Call Centers Missing Opportunities to Boost Business

There’s far more to handling customer contacts than improving the satisfaction and loyalty of those customers – as important as that is. As a primary customer touchpoint, the call center has significant potential to provide other business units with invaluable intelligence and support – e.g., it can help operations pinpoint quality problems, marketing develop more focused campaigns, IT design better systems, and serve as an early warning of competitive developments.

Unfortunately, far too many organizations seem to be missing this opportunity. In its recently released landmark benchmarking study, the Contact Center Operations Report, ICMI found that only 54.8% of call centers are sharing key customer data and feedback gleaned from monitoring with other departments and upper management. “This results in many missed opportunities to improve products and services, marketing, interdepartmental relationships and executive support,” says ICMI’s Greg Levin, one of the report’s authors.

While monitoring is not the only way to capture customer input, it’s a primary source, and when it is missing, that’s usually an indication that other means aren’t optimized either. With the right approach, any organization can better leverage this input to improve performance – which is especially important when the economy is so difficult.

Brad Cleveland
Senior Advisor and Former President & CEO,
ICMI
bcleveland@think-services.com

Job Roles Are a Changin'

One of the recurring themes at the recent ICMI Call Center Demo conference in Miami (which, by the way, was terrific) is that job roles continue to evolve quickly. At the agent level, job requirements are becoming more generalized in most call centers. Agents must increasingly understand the access channels customers use, the interrelated nature of services the organization provides, and the breadth of needs and expectations that customers have. The growth of social media and the enormous capabilities consumers have to access and use information is accelerating this trend.

At the management level, many job roles are becoming increasingly specialized. For example, workforce management is seeing the emergence of forecasting, scheduling and real-time management expertise. Similarly, quality monitoring depends on monitoring and coaching, program design, calibration and data analysis. Technology can also lead to specialization; e.g., individuals specifically assigned to support speech, desktops, networks, quality monitoring systems or workforce management applications. If you manage or support a small call center, you may wear many of these hats—but they are more specialized hats, nonetheless.

The most successful organizations are cultivating development programs at all levels that deliver specific skills and knowledge while reinforcing the call center’s (and organization’s) most important overall objectives. And the best leaders are encouraging collaboration and an appreciation for the diverse responsibilities the call center requires—while keeping everyone focused on the business results that matter most.

Brad Cleveland
Senior Advisor and Former President & CEO,
ICMI
bcleveland@think-services.com