Do You Have Trusted Advisors in Customer Experience?

By Mike Crane, EVP Services

It's finally time to remodel the inside of your house. You're a little apprehensive because you think you know what you want but have never done this before. Your neighbor just remodeled a room in their house, and it reflects your taste. You ask the neighbor for the contractors who completed the remodel and you give them a call. With the experience that these contractors bring, they become your trusted advisors. They've done this before. You've seen their work. You appreciate the level of detail and options they provide you based one what they have seen. You also trust that they will complete the work as well as they did your neighbor's home. Wouldn't you want the same type of trusted advisor for your customer experience needs?

A contact center's business needs continue to evolve and it's important to adapt and turn opportunity out of these evolving needs. Services for contact center needs do not stop after the product is up and running. There is an optimization process to revisit and inspect the operations and business requirements, which evolve after the initial implementation. Contact centers continuously look at areas that they can improve from an efficiency or customer satisfaction standpoint.

As new business goals are implemented you need knowledgeable technical experts, who can apply their experience from transforming similar organizations. They then create a customer solution that is specifically meant to align with the updated business KPI's.

And it doesn't stop there; continuous engagement by a knowledgeable consultant can also increase the value the contact center provides to the business, as they better understand the operational dynamics. A relationship is then established focused on optimization versus a tactical relationship based on projects.

• A great example of this type of engagement occurred with a customer we've had for five years, a company in the food service industry who scaled from 3 to 110 seats over time.

As the market and customer base evolved they needed to ensure that the "best agent" would be available based on the customer's profile and previous experience. One of our Optimization Consultants went in, looked at their IVR workflows and Salesforce data, and then created a solution to enable this functionality. It allowed the customer to provide a better experience for their customer and in turn drove improved financial results. This initial engagement began with a query into how the customer's needs have evolved and what were areas they were looking to optimize. As we better understood the business problem we were able to provide the right technical and operational solution.

• Another example is a customer in the mortgage servicing industry, who has doubled in size over the past four years.

The customer's business problem was that their IVR had evolved in complexity, making it difficult to manage. In addition they were reliant on a third party payment system, which impacted profits. Once again the team engaged in a Discovery session to understand what the customer was trying to achieve and how they were measuring success. The team then created a solution that not only simplified the IVR workflows, but also eliminated the need for a third party payment system. Subsequently, this also enabled agents to service mortgages across many brands for gain in efficiency and revenue. Without the initial discussion around changing business needs and current challenges, the Consultant would not have had visibility into these growing pains.

The trusted advisors in the contact center industry are the resources with deep knowledge and experience that can optimize a contact center's operations with the evolving business needs. They have the technical breadth and depth necessary to help optimize your business. Their engagement usually leads to an ongoing relationship based service focused on the success of the business and operations.