Call routing and agent desktop testing are essential for contact centers because they verify customers reach the right agent quickly and that agents have the tools and information needed to resolve issues efficiently. Without proper testing, misrouted calls and faulty agent systems lead to customer frustration, increased costs, and higher agent turnover.
Cyara helps business improve agent productivity and increase customer retention with our agent routing and desktop testing solutions.
Though customer service departments and contact centers are integral parts of any business and are necessary to helping customers receive information or solve issues, few people look forward to dialing a customer service number. In fact, survey research found that 38% of respondents would rather get a cavity filled than contact a brand’s customer service.
From a contact center perspective, this response likely sounds disheartening. Managing a contact center is no easy feat, and there are numerous interconnected systems, including IVR menus, skills-based routing rules, and computer telephony integration (CTI) platforms, that must be tracked to confirm every aspect is performing as designed. But customer expectations are constantly evolving, and it’s critical to optimize your contact center’s systems to support top-line business objectives.
One way to ease the strain on your team and deliver quality customer experience (CX) that will delight your customers (and eliminate the idea that contacting customer service is worse than a visit to the dentist) is by testing your call routing and agent desktop systems. Proactively address CX issues, reduce customer and agent churn, and optimize your systems for success.
What is call routing testing?
Call routing testing is the process of validating that incoming calls are directed to the correct agent with the appropriate skills to resolve customer issues. This testing verifies your IVR menus, skills-based routing rules, and queue configurations work together to connect customers with the right resource on the first attempt.
What is agent desktop testing?
Agent desktop testing verifies that the applications and interfaces agents use to assist customers, including CRM systems, knowledge bases, and CTI screen pops, are functioning correctly. The agent desktop is the unified interface where agents access customer information, interaction history, and tools needed to resolve issues efficiently.
The importance of assuring customer-to-agent interactions
In recent years, much of the CX industry’s attention has been focused on chatbots and other conversational AI-powered systems. While this technology has experienced many advancements, providing self-service customer service options, and providing agentless CX, there are many customer-related queries that chatbots simply can’t address. In these times, it’s essential to verify the customer-to-agent pathways are performing flawlessly.
And it starts before your agent even has the chance to speak to your customer. For many customers, call routing and transfers are a point of much frustration.
When your customer reaches out to your contact center, they’re looking for a seamless and easy solution to whatever their problem may be. So, imagine how frustrating it must be for a customer to finally connect with an agent, possibly after waiting on hold for a certain amount of time, and explain their situation in full, only to be told that they were transferred with the wrong department. Now, imagine how your customer might feel if they were forced to repeat this process of waiting and retelling until they are finally directed to someone who can help them.
After your customer has finally reached the end of the cycle and been connected to an agent with the ability to solve their issue, it’s also critical to confirm your agents have all the information they need to effectively aid. If their agent desktop isn’t designed or performing properly, your agents could even be unable to offer a solution. After all of that, your customer is sure to leave the interaction with a sour taste for your brand.
Key benefits of call routing and agent desktop testing
• Reduced customer frustration by ensuring first-call resolution
• Improved agent productivity through properly functioning desktop tools
• Faster issue resolution with accurate information delivery
• Lower agent churn by reducing repetitive, frustrating interactions
• Decreased operational costs by minimizing misrouted calls and repeat contacts
Assuring end-to-end performance
Customer-to-agent interactions are essential to forging a positive relationship between your customers and brand. When these CX pathways aren’t performing as designed, it can negatively impact your business, and potentially drive your customers to your competitors in hope of better CX.
From the instant your customers call your contact center, they should be presented with a flawless journey. Every time a customer must be rerouted, or an agent has inaccurate information, it can increase their frustration. In turn, your agents will begin to feel the strain, thereby reducing their productivity and ability to resolve customer-related issues.
Manual testing vs. automated testing
For many contact centers, call routing and agent desktop testing may feel like a burden. Without the right tools in place, traditional manual testing is incredibly time-consuming and limited, with tests leaving plenty of room for error without much effectiveness. Manual testing typically covers only a fraction of possible call scenarios and cannot keep pace with frequent system updates.
Automated testing, by contrast, can reduce testing time by 70-80% while dramatically expanding test coverage. Automated solutions can simulate thousands of interactions across multiple scenarios simultaneously, identifying issues before they impact customers. And, as contact center technology evolves and the number of applications makes your CX infrastructure more complex, automated testing has become essential to effectively verify performance quality.
Agent desktop and call routing testing with Cyara
Cyara’s call routing and agent desktop testing and monitoring solutions empower businesses to proactively eliminate CX defects impacting customer-to-agent interactions. Our solutions give you visibility into every stage of the customer journey, from your customer’s perspective, ensuring your CX journeys are performing as intended.
Key capabilities
With Cyara’s call routing testing, you can understand how your CX is performing from both the agent and customer perspective. Validate that the agents are receiving the right information, and if that isn’t the case, you can then accelerate the troubleshooting and remediation process.
Meanwhile, with our agent desktop testing and monitoring solution, you can simulate real-life interactions to verify that your agents’ applications are behaving as intended. Cyara’s solutions provide data-driven insights, so you can take corrective action as needed and understand exactly where your agents may be experiencing problems while trying to help your customers.
Business benefits
Agent-driven CX is expensive. Studies found that agent-handled tickets cost approximately $8.01, compared to just $0.10 for a web or app-based tool. So, your contact center needs to receive the best results for its value by delivering flawless agent-based interactions. When your CX journeys are performing incorrectly, your customers will know, and it will have a negative impact on your business. Visit our website to learn how you can transform your CX strategy with Cyara’s automated call routing and agent desktop testing and monitoring solutions or contact us for a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
Call routing testing simulates customer calls through your contact center systems to verify that calls are directed to the correct queue, department, or agent based on predefined routing rules.
Agent desktop testing identifies issues with screen pops, data accuracy, application performance, and system integrations that prevent agents from efficiently resolving customer issues.
Automated testing provides broader coverage, faster execution, and consistent results while reducing testing time by up to 70-80% compared to manual methods.
Call routing should be tested continuously and after any system changes, updates, or new feature deployments to deliver consistent performance.
Poor call routing and agent desktop performance can frustrate customers, increase agent strain, and drive customers to competitors. Ensuring these systems work as intended is critical to delivering a seamless customer-to-agent experience.
Manual testing is time-consuming, limited in coverage, and prone to human error. As contact center technology grows more complex, manual approaches become even less effective at verifying performance quality.
Agent desktop testing simulates real-life interactions to confirm that agents’ applications are behaving as intended. This includes validating that agents receive the right data and information needed to resolve customer inquiries without asking customers to repeat themselves.
Cyara’s call routing testing validates performance from both the agent and customer perspective, confirming that calls and data are routed to the right agent. It also accelerates troubleshooting and remediation when issues are identified.
Yes. Cyara’s solutions provide visibility into every stage of the customer journey from the customer’s perspective, ensuring CX journeys are performing as intended from start to finish.
Agent-handled tickets cost approximately $8.01 each, compared to just $0.10 for web or app-based tools. Ensuring flawless agent interactions protects that investment and prevents poor experiences from negatively impacting the business.
Customers who are routed to the wrong department must wait on hold again and repeat their situation, which increases frustration and damages their perception of the brand.
