Making More With Less: Contact Center Industry Executive Recommendations For Operating A Call Center In An Economic Downturn

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Apr 2008 by Schelmetic, Tracey E

The call center, as an entity, has often been tasked with "making more with less." Customer expectations are rising, labor costs are rising, competition is rising. So what's going down? Budgets, frequently. But in the past, companies could rely on a high degree of spending from consumers and businesses. The potential sales were there, they merely had to compete for them. Fast-forward to 2008 and, whether you agree the U.S. is at the beginning of an official recession or not, it's impossible to pretend that the economy in general, and consumer and b-to-b pennies in particular, are not being pinched.

So what steps can call center entities take to cope during an economic downturn? For answers, we turned to executives from prominent contact center solutions and service provider companies. Executives were asked, "What is the most important technology for the call center to invest in during slower economic growth times?" Without further ado, we present their sage advice.

Mark Lepko, President Altitude Software North America

The economic slowdown represents an opportunity for contact centers looking for ways to differentiate while cutting costs. Today, there is a clear shift in contact center operations, with contact centers focusing on first-call resolution as a priority, aiming to reduce costs and maximize agent performance. The ROI arising from technology solutions that help achieve reduced numbers of second calls for the same inquiry is really quite significant. Studies indicate that, in some situations, 50 percent of calls could have been avoided if correctly handled on a first call.

Although the problem is identified, the solution is not easy to implement. It requires a combination of providing training/coaching to agents, defining the right processes and having the appropriate technology infrastructure in place. In this respect, a unified agent desktop solution is essential for contact centers aiming for more efficient and productive agents while improving success rates in helping customers with queries. Since agents have to simultaneously manage multiple interaction channels, use business applications and guide the conversation with the customer through a script, all relevant information must be a click away.

A unified agent desktop is a huge step towards getting the right answers within acceptable periods of time. The unified desktop not only saves time, but also optimizes agent performance in what amounts to a direct impact on the contact center bottom line.

Tom Chamberlain, Director of Business Process Marketing Aspect Software

In a slowing economy, companies are clearly focused on increasing efficiency and maximizing resources in all operational areas. In the contact center, this means automating the right processes to enhance service levels, not hinder them; leveraging automation technology like predictive dialers and voice portals; taking advantage of other applications that can increase first-call resolution.

Voice portals and self-service solutions.

Self-service tools, when implemented correctly, make the best use of agent resources by automating routine portions of an interaction, like providing account balances or confirming appointments, and seamlessly transferring the call to an agent for more complex portions. Automating routine transactions is critical to efficiently handling more calls. Additionally, voice self-service is a valuable solution for customers that call ' regarding sensitive, private issues that they would not want to share with an agent, such as high debt information, credit card numbers, repossession or foreclosure status. This technology is essential in a slow economy because it allows contact centers to do more with less. However, the key to the success of this technology is to ensure it is designed to give customers the information they need, not prevent them from talking to agents.

Predictive dialers. Advanced outbound dialer technology is another way for contact centers to improve efficiency, which is particularly important for sales and collections contact centers during a slowing economy. Solutions that offers campaign development tools, call table filters, predictive dialing, call blending, browser-based agent desktop, real-time statistics and historical and custom reporting can maximize the number of calls handled and ensure that agents reach customers at the right time to increase debt collection and to improve sales rates. This enables companies to increase revenue and reduce operating costs in the contact center.

Unified communications. More companies are seeing the value of a unified communications strategy that incorporates the contact center, and are realizing that UC offers a unique opportunity to help improve first-time call resolution and contact center efficiency. By interoperating contact center applications with UC technologies, contact center agents can shorten problemresolution cycles, answer customer inquiries quickly and more effectively upsell services and/or products to prospective customers because they're able to identify subject matter experts more quickly and easily. Leveraging standards-based and unified contact center solutions enables this easy interoperability with presence engines and other UC tools. This is another example of how contact centers can improve processes and efficiencies to save money and maximize agents' times and improve overall customer loyalty, which is extremely important during a slow economy.