One of the questions we pose to clients when looking at contact centre procurement projects is ‘do they actually need a new contact centre’. You would probably be surprised how often the answer is ‘no’.
Contact Centres are sold on functionality, supplier X can provide integrated WFM, supplier Y can provide flexible cost model, Supplier Z can integrate with Social Media etc. But functionality alone misses the point of what customer service should be about. The question should be not what functionality a product can do but what outcome do you want to achieve.
For example; your contact centre may be running at 110% and you think that by reducing the number of calls or shifting channels may reduce the overall strain on the contact centre. Certainly, the functional response to this is to implement new technology which allows you to service your customers via other channels, but what if the answer is not to shift inbound traffic but increase outbound traffic, reducing the need for customers to contact you altogether.
What if you looked to proactively push data to customers before they’ve even asked for it?
What if you took the top 3 communications wrap-up code and broke them into their component parts? Then evaluate the code via an automated process which engaged the customer post contact before an escalation is required to a call into the contact centre.
What if you could interrogate your CRM system when a customer contacted your business and then route the contact automatically based on the current interactions or credit status of the account?
Now, what if you could do all this without changing the underlying infrastructure. Interesting thought?