A digital-first approach lies at the core of every contact center’s transformation strategy, yet solely relying on digital channels risks damaging your customer service. With 48% of consumers stating they believe the lack of human interaction will negatively affect the service quality, and 54% of customers preferring to solve issues over the phone, offering seamless voice interactions is crucial for any leading contact center organization. Then again, it’s not enough to just offer phone calls — to deliver the experience your customers and employees truly want, interactions need to be personalized, fast, and accurate. This is sometimes easier said than done.
With many organizations still relying on outdated and siloed platform environments — where contact records are stored in one system and engagement history in another — valuable time is wasted searching for insights and information. When information isn’t readily available, it’s difficult for agents to promptly solve issues, and for supervisors to efficiently optimize workflows and training programs.
In this article, we’ll explore how to streamline service management by adopting an omnichannel engagement workspace. More specifically, we’ll dive into how to handle calls from ServiceNow by harnessing the power of a native Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), such as 3CLogic’s CTI, enabling voice interactions from within your existing workspace.
What is Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)?
CTI stands for Computer Telephony Integration and enables organizations to embed call center capabilities within existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Service Management Platforms. Per Gartner's definition, a CTI is “The intelligent linking of computers with switches, enabling coordinated voice and data transfers to the desktop.”
To understand the technology's true impact on customer and employee engagements, ask yourself; Have you ever encountered the frustration of repeating the same issue multiple times to different agents — or maybe even the same agent? This is most likely due to a siloed data structure, where engagement data, contact history, and customer records are stored across separate systems. Consequently, this creates time-consuming, manual, and complex call handling for agents, leading to inefficient and de-personalized service. A Computer Telephony Integration can effectively help solve this problem. With a CTI integration, voice interactions are embedded within the existing CRM or CXM workspace, effectively providing a streamlined customer service experience for improved productivity and better customer experiences. This type of consolidation of technologies is seen as one of the four pillars of successful CX. Now, let’s see how this integration enhances the ServiceNow platform!
ServiceNow CTI benefits
With a ServiceNow CTI integration, essential calling functionalities such as screen pops, call logging, and click-to-call are enabled within ServiceNow to complement existing digital workflows (email, chat) with voice. The CTI’s screen pop is visible within the agent’s ServiceNow workspace and facilitates both inbound and outbound call handling. It takes all relevant caller data — from contact history to case numbers — and simply “pops” the information into the agent’s screens to reference before, during, and after live customer calls. This eliminates the cumbersome task for agents to manually search for customer information across siloed platform environments, thereby saving time and boosting productivity. The outcome? With information such as customer name, contact information, recent interactions, and ongoing service requests or issues readily available, agents and supervisors are provided with complete customer service insights. This makes it easy for supervisors to optimize workflows, and for agents to quickly resolve customer issues in an efficient and personalized manner, paving the way for proactive customer service.
CTI benefits for the ServiceNow agent workspace
According to Salesforce research, 89% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand again if offered a positive customer experience — that’s a lot of loyal, returning customers to boost your ROI! Reaching successful CX starts with ensuring every customer’s unique inquiry is solved with empathy, speed, and accuracy. A CTI for ServiceNow’s various agent workspaces (including service desks such as ServiceNow ITSM, HRSD, and CSM) has incremental benefits for your agents:
- An omnichannel-activated ServiceNow workspace streamlines service by providing agents with a one-stop shop for all service engagements, regardless of communication channel.
- ServiceNow-integrated contact center capabilities empower agents with readily available information for contact records, cases, and tickets through a unified platform view, leading to less time wasted utilizing disparate systems and more time spent delivering seamless and personalized service.
- Enhanced call handling abilities from the ServiceNow workspace — such as accepting and making calls, placing customers on hold, executing seamless transfers, or effectively routing in an expert to join an ongoing conversation — enable agents to assist more customers in less time, effectively speeding up service delivery without the need for additional headcounts.
CTI benefits for the ServiceNow supervisor workspace
Agents aren’t the only employees benefiting from a ServiceNow CTI integration. A Computer Telephony Integration also empowers your supervisors to effortlessly perform better in their daily tasks:
- CTI-enabled auto-call logging for ServiceNow creates a correlation between customer engagements, tickets, cases, etc., providing a more complete picture of contact center activities to help supervisors optimize agent performance and call flows.
- Comprehensive customer engagement data stored within ServiceNow allows supervisors to build predefined workflows to automate ticket or case creation, intelligently route customers to the most appropriate agent for their needs, or escalate an issue based on custom criteria. This automation significantly reduces manual effort, improves call deficiency, and accelerates response times, ensuring consistent service delivery.
- Enhanced ServiceNow reporting, dashboards, and wallboards provide supervisors with a more in-depth understanding of KPIs, trends, and insights.
Conclusion
Enabling call handling within ServiceNow is crucial to ensuring operational efficiency and increased customer satisfaction. With a ServiceNow-native Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), such as 3CLogic’s CTI offering, call center technology is seamlessly integrated within the workspace already used to streamline engagement insights, enhance workflows, and deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences.
While this blog focused on CTI integration for ServiceNow, 3CLogic offers integration of advanced AI and contact center capabilities for additional CRM and service management platforms, such as SAP, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics. To learn more about what 3CLogic offers, visit our Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) page or get in contact with an expert today.
