Contact centres of the past used to belong to the company’s support division and provide answers to the customers’ questions, whenever available and at the expense of the customers’ patience. Nowadays, the business decisions belong to the customers.
Contact centres of the past used to belong to the company’s support division and provide answers to the customers’ questions, whenever available and at the expense of the customers’ patience. Nowadays, though customers are more empowered to make decisions than ever, contact centres are often wrongly seen as an unhelpful cost.
The ’era of the customer’ was reached through fierce competition and constant modernisation and it stands that businesses that are serious about their customers invest in resources to answer their questions. Innovative ideas and quality products shape the strategy of the market but how do companies differentiate themselves in a room full of achievers? How do they get their piece of the pie when the stakes are that high? Through quality customer service! That is where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) specialists come in.
CRMs provide customer support whenever possible and at the expense of the client. The former is not even an option anymore – 24/7 service is a quality standard, ‘business hours only’ can be afforded only by the most confident of the players. The expenses, however, have become the main differentiator of the contact centres.
How to win more clients without losing a strategic profit margin? One of the most well-recognised routes is outsourcing. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) professionals save money on the difference in salary levels between different countries. The Philippines and India, both having educated English-speaking population in abundance, are still well below American and European salaries, despite rapid development. However, many businesses have found that outsourcing their CRM can result in a loss of value, if their service providers aren’t able to maintain the customer experience they are after.
Another idea is to provide the pricing strategy that would benefit both clients and suppliers. For example, if you need to find a contact centre for your new smartphone users but want to pay just a fixed hourly rate, then your CRM provider would be disappointed. Smartphones tend to be upgraded, new apps tend to be released and marketing campaigns usually kick in a few months later to remind us about the latest offers; who wants to adapt to all these changes for free? Instead, CRMs would ask you to include a clause that increases their fee in line with your customers’ calls.
Or, imagine, a client wants to improve their customer service but they’re only paying a pay-per-transaction rate. It would mean the contact centre will get more money with every answered call. High quality service would be hard to achieve if agents are on a time quota. That’s when minimum required CSat (Customer Satisfaction) level would be handy.
Technology and innovation can play a big role in saving contact centres some money, as cloud-based infrastructure and homeworking allow less spending on the offices and more on efficiency. Social networks, web chats and emails are another way of minimising costs and supporting the customers in the most convenient fashion.
Mobile technologies are on the rise, so why the customer service should be left behind? Omni-channel approach, or providing service whenever, wherever and across all platforms, is becoming a benchmark of the contact centre industry. And don’t forget employee satisfaction. Staff is the key element of any contact centre, so when they’re happy the customers are happy. And that is the ultimate goal.
To find out more about the procurement of CRM services, please click here to download a snapshot of the latest Procurement Leaders Contact Centres report.
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The views expressed in this post and throughout the series are the autor's own and not intended to reflect the views the YQ Matrix platform, its users or any associated organisations.
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