Transforming Contact Center into a Profit Center

Most companies consider contact centers as something entailing the huge cost. The reason why organizations still need to have one is, to provide adequate service to their customers. If a company does not have a contact center to address the issues of its customers, it can run the risk of losing them. This is because, if consumers do not get the attention they deserve from a firm, they would stop doing business with it, and rather switch to its competitors. In such case, the firm would stand to lose much more than the cost incurred in running a service center. Moreover, the lack of customers can put the company in danger of being pushed to extinction. Hence, organizations are content even if their customer-care department produces minimum profits.

However, the situation is quickly changing. Many companies are today using an innovative combination of technology and strategies to turn the contact center into a profit center. The perceived earnings can be both tangible and intangible in nature. Profitability can be calculated in the form of reduced cost, improved functional efficiencies, higher employee productivity, and enhanced customer experience. Even if there is no clear opportunity to extract revenue, companies can still profit from the contact center services by achieving these benefits which we discuss in detail, below.

Optimized Management

The advancements in technology have benefited many organizational functions. The automation of the service cycle in contact centers is an important step towards achieving management optimization. It involves deploying advanced reporting and dashboards to analyze important metrics such as call resolution and customer satisfaction in real-time. Feeding the organization’s decision support system with such intelligent analysis can help in improving the overall performance of the service center, which in turn would boost the effectiveness of a company’s bottom line.

Reduced Costs

Cost cutting can be optimized by consolidating the various customer-touch-points into a single system. The strategic integration would reduce the redundancy in various service functions. Moreover, even the service center personnel would find it easy to understand the customer’s latest issues, and can initiate the appropriate response. The seamless connectivity of customers with service representatives who have real-time access to their data can minimize the lag in service across all touch points. The automated feedback channels can add to the efficiency, which can also drive down the costs incurred due to various service-delays.

Increased Productivity

Automating customer-interactions involving negligible interventions from the customer-service agents can boost productivity. The crucial information collected from the automated tasks can be helpful in churning out insights about customers’ behavior while interacting with the machine. This information can be vital in optimizing the machine-based interactions, which can also boost the performance of the service center. Furthermore, agents can then have the opportunity to focus exclusively on making meaningful engagements with the customers to enhance their overall experience.

It has also been identified that most customers are ready to pay a premium to get the best service. Keeping this in view, companies can look forward to invest in innovative technology for their contact centers. The improved overall efficiency and minimized cost coupled with better customer satisfaction can enable firms to gain significant returns on their investments. In this way, the traditional notion of considering the contact center as an unavoidable cost is steadily being transformed.

Key Takeaways

• Contact Centers are vital for organizations to provide adequate service to their customers.
• Many companies are today using an innovative combination of technology and strategies to turn their contact center into a profit center.