the right time by scheduling their start and finish times, breaks, and lunches. Contact centers heavily rely on metrics and historical data to accurately predict customer call volumes and schedule agents accordingly.

All the information from these different applications is then used for data analytics, providing valuable insights into the operations and performance of the contact center. Data analytics platforms have seen significant growth in contact centers and businesses in general, because they enable organizations to gain deep insights into their customer service operations and ensure efficient and valuable service to customers.

Pega Customer Service includes CRM and analytics components, and customers have the option to use the CRM and analytics functionality or choose alternative solutions. However, workforce management and quality assurance, also known as workforce optimization, are specialized software that falls outside the scope of Pega solutions. Pega offers a separate software solution called Pega Workforce Intelligence, which uses AI-powered discovery bots to collect information on employees, including contact center agents. Workforce Intelligence provides valuable insights into identifying obstacles and distractions in the operation.

In summary, contact centers rely on various business applications to enhance their operations. Pega Customer Service provides CRM and analytics components, while specialized software must handle workforce management and quality assurance. However, Pega Workforce Intelligence is a separate solution that provides valuable insights into employee performance and operational challenges to help ensure that contact centers can deliver consistent and high-quality customer service.