ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008 - (Page 43)

EXPERT’S ANGLE ing to capture a range of high-quality information, in a continuous manner, thus supporting the ability to produce “real-time” information, as well as provide the long-term consistency necessary for accurate trending (see the box, right). > FOURTH, ANALYTICS IS THE FOUNDATION FOR INTERDEPARTMENTAL RELATIONSHIPS. In terms of the continu- ing evolution of the contact center, analytics provides a foundation for a long-term relationship with the other major corporate functions that need this information. By providing high-quality customer information, the contact center becomes highly relevant to a range of business groups because it is now providing them with critical information. > LASTLY, IF DONE WELL, IT MAY BE “FREE.” By focusing on the internal M The Contact Center Is a Natural Place for Capturing Customer Contact Information > No other group in the company has as many customer contacts. > Many contacts are already being recorded (calls, emails, etc.). > The workforce is appropriate. • It is skilled and cost effective. • It understands the company’s products and services. • It knows how to talk and listen to customers and prospects. > The contact center already hears many of the critical comments that are simply not being captured and reported > It already does customer surveys, although the focus is typically on quality of service and agent benchmarking. operations opportunities to use contact analytics to improve productivity and quality of service improvements, there will be a net cost savings. A contact center can actually invest in capturing information of high corporate value while simultaneously reducing its budget and improving its quality of service. This also means that the necessary investment in technology, implementation and ongoing costs can be justified by a positive ROI if the benefits are incorporated into the contact center’s ongoing business processes. TO SUCCEED, BE PROACTIVE AND CURIOUS The contact center management team is used to being deluged with demand — customers call and send emails that need to be immediately handled. Unless one does outbound telesales, the management team never has to create demand. This is what marketing and sales departments do. The challenge is how well and effectively one can handle the demand. Making the benefits of contact analytics available to the corporation is a totally different challenge. In this situation, the contact center is offering a valuable service to the rest of the company. It needs to understand the audience and its needs in order to design the service so that it is a success. The prospective users need to be educated on why the information is important to them. They need to be taught why they should spend the time to learn what can be done for them and why they should work with the contact center to discover their needs. When thinking about what and how to offer the information to other departments, the contact center needs to ”get into their skins. ” Think about their jobs. Other departments are all very, very busy. Why is the information better or different than what they already get? They want to get what they need quickly, in a minute or two if possible. They want to quickly customize the data views to see and access them anywhere, or anytime. The information needs to be “sticky, so ” that they will want to get a bit addicted to seeing the changes in customer opinions, comments and trends. They should want to see updates and changes frequently, daily or weekly at most. They should want alerts, telling them when something unusual is happening; for instance: > Is a competitor being mentioned more frequently? > Is a complaint being heard more often? > Is a product feature attracting growing interest and driving sales closures? > Is there a new service issue that needs to be addressed? If the design of the customer contact analytics solution meets these general requirements, it will be a success. Business groups will start demanding more information from the contact center and involve it in their business. The contact center’s role is to be the expert at gleaning quality information from the customer base. icmi’s insight www.icmi.com | JANUARY 2008 43 http://www.icmi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008 Contents Customer Care Technologies Ad Index Editor's Page Contact Center Spotlight People: Prehire Tests In The Center Strategy: Video Contact Centers Show Preview Operations: Knowledge Management Industry Research Contact Centers Face Today's Realities: A Case for Consolidation 2.0 Is Your Agent Training Process Evolving with the Role? The Key to Innovation Is Maintaining Your Strengths Becoming Strategic: Using Customer Contact Analytics to Empower the Contact Center's Role

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008

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