Contact Center Testing (Call Center Testing) Guide

We have provided a complete guide to contact center testing with tools and techniques for your benefit. Let’s get started.

Contact Center Testing is a type of testing done on Omnichannel customer journeys to thoroughly examine the transition points of communication. It tests voice, IVR, email, SMS, and chat communication points.

In this ever-changing age of a variety of customers, expectations have become much higher than they were ever before.

Companies need to meet or exceed customer expectations with the best possible customer service. So, they need an effective system to meet those high expectations of customers consistently and also compete with others to stay successful in the market.

Contact Center Testing

Contact Center is one of the systems that helps in developing communication between a customer and the company. You may also refer to it as a Call Center that helps companies solve queries and problems and generate results to meet customer expectations.

To have a consistent customer experience, you need to have a contact center system that performs well under all business conditions. Contact Center testing is the key to achieving this goal.

This article will provide a lot of clarity on how this testing works.

What is Contact Center Testing

Before we get into what is being tested, we need to understand what the Contact Center is.

Contact Center: It is a central place also known as an e-contact platform or customer-company interaction platform from where all the customer contacts are managed.

Contact Center and Call Center: A Contact Center comprises one or more Call centers inside itself. While both systems imply providing customer service, the Contact Center supports more services than a Call Center.

The Contact Center generally offers Omnichannel journeys to customers where they use different channels to get their work done. These channels could be digital as well as non-digital channels.

Services supported by the Omni Channel include emails, chatbots, text messages, online, voice calls, etc. to communicate with the customers.

Testing Contact Center

It is imperative to perform Contact Center Testing when any new projects are launched and when new changes are driven into the Contact Center environment. This enables the smooth rollout of new features and functionality that are critical to the customer experience.

Contact Center Testing is a type of testing done on Omnichannel customer journeys to thoroughly examine transition points of communication.

Testing is done to check the entire cycle of the customer journey and involves the following activities:

• Routing of calls to appropriate agents
• Which of the prior channels are readily available
• Appropriate infrastructure and technology for Contact Center
• Various other factors which indulge in Omnichannel’s customer journey.

(Contact Center infrastructure refers to the hardware and software required to support communication. They can either be located in the Contact Center itself or they can be located and accessed externally.)

Well, are you wondering what this testing is?

This is about preparing an Omnichannel contact center infrastructure that is highly available, stable, and consistent to handle all business conditions.

Let me make it clear, this is about how a company’s Contact Center software, technologies, and infrastructure are integrated to perform well. Also, how swiftly phone/other media interactions are routed to the appropriate agents and how much load a Contact Center can hold on to.

It also involves various methodologies, technologies, and infrastructure with complex protocols that help in generating insights, reports, and analyses for the agents.

Building Blocks for Contact Center Testing

Key Points to consider before testing

• Generating inbound and outbound interactions
• Agents and their interactions with all the contact center applications
• Interaction with customers by agents through several media outlets that might be supported
• Phone calls are routed to the appropriate agent
• Formation of multiple statements such as administrator, operator, and system admin
• Deployment of new contact center features
• The hierarchical arrangements of Supervisors, Agents, Queues, and Groups are maintained and managed accordingly

Before you start conducting any performance checks on your system, it’s good to keep a watch on your system alternatives for performance and testing; and you also need to understand the volumetrical Contact Center which is tested.

There is no purpose to running any Performance check against any aspects of appliances that are seldom used. However, it’s necessary for those aspects of the system, that are densely used to go through an intensive and thorough test.

To determine the above-discussed aspects, one should consider the following:

• Total Agents to be logged-in at the same time
• The number of phone calls that are created to the Call Center
• The rate at which Agents go online to attend the call
• The speed at which telephone calls arise through Call Center
• Number of simultaneous phone calls to be handled by the agents each hour
• The amount at which emails are created for Call Center and from Call Center
• Number of concurrent emails to be handled by the agents each hour
• Total number of concurring emails received

Contact Center Tests

As discussed, the above testing is required when any new projects are launched. Now imagine if your company is launching a new project and you are speeding up the launch of new applications and systems.

However, you see that the changes that are driving your newly upgraded environment don’t seem to work well. And again you see that old things are faltering too.

No need to worry as this scenario is common in almost every small and large enterprise. The pressure of working with a new system and collaborating with a new dynamic environment has an effect on both internal and external sources. Therefore, there is a need for rigorous testing to forego different test plans.

Without testing, a number of errors and problems can occur which hinders the smooth flow of the system. Therefore, effective testing strategies are required which conclude testing processes for prevention of such errors and problems.

Project Testing

Project testing is essential for every small and large enterprise while launching new projects. Rigorous testing helps in analyzing the system workflow and different applications integrated with the system.

There are two types of project testing that are given below:

Functional Testing

This type of testing is applied at various stages of the Contact Center to check the functionality of the system.

