While many companies look on their contact centers are a cost of doing business – a rather high cost that uses a lot of capital but offers very little tangible return – other companies view the contact center differently. For starters, it’s the front line between a company and its customers, and since sales and revenue are made or broken by the relationships companies build with their customers, it’s one of the most critical operations in the business.
In the ever changing pursuit of attaining true customer engagement – today a prime measure of success in business – the contact center is ground zero for many companies’ number one goal: building a large pool of dedicated customers who become “net promoters” of the company’s products or services.
Even more critically, however, the contact center is a deep source of valuable business intelligence, though many companies fail to leverage it. The era of “big data” is upon us, and most companies today collect so much data they simply don’t know what to do with it. By using this data and interpreting and analyzing it, companies can gain deep insight into their customers and their operations. They can use this intelligence to determine what works and what doesn’t, and where their time and money would be best spent to make tangible, immediate improvements to the business.
Avaya’s (News - Alert) director of marketing and customer experience, Laura Bassett, recently explained that the intelligence gathered from the contact center can provide valuable feedback for nearly every corner of the enterprise, particularly product development.
“Your contact center can drive revenue and increase shareholder value by being an important tool when it comes to product development, creating the best possible customer experience and implementing the strategic objectives of your company,” said Bassett.
Data gathered from the contact center can be analyzed to yield real intelligence that can offer insight into billing and accounting practices, marketing program effectiveness, sales efforts, branding and many other critical processes. The go-between technology is generally analytics, which can uncover patterns that might not be ordinarily spotted by individuals within the organization. Some companies are very surprised by the information a good analytics solution can spot.
Essentially, the goal is to turn the contact center from just a demarcation between customers and the company into a complete knowledge center, or a source of most of the pertinent information a company needs to make better business decisions.
Edited by Blaise McNamee