Mission Possible: Creating Contact Centers People Love

2023 was a big year of change and transformation for technology (yes, generative AI!), for contact centers—where recent technology advancements are radically reshaping ways of working—and closest to home, for Sharpen. 

In one transformative year, we merged three best-in-class contact center software companies—SharpenCX, Webtext, and PlumVoice—into a unified organization with a series of points of differentiation.

The result? A powerful offering positioned to reshape the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) industry and positively impact the customer experience moments that matter most: 

• AI-powered self-service, 
• intelligent interaction routing, 
• robust and flexible communication across voice and digital channels, 
• and a unified agent experience that unlocks agent potential.  

As our revenue numbers doubled, so did our desire to build upon our differentiated solution and make a market-changing impact on the world.  

“Contact centers people love”

Is it possible, we asked ourselves, to create contact centers that people love? Can we transform experiences that are notoriously difficult and painful and make them not only tolerable but enjoyable? 

The short answer: Yes. 

But there’s work to be done because most contact center experiences…well… suck. In fact, customer satisfaction ratings in 2022 were at their lowest levels since 2005. 

The team at Sharpen is on a mission to flip the script on lousy customer experiences and help organizations deliver joyful moments of deep connection with their consumers. How do we plan to do that? 

With a contact center platform engineered to sharpen every connection that’s:

• Performance-oriented
• Designed to empower
• Innovative by nature

Performance-oriented

Ultimately, everything has to link back to better outcomes. If you remove mundane tasks from agents’ workloads—via self-service—and give them powerful tools, you can drive better customer experiences, driving up revenue. We believe the contact center will be a source of massive market share changes for every business over the next one to five years, and companies that get it right will be massively favored!

Sharpen exists to support our customers and drive better outcomes: better outcomes for consumers, for agents, and ultimately, for businesses. Those outcomes look like lowering costs and increasing revenue—but they also take the form of stronger, happier, and more impactful connections between people. 

What does this look like? 

Simpler and faster customer operations with contact center tools managed with clicks, not code—giving you the agility to modernize, transform, anticipate your customers’ needs, and stay ahead of the competition. 

Performance orientation also means understanding and owning your outcomes with real-time performance insights up and down the organization. Sharpen makes it easy to customize, track, and improve the metrics that matter most, driving costs down and ROI up.

Designed to empower

One word we’ve been playing around with for a while now is “empower.” I really love the word for Sharpen. 

Exceptional CCaaS software is the contact center’s backbone, working behind the scenes to power operations like electricity in a building. The less you hear about it and know it exists, the better. In fact if you hear about it, it probably means something went wrong!

But it’s also a tool that enables the front line to serve customers effectively, empowering them. To drive great outcomes, contact centers need software that quietly and seamlessly works while simultaneously partnering with agents.

The best customer experiences are rooted in empowerment for agents and customers. The Sharpen platform is purposefully crafted to ensure a smooth, intuitive experience for both sides of the experience equation. 

We believe contact center agents have untapped potential that, when unleashed, fuels positive, efficient human-to-human interactions. So, while most contact center platforms are designed with agents as an afterthought—cobbling together interfaces and requiring incessant toggling between systems—Sharpen puts the agent at the center. 

We also recognize that today’s consumers can access more data than ever, creating higher expectations for brand interactions. However, few contact centers have truly answered the call to empower their customers in brand interactions. Specifically, few enable customers to engage how and when they choose and ensure that complex, agent-managed interactions are seamless. 

The Sharpen platform makes it easy for you to rise to the challenge. Meticulously designed and masterfully engineered, each facet works together to craft seamless, engaging end-to-end interactions.

What does that look like? 

For agents, it’s intuitive tools, process automation, real-time insights, and fingertip access to customer data, so they’re more engaged, productive, and valuable. For customers, it’s delivering effortless and secure experiences across every touchpoint—whether via AI-powered self-service, voice, or a plethora of digital channels. 

Innovative by nature

Innovation is key. One thing we all agree on in the contact center space is that technology is changing—and more rapidly than ever.  At Sharpen, we’ve built our software to be “future-proof.” Change is easy for us.

The evidence for that? We’re rolling out AI capabilities faster than any of our competitors. We released 200+ versions of our software last year, whereas some players only released one updated version.

And, of course, we merged three products into one. This would be simply impossible with a legacy tech stack.

“Make change easy” is a phrase I love to use, and we embody it at Sharpen.

What does this look like?

The ability to flexibly migrate and modernize your IVR and contact center systems at your own pace—maximizing your existing investments and mitigating digital transformation risk. Contact center innovation also requires an extensible, open platform that makes integrating and adopting new technologies easy. 

And most importantly, the product of innovation should be intuitive and usable. The Sharpen platform fuels your contact center’s innovation using AI where it makes sense, solves a specific problem, and has an obvious and immediate impact. 

It’s time to Sharpen every connection

Let’s make 2024 the year where we say “goodbye” to dreadful customer experiences and “hello” to sharper, more enjoyable contact center interactions. Our entire team is ready to help you create contact centers people love, and their commitment and enthusiasm are reflected in everything they do—from our brand’s new look and feel to our latest product enhancements. 

So what do you say? Let’s flip the script together.