Different stages are as follows:

• SIT (System Integration Testing) is undertaken after the system is fully installed to check whether the system and its applications are cohesively working or not. It also ensures that any changes made to the newly established working environment do not affect existing elements
• Component Testing is done to check whether the working elements or components of the system are working or not. This testing is of a narrow approach but is an essential requisite for other tests
• Usability Testing is done to check user interaction with the system. Moreover, this testing involves whether the user is delivered with what is defined and not only meeting the solutions. In other words, testimonials, feedback, and mockups are examples of usability tests to check the user interaction with the system
• UAT (User Acceptance Testing) is done to ensure that the system applications are working according to pre-defined standards and are easily accepted by the user

Performance Testing

The performance test is usually done to determine the speed, accuracy, response time, and scalability of the system. This type of test usually takes place at the beginning and end of the project.

• Load Testing helps in finding the breakpoint of any application and also bottlenecks of any application. Moreover, this test is done to identify how much workload a system can handle under extreme conditions
• General testing of performance to check the software response under heavy conditions like refresh time, pop-up display, and generation of reports
• Disaster Recovery testing is done to verify process timings and restoration of backups. In addition, it measures the continuity of the system when some elements of the system are removed

Why perform this kind of testing

As we have discussed above, customer expectations are changing all the time and Contact Center is the delivery mechanism to meet those expectations and provide satisfaction to the customers.

Some of the few things that make Contact Center testing a must-have requirement are:

• CX (Customer Experience) failures often happen when customers cross channels
• The general assumption of a customer is that a company must have a flawless Contact Center which interacts with them in the most brilliant way possible solving all their queries
• The tolerance a customer has for a Contact Center is extremely low hence you have to deliver him/her your best on the first attempt
• Agents often fall under terrible pressure while trying to resolve a client’s issue in no-time

The most challenging task is to drive and ensure the CX (Customer Experience) correctly through the entire Omnichannel journeys of a customer. The journeys are pre-designed which involves complex methods, technologies, and infrastructure. CX must be tested against certain standards to ensure the journeys are correctly designed.

While ensuring CX you also need to ensure AX (Agent Experience) as the agents are the experts who are under pressure to resolve the customer query in real-time.

Contact Center Testing Tools

As each company has its own Call Center and Contact Center, they use different software for their purpose and needs.

As we have seen above, if the infrastructure lies within the premise of the Contact Center, the hardware and software are managed by the company which owns the Contact Center. Outsourcing will be followed up in the scenario of external infrastructure.

The best practice is to test the complex and constantly evolving Contact Center infrastructure, technologies, and applications with the integrations.

The best tools available in the market are:

1. STAMP
2. CYARA
3. HAMMER

You will see an example and review of the STAMP Tool

STAMP

STAMP stands for System Testing and Monitoring Platform which provides end-to-end test automation and CX monitoring. It also helps generate and run comprehensive contact tests for Omnichannel Contact Centers.

This tool automatically executes preliminary steps to configure various existing tests from the test amplification. It was mainly designed for the use of software editors and integrators.

The DevOps community was the first community in general to use the STAMP tool. STAMP supports QA, DevOps, IT, and Contact Center Management by providing real-time performance, reports, and alerts of the system.

Why STAMP

Contact Centers of various companies are strategically being enhanced and updated on a regular basis to provide high customer satisfaction and generate high revenue.

Ultimately, the constantly improving Contact Center and its functionality and technology can be a burden to many customers and staff members of the company if not tested accurately.

There are many reasons to use STAMP

• STAMP tests are highly flexible and can be cloned, reused, stored, and shared throughout the organization as and when needed.
• STAMP ensures that systems are cohesively and consistently working under real-life situations.
• STAMP provides various users with the freedom of self-operating end-to-end testing for optimizing CX and AX.
• STAMP helps in reducing work stress, pain, expense, and work delay as companies can take measures to maintain the system.
• STAMP is the backbone of Contact Center as it is a comprehensive solution that can automate tests, provide records and reports, and also define problems.
• STAMP covers almost every aspect of automated testing and optimizes customer interaction, helping agents and resolving customer experience issues.

Working

After STAMP gets introduced in Contact Center’s Application Tests, it has to go through various Omnichannel interactions. These interactions decide whether the type of test to be carried out will be concurrent or sequential. After which it runs all the interaction options and captures the responses of the Contact Center.

Types of tests STAMP will perform

1. Load Testing: While STAMP loads each and every interaction volume like calls, emails, chats, etc., it also creates real-time scenarios for ensuring the system is perfectly sized and configurations are correctly made.
2. Regression Testing: We perform a regression test to ensure reliability and stability, and to check if there is any impact on the existing CX.
3. Stress Testing: This test is undertaken to analyze how Contact Center operates during outages, accidents, or destruction. It also measures responsiveness under stressful conditions.
4. Functional Testing: This test measures the functionality of a Contact Center system. It measures data transfer between different apps, system response within a defined acceptable range, and records end-to-end verifications of the system.
5. Heartbeat Monitoring: This test involves sending alert messages to the operation if any collapses are found. It helps in maintaining the CX.

