Home

Five Major Trends in the Contact Center

Pelorus Associates is a market research and consulting firm that carefully tracks important trends and developments within the contact center industry. The following list summarizes five trends that have been underway for some time and we expect will continue to impact contact center operations and planning.

(1) Recognition of the Contact Center as a Strategic Resource

Long thought of as cost centers, senior management now understands that the quality of all customer touch points is critical to achieving revenue, profitability, and customer care objectives. As the voice of the company, agents are uniquely positioned to strengthen or weaken brand loyalty and corporate image. Residing within the contact center is a vast reservoir of consumer information that can be mined for a deeper understanding of customer motivations and behaviors. As well, managements of progressive companies see superior service as a competitive advantage and are equally concerned about both operating costs and customer satisfaction. Industry surveys show that over half of senior managers now view their contact centers as strategic resources. A 2008 ICMI survey of contact center professionals showed that 70% of call center professionals felt that executive leadership understood the contact center’s value to the organization. A 2009 research study sponsored by Knowlagent revealed that 72% of contact center professionals believed that the perceived value of the contact center had increased among senior management from the prior year.

(2) Advent of Customer Experience Management

Borrowing from marketing literature and philosophy, the past four years have produced some innovative new thinking about the relationships between business development and customer care. “Customer Experience Management” has emerged as a new paradigm for modeling the agent-caller interaction. An important distinction between customer experience management and traditional customer service management is the notion that every interaction with the enterprise at any touch point constitutes an experience. The sum total of these experiences influences the customer’s view of the brand and the company. These experiences can be positive or negative. The resulting predisposition to favor or disfavor the brand has important economic consequences. Customers that have negative views will choose other brands, if that option is open to them. If they cannot readily switch brands because of barriers these supposedly “loyal” customers may share their feelings with others - a likelihood made much easier with Internet blogs - and thereby dissuade potential new customers and diminish investments made in communicating the brand promise. The practical impacts of this line of thinking are the implementation of new solutions like intelligent agent desktops, and decisioning guidance software, as well a fresh look at the metrics by which the contact center is measured

(3) Emergence of the Chief Customer Officer

A growing number of progressive companies have determined that driving a customer-centric culture throughout the organization can be best established by tasking a senior executive with that responsibility. This individual may carry a variety of titles, including the popular chief customer officer (CCO). Others are vice president of customer experience, chief experience officer, vice president of customer care, or senior director of customer relations. According to the Chief Customer Officer Council, there were roughly 20 individuals with the title of chief customer officer as recently as 2003. The organization estimates that there were at least 500 people with a specific title of chief customer officer in 2011 and probably hundreds more with related titles. In organizations that do not have a specific title related to customer care responsibility for customer retention and management of customer contacts are as often added to the duties of the chief marketing officer.

The chief customer officer is charged with developing a formal customer experience strategy. This executive is also responsible for overseeing the tactics required to help assure that all customer touch points share the common goals of attracting new customers through superior customer service and retaining the most valued customers. According to Curtis Bingham, founder and president of the Chief Customer Officer Council, “The Chief Customer Officer is uniquely accountable for driving profitable customer behavior and creating a customer-centric culture by leveraging in-depth customer insight to drive corporate strategy.”

(4) Changing Role of the Contact Center

The evolving role of the contact center is compelling contact center managers to rethink the way they measure and evaluate agent and group performance. Today, contact centers are expected to achieve goals that were not part of the plan even ten years ago. Examples are:

· Retain customers,

· Grow customer satisfaction,

· Resolve customer issues on the first contact,

· Increase revenues,

· Evaluate campaign success,

· Supply market intelligence.

At the same time, contact centers are still expected to operate at peak efficiency and keep operating costs down. These multiple goals are often in conflict with each other. If agents are expected to resolve queries on the first contact, then handle time is certain to increase. Similarly, asking agents to up-sell and cross-sell means calls will take longer, as agents shift from “service mode” to “sales mode.”

(5) Revisiting Metrics

As the responsibilities of call centers evolve to more closely align with corporate goals and strategies, contact center management is questioning the relevance of many traditional metrics. A good example is average handle time (AHT). The time spent on an interaction may be less consequential where the primary goals are to sustain or increase revenues and to achieve customer satisfaction goals. Examples of “new” metrics include:

• Customer lifetime value,
• Revenue per call,
• Revenue per agent,
• Cross-sell attempts,
• Cost per contact per channel
• Conversion rate,
• Top box customer satisfaction,
• Top box agent satisfaction,
• First call resolution,
• Customer Effort Score.