Contact centers generally operate with fixed or limited resources. Hence, the need to reduce costs to do more with less. Especially in times of crisis such as the pandemic. However, saving costs in the Contact Center or making cuts or reductions without a specific objective, will only end up in dissatisfied customers and will undoubtedly affect the operation and reputation of the organization.
Therefore, in this article, we want to share with you valuable tips on how to achieve a balance between reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction in the long term.
1. Improve the technology infrastructure
Optimizing the equipment and technology used in your contact center can lead to significant cost savings, both in terms of making life easier for agents and managers, as well as reducing infrastructure costs.
Start by looking at the most basic equipment, such as the equipment you supply your agents with, for example, headsets, as this could have a negative impact on agent performance and even morale. This will undoubtedly end up affecting the customer experience.
However, if we go further, you must validate and be sure that the contact center software you use manages to meet all the needs of the operation, allowing you to achieve the planned objectives, save time and save resources.
The success in customer service depends on the use and proper implementation of technological tools. This is how you will be able to reduce time, automate processes, and take advantage of all the resources you have available to provide an excellent experience to your customers.
The biggest technological change of the last five years has been the rise of the cloud. Cloud services provide total flexibility, allowing you to easily scale to meet your needs and pay only for the capacity you use. Plus, with no on-premises deployments, there are no maintenance or server costs.
The pandemic and home working have accelerated this trend: remote agents can use cloud systems to work effectively from anywhere, with access to the same solutions and information as when they were on the contact center premises.
You may also be interested in Meet Presence SmartCloud, the most flexible cloud contact center solution on the market.
2. Improve the efficiency of the operation through automation
The automation of Contact Center processes or the diversion of interactions to other channels, such as self-service, is essential to reduce customer service costs.
Three areas to focus on are:
- Authentication
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Use of AI, chatbots, and self-service.
The above will enable consumers to receive answers without interacting with a human agent. In addition to ensuring high levels of satisfaction, simple and effective communication, improving business processes and ROI, adding value to customer interactions, and empowering your agents, freeing them from routine and low-value tasks.
You may also be interested in: Integrate an AI-enabled chatbot into your Omnichannel Contact Center software.
3. Improve and optimize the control of the operation with the right solutions
It is important to achieve control of the operation through tools that allow you to:
- Perform constant and timely monitoring of KPIs,
- Ensure quality in service delivery,
- Effectively manage personnel,
- Visualize and share data dynamically.
This will allow you to properly manage the Contact Center, regardless of whether you are working remotely or on-site.
These are some tools that you can implement in favor of optimizing the control of the operation:
Generally, Contact Centers tend to generate and store a lot of data and information. This complicates the extraction of the same, making it difficult to execute operations and even the relationship with customers.
Therefore, this tool allows you to collect all the information in a dynamic and visual dashboard, so you can get a 360° view of the business. As well as the generation of reports in real-time and the identification of users’ behaviors, preferences, and trends, in order to anticipate them and, thus, satisfy their specific needs.
One of the biggest challenges faced by a Contact Center is to provide a service that meets customer expectations. It is from this attention and the experience generated, that good results are achieved in the operation.
Hence, the importance of having a specialized solution in quality control. That not only allows you to monitor the customer service provided by agents to customers. It also allows you to detect existing problems and look for solutions to correct them. This tool even allows you to find the coaching needs of agents, and thus improve their productivity.
Workforce management can be one of the biggest challenges when managing a contact center. Too many consultants can result in low agent utilization and, therefore, higher operating costs. Having too few agents can lead to dissatisfied customers or poor service delivery.
Therefore, in the contact center, there is a difficult task: to efficiently size resources. Getting the most out of them is essential to withstand peaks in demand and offer a unique customer experience.
The Workforce Management solution will allow you to facilitate the forecasting and scheduling of your contact center staff in an easy-to-use platform designed to increase agent retention and productivity, as well as reduce administrative overhead. This will enable more effective and efficient control of the operation. As well as benefiting from a world-class workforce management solution.
In conclusion, you should certainly balance the pursuit of efficiency with a high-quality customer experience, as this is what consumers expect every time they interact with your company. Otherwise, you’ll simply be running at a loss. Therefore, organizations must take a long-term, 100% customer-centric approach to reduce costs.
This requires a thorough assessment of current contact center infrastructure and activities and how they can be improved over time, based on your particular circumstances. To achieve this it is ideal that you partner with a Partner who understands your needs and has the expertise to assess where you are now and where you want to be. A partner who can help you create a roadmap for long-term savings in the contact center.
If you would like more information on how to achieve that balance in your contact center, we invite you to download this Guide. Also, if you have any questions, you can contact us here.