Benefits of STAMP

• The benefit of putting in low efforts with full coverage: STAMP automatically tests the client’s experience in an IVR network. This repeatable approach saves time as well as money
• Canon Performance of System: STAMP rigorously performs different tests like load and stress testing in order to ensure that the high volume of visitors in peak situations could be handled more carefully.
• Problem Detection in Early Stage: The Heartbeat Monitoring and Regression test helps in a way that agents and customers do not face any issues related to the system, therefore more emphasis is done on the brand name.
• Code-Free Testing: STAMP provides an atmosphere where the user does not have to write complete coding for the body, which means a reduction of code with the help of mouse pointing and clicking.
• Supportive DevOps Technology: Test plans and cases are reusable and schedulable, and may go through the developer’s Victimization Rest-based APIs

Features of STAMP

• STAMP monitors IVR and other telephony systems for their optimum performance
• It also deals with the reporting and routing of CTI Systems along with back-end integrations
• STAMP conjointly offers a completely distributed and versatile design to satisfy the need for any Contact Center specifications
• It provides real-time interactions and activities to test beneath the load
• It creates distinctive test plans quickly either through importing APIs or by planning systems among STAMP
• Users can create clones and can also export test plans
• STAMP configurations help to create monitoring plans for testing purposes
• User Omnichannel journeys are supported by STAMP in conjunction with email chats, etc.
• Delivers advanced take-a-look at information management like setting up and re-formatting information before execution, cluster information things, collecting information things from alternative servers where databases are created via the internet
• STAMP helps in enabling grouping, storing, saving, and sharing of tests between DevOps and the team for testing.
• “Virtual Agent” enables by STAMP helps in taking immediate action.
• Old records and reports are maintained by STAMP which includes deep insights and real case studies for configuration levels
• Offers configurable notification levels for supported failures
• Generate a time period to read or take a look at the accomplishment
• It also helps in recording calls and provides other features to agents like pause and play, forward play, and rewind play of call interactions

=> Check the official link for more details on the STAMP tool.

Time and Cost Savings through Automation

au•to•ma•tion (n): It is a technique which states that the operation or functioning of a process is done without or less human intervention by automatic means— Dictionary.com

With automation-enabled testing technologies like STAMP, a Contact Center can save remarkably on both cost and time while loading testing their architecture and infrastructure to keep up with client demands at all times.

For Example:

Let’s say a customer visits your website to place an order. The customer should be able to track the shipment of the order placed on your website. This can be done through a GPS system available on the delivery person’s cell phone.

There is no interference from any employees helping the customer to track the order. The order automatically gets tracked with the help of software.

This is very beneficial for the company, its employees as well as consumers. The employees don’t have to manage or track data for customers. Customers don’t have to deal with regular updates to track shipment queries.

The company saves a lot of time with the help of automated software as employees don’t have to waste time only dealing with customers on phone calls or via messages.

They also get time to promote their product to attract new potential customers. Ultimately, the diversification and growth of the company is achieved successfully through automation.

At the same time, customers also benefit from this automated software as they don’t have to request or bargain with anyone for their queries. The process has become so easy and interactive that any type of consumer can go through and understand it briefly.

Have you heard of it? With automation in software, 20% of each employee’s time is saved which means a full day time in a week is saved by a company.

Sometimes you can save a lot with the help of a system. So, gear up and find a new system that saves a lot of effort for your company.

Efficiency and Accuracy of Testing

Efficiency means the completion of work or tasks on time with minimal resources.

When we talk about contact or call center efficiency, it means how effectively customers are interacting with your call center services. Are they fully satisfied or not? Or are they switching to competitors?

Also, can you do cost-cutting without sacrificing customer satisfaction? Or can you eliminate any unfruitful resources and be more effective for your customers?

This is how contact center efficiency is defining how effective you can be for your customers.

Accuracy means the completion of the task with correctness and perfection.

If your company does not provide accurate information or provides any false information to the customers then you are probably distorting customers’ satisfaction.

It is important that every single customer’s data should be maintained accurately, so whenever an existing customer comes up with any query your company is always ready to deal with them.

Conclusion

Companies are constantly enhancing their Contact Center technology to positively impact interactions and response times with the intention of client satisfaction, recognition, and revenue.

Contact Center systems, as well as Interactive Voice Response systems, should work well with the varied technical elements in an Omnichannel setting.

Now it must be clear to you all that Contact Center testing is not just a test to measure the quality of a call or resolve the client’s problem. The concept is a bit different. It is a test to measure your company’s strength in meeting customer satisfaction.

The test concludes with the hierarchical arrangements of the system which involves the use of different types of methodologies, technologies, and infrastructures. It is imperative to test your Contact Center to keep your company updated and compete in the market.

It is essential to maintain the correct standards for Call Center testing in line with having sound system architecture at all times and also to keep up with client demands.

As we have seen in this article, STAMP stands to be the benchmark outside of all Contact Center testing tools, and with a broad range of feature lists, it does a lot more than expected and proves its effectiveness.

By automating the Contact Center’s client interaction testing method, STAMP ensures that all systems are systematically and cohesively performing beneath diverse real-world conditions.

It executes customer-to-agent interaction tests and makes sure every interaction is accurate, fast, and consistent, as your customer expects it to be.

Hope this article helped you get an idea of the importance and need of Contact Center Testing in a Company. Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments section below! We would love to hear from you.