Today’s customer contact centers are far more complex than ever before, as consumers demand top service at every touchpoint. So how can you build a strategy to help take your center to the next level to ensure you are delivering what customers want, while still keeping an eye on the bottom line?
First, Know Your Customers (And Your Competitors)
Before you can respond to customer needs, you must know their preferences. It makes little sense to staff a CSR team with social media reps if none of your customers ever contact you on Facebook or Twitter. Survey the landscape and determine which channels they prefer to use, and how often.
It is also critical to understand what your competitors are doing. What approaches do they take that work well? What doesn’t work so well? What ideas can you build on and improve on for your center? This research can help you design your strategy and position yourself for success.
Lay The Foundation For the Future
Once you know what your customers want, you can examine your current strategy and determine if it is designed in a way that can be modified and fine-tuned to meet your customers’ needs, or if it must be rebuilt from the ground up.
From there, you must work closely with your tech department to determine whether or not you have the infrastructure in place to carry out your eventual strategy, and if not, how to get there. Be sure to examine the costs associated with every investment you will request from leadership, so that you can justify the costs.
Hash Out The Strategy
Next, you can start to outline your goals and the steps that must be taken to achieve those goals. Be sure they align with the overarching corporate goals so that you can make a clear case to company leadership for investing in the center.
Focus on these areas when defending your position:
- Operational efficiency – how will the new center drive cost savings and efficiency?
- Resource optimization – How will you optimize resources and develop staff to meet constantly-evolving customer needs and demands?
- Accessibility – Does this really make it easier for customers to connect with the organization?
- Data acquisition – What information will be gathered and how will it move the company forward?
- Challenge demand – How and where can things like self-service, automation, forums and peer to peer interaction be used to help reduce a customer’s need to contact you in the first place?
Quantify everything in terms of the dollars you want to spend against the estimated return on investment. When you can prove your case in terms of profit, you’ll have a much better chance of creating a contact center that will take the company where it wants to go.
Achieving your ultimate goals once your strategy is in place requires staffing your new center with the best talent the market has to offer. If you are looking for strong, engaged CSRs for your customer call center, the expert recruiters at Contemporary Staffing Solutions can help. We specialize in connecting call centers with people who have the skills and the drive to succeed. Contact CSS today to learn more about our strategy for helping you take your contact center to the next level.