Just Add a Middleware: The Proven Way to Create a Robust Contact Center
Updated: Jun 6
Modernization of contact center software as a part of a digital transformation strategy remains a hot topic. Companies try various options starting with component replacement and ending with a new software development project.
Meanwhile, we found a more reasonable way to boost the contact center to help your business expand audiences and enhance customer experience. You can empower your legacy software with middleware. Continue reading to discover:
What middleware can provide you with
Where would it be suitable to apply middleware
How middleware matches the entire architecture
You may also like: Expectation and Reality: What Contact Center Will Suit Your Clients?
Middleware is a Magic Component to Turn Legacy Contact Center Into Modern and Highly-Scalable
Why Middleware?
Middleware is a middle layer of software connecting different solutions and reducing the burden they usually have. Consequently, this approach can upgrade contact center software since it can turn products with limited functionality into a seamlessly connected ecosystem with broad functionality.
In case of a content center upgrading, middleware is capable of:
ensuring high scalability and opportunity to work with any-scaled overload
improving employee productivity and experience due to a convenient interface
helping you uplift your sales via multiple channels
boosting customer satisfaction and experience
processing massive amounts of data simultaneously
ensuring the smooth integration between all solutions you use
You may also like: What Middleware Is And How It Works
How Middleware Can Ensure High Contact Center Productivity
We asked Ievgen Chupryna, Solutions Architect at JEVERA, for help to find the answer.
MS: What core components does an ordinary contact center usually comprise?
IC: Well, businesses apply different variations of contact center software, beginning with ready-made solutions and ending with fully custom ones. That’s why there’s no versatile toolkit that covers everything. However, we could confidently say that each contact center uses customer service telephony, CRM, ERP, and other back-office systems to provide high-quality support. This way, customers can contact agents via suitable channels, and the last ones, in turn, can ensure the relevant support via access to all available corporate systems.
MS: What challenges might businesses face using contact center software?
IC:
#1 Limited functionality: First, companies aren't always working with intelligent solutions because of their cost. For example, they can choose telephony or other components with limited functionality. They should set up plugins to build relevant integration points and connect the product with the other contact center components.
#2 Legacy components: The following challenge is legacy technology. The IT world is too dynamic. It offers new tech stacks, technologies, and solutions to boost operations. Business giants apply them because it looks affordable. However, it's challenging for most mid-sized and small companies to catch up with the leaders in this race by using the same techniques. They are looking for other solutions: less expensive and equally efficient to provide more value to their customers. Meanwhile, it's complicated to implement something new, like a microservice-based product to a monolithic software base. It requires effort and time.
Moreover, legacy technologies have significant drawbacks, slowing down business development. Once, we worked with a company whose legacy software crashed on Black Friday. The client lost vast revenue and had to fix the situation immediately.
#3 Poor employee experience: The last challenge is employee satisfaction. Agents' work is entirely stressful. Moreover, they have to use dozens of tabs accessing all involved back-office systems to serve customers properly in ordinary conditions. It makes the operation monotonous and leads to fast burnout, which means - employee turnover.
MS: Can middleware fix the above issues? If so, how exactly?
IC: In most cases, yes. Let me illustrate the situation. Imagine that you’re a retailer using telephony with quite limited functionality and legacy back-office systems (primarily ERP because it’s responsible for all trade operations you conduct).
You have both brick-and-mortar stores and eShops, so no matter what buyers will reach you (offline or online), you can help them solve their issues. You have several agents and managers measuring their performance and quality of communication. With this input data, you can process a certain number of requests daily. But what if your business is fast-growing? Or what if the coronavirus is coming and your online audience has grown exponentially? - Yes, you’ll face the above challenges.
If you place a one-stop-shop middleware between agent and legacy back-office systems, you’ll see how it will affect the business processes from day 1 after implementation.
Let’s imagine that this one-stop-shop dashboard provides your agents with effortless access to the client base, purchase history, contact history, task manager, new orders form, product catalog, and phone connection. You can integrate your telephony, CRM, ERP, and other contact center components with middleware via APIs.
MS: What are the pros of middleware usage in this case?
IC:
Middleware will deal with overload, providing legacy back-office systems with accurate data to process. No matter how many requests you serve per day, your out-of-date systems will not crash.
Middleware could be the entry point of any innovation implementation. For example, you want to apply microservice-based tools, IoT, or AI technology to your legacy base. It wouldn't be a problem anymore because middleware is about seamless connection.
You can ensure excellent customer support service and build an agile software base without applying costly solutions or technologies.
You'll be able to perform step-by-step migration to microservices without damaging your business since, as I said before, middleware is about connection.
Agents would have a convenient work environment that turns their monotonous work into a highly efficient and fascinating one. They will have all the information in one place. It can affect their experience and attitude as well as the average time of interaction and level of sales. Because when employees work in convenient conditions, they can provide relevant support faster and offer customer-centric options to buyers. This approach will ensure your company with a new revenue stream named "online cross-/up-sales.
You may also like: Contact Center Software Migration To Microservices: Engineering Case Study
Afterwords
Middleware is the answer to most challenges companies face when marrying legacy and modern software. Businesses should apply it to connect different tools and turn several solutions into an agile and highly-scalable ecosystem.
Middleware suits contact center software better than other options because it ensures an efficient modernization to provide services effortlessly, without downtimes, employee burnout, etc.
If you’re looking for a way to upgrade your contact center by applying middleware - let us know. Our specialists will share practical solutions and valuable insights, helping grow your business faster.
Subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about recent JEVERA updates, news, and achievements monthly.