 Contact
Center Drivers of Enterprise Value
The contact center creates value for the enterprise through six
key value drivers.
Customers
The relationship your company has with its Customers determines
your company’s value. And chances are your contact center
has more frequent interactions with your customers than do other
functions. Given your special relationship, there’s plenty
you can do on your own to drive additional value, especially by
isolating and attending to those factors that most drive customer
loyalty. To fully actuate this Value Driver you’ll need a
delivery framework that includes Actual and Potential Customer Lifetime
Value and Loyalty Drivers, prioritized by customer segment and.
The tools you’ll need include such skills as survey design
and implementation