In the early days of contact center outsourcing, return on investment was measured by a single, simple factor: reduced overall costs. Outsourcing providers often sacrificed performance to keep costs down. In today's competitive landscape, however, many companies are re-evaluating their outsourcing partners, realizing the revenue-generating potential of contact centers.
One important -- yet often overlooked -- function of a contact center is managing the customer experience consistent with the company's brand. A customer's experience during transactions with contact center agents solidifies overall impressions of the brand. Transforming a contact center from a cost-cutting afterthought to a viable, brand-carrying, profit-generating division of the business could give a business an advantage over its competitors.
Within the contact center and outsourcing industries, the process by which both cost and added business value are considered to give customers the most bang for their outsourced buck is known as "transformational outsourcing." Reducing costs will always be an important element for companies that elect to outsource their contact centers needs, but the best outsourcing partners will be able to add business value while still keeping costs to a minimum.
Most outsourcing providers have a detailed process for selecting the best location and hiring the best agents to meet their clients' contact center needs. Visionary outsourcers, however, hire agents who can be easily trained to become "universal agents." The universal agent is one who can perform multiple tasks. Associates who can take on several duties -- from customer care to technical support to sales -- are an invaluable resource to the contact center, both in terms of reducing costs and adding business value.
As desirable as the universal agent is to a company, the idea that one person can address all of a caller's needs is even more important to the consumer. If one agent can fix a problem with a bill and then offer technical support, the caller does not have to deal with the frustrations associated with being put on hold and transferred to various agents. Not only does this improve the customer's experience and enhances the brand's reputation, but it can lower costs by eliminating multiple queuing problems and increasing agent utilization.
Once universal agents are in place, outsourcing providers have the support needed to offer transformational outsourcing as part of their overall value proposition. Employing multi-lingual agents, establishing a strategy for cross-selling and up-selling and implementing efficient back-office processes -- including shipping and handling returns -- are examples of how an outsourcing partner can add value and generate revenue. As organizations' outsourcing strategies continue to mature, there are several aspects of customer management as opportunities for true business transformation, including:
- Customer care -- Caring for customers and nurturing relationships are vital to long-term profitability. Leading outsourcers offer sophisticated technologies -- including universal agent desktops, computer telephony integration (CTI), customer data repositories and product knowledge bases -- in order to deliver customer service with a greater level of efficiency, intelligence and personalization.
- Inbound sales -- The inbound sales call, chat or e-mail is a pivotal opportunity to make a positive impression on a consumer and ultimately boost brand image. The customer is ready to buy, so the experience should be smooth, easy, friendly and convenient. The integration of inbound calling systems with customer history and proactive profiling delivers superior opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling via dynamic scripting.
- Web self-help -- Tight integration of self-help systems with back-end customer care and billing engines enables real-time service and updates. If a customer inquires online about account status, the self-help application or customer service representative can instantly retrieve that information and provide informed, personalized service.
- Robust response management -- Campaign management is vital in newly deregulated markets that run sophisticated acquisition campaigns. This process requires tools and services to handle e-mail, direct mail, e-commerce, telephone and advertising campaigns. With integration, companies can manage all the multi-channel inquiries and orders that a campaign may generate, as well as perform in-depth return on investment (ROI) and customer profile analyses to enhance future campaigns.
- Logistics and distribution -- Often dismissed as a back-end or operational function, order fulfillment is vital to customer management as a tangible touch of the relationship and commerce process. An integrated solution connects order and payment processing, inventory management, shipping and returns processing activities to customer care and sales.
- Marketing services -- Customer acquisition and retention require knowledge about customer purchasing patterns, demographic and psychographic profiles. Integrated customer management delivers greater effectiveness across a multitude of marketing efforts, including customer acquisition programs, database development and analyses, market segmentation and targeting, permission marketing, list management and customer value analysis.
Because they specialize in customer care and other contact center operations, outsourcing providers are able to offer these and other revenue-generating services while ensuring that costs are kept to a minimum. It is important for companies to realize the potential of the contact center and to they should not simply view it as an unimportant business division.
As more and more organizations across all industries elect to outsource their contact center needs, outsourcing providers continue to seek a competitive advantage. Those partners with the most efficient, robust transformational outsourcing strategies will remain in high demand as executives continue to realize that the contact center can be significant, often untapped source of revenue.
Amit Shankardass is senior vice president of solution planning at ClientLogic, a global business process outsourcing provider. Contact Amit at AmitSha@clientlogic.com.
