Smarter customer contact starts with the right combination

Best of Breed vs. Best of Suite

Before diving into specific tools like chatbots, voicebots or other customer contact solutions, it’s important to pause and consider a key strategic choice: will you opt for a best-of-suite or a best-of-breed approach?

Best of suite means choosing a single platform that offers multiple functions, often integrated and centrally managed.
Best of breed focuses on selecting the best solution for each individual component. So the best chatbot, the best CRM, the best telephony solution and integrating them with each other.

Both approaches have their pros and cons. Suites are often easier to manage, but less flexible. Best-of-breed setups are powerful, but require more direction and a clear vision.

What do you already have? And do you really need it?

In practice, we see it all the time: organisations want to “do something with a chatbot” without really knowing why. It sounds modern, smart and efficient. But is it actually the right fit for your situation?

Not every customer question is suitable for automation. There are plenty of examples where frequently asked questions via phone turned out not to work well in a chatbot: think of detailed explanations that still needed to be sent afterwards by email or SMS. In those cases, automation often creates more frustration than relief.

That’s why it’s essential to take a step back and look critically at your current customer contact. This checklist can help:

✅ What do we already have?
Which systems, tools and channels are we already using? Do they work well together? Are they still up to date? Do we already have live chat, a telephony platform or a ticketing module?
✅ Do we have a central knowledge base?
Is there a single place where knowledge is built, maintained and shared? If not, you risk every solution becoming its own little island. Without centralised knowledge, scalable automation is nearly impossible.
✅ How many of our customer questions are suitable for automation?
Map out the top five incoming questions. Are they simple, repetitive issues? Or questions that require context, empathy or creative thinking? Only by analysing this properly can you determine whether a chatbot actually adds value.

Only when you can answer these questions with “yes,” or have gathered concrete insights, can you make a conscious and well-founded decision for a specific solution. A chatbot, voicebot or any other channel should support your real needs and not the other way around.

Because technology is not a goal in itself; it’s a means to structurally improve the customer experience.

Reusability and scalability

One of the most important lessons from real-world cases is that any investment in customer contact technology should be future-proof. If you choose a chatbot today, make sure it’s scalable and can integrate with other systems. Don’t just focus on solving today’s problem, think about how the knowledge and logic can be reused across other channels (voice, email, etc.).

👉 Tip: Also read our earlier blog about reusing your chatbot for your voicebot.

The foundations of a smart customer journey

When you’re working on modern customer contact, you don’t need a handful of disconnected tools. You need a well-thought-out combination of building blocks. At Sound of Data, we work with organisations every day to create a customer contact architecture that’s built to last. It consists of four essential components:

The smart interface (chatbot or voicebot)
The channel where the customer interaction begins. Think chat, voice or WhatsApp.
Routing & integration
The layer that ensures every interaction ends up in the right place.
The knowledge layer
A central, well-maintained knowledge base that ensures consistency and scalability. It’s the content engine behind all your contact channels.
Your CRM system
The place where customer information is managed and followed up.

Together, these elements form not an improvised collection of tools, but an integrated ecosystem for customer interaction. Scalable, intelligent and ready for the future.

Smart collaboration

For future-proof customer interaction, three elements are essential: a strong front office, intelligent routing and seamless integration. We strongly believe in the power of a specialised combination: Kindly for chat(bots), Seamly for voicebot technology and CRM integration, and Sound of Data for routing and system integration.

Seamly offers voicebot technology that excels at natural conversations over the phone channel. Kindly is a leading platform for chatbots, known for its proven scalability and strong focus on user experience. Sound of Data ensures that these interfaces don’t function as isolated islands, but work together seamlessly within the customer contact architecture. We facilitate the connections between systems and channels so that each interaction reaches the right department at the right moment.

A well-structured knowledge layer (knowledge base, CRM and ticketing) is a crucial foundation for successful automation. Only when this foundation is in place can we deploy technology in a smart and efficient way.

Together, this combination forms what we see as the golden triangle of customer interaction: each component does what it does best, and collectively they deliver a solution that is scalable, effective and truly ready for the next step in customer contact.

Conclusion

Whether you’re just starting to explore chatbots or looking to redesign your entire customer contact environment, begin with the right questions, take a broad perspective and think ahead. Automating without a clear vision rarely delivers the results you hope for.

At Sound of Data, we help organisations piece this puzzle together. In collaboration with partners like Kindly and Seamly, we build customer journeys that are not only efficient, but also personal and sustainable.

Need help shaping your customer contact strategy or building this ecosystem? We’d be happy to think along with you, feel free to get in touch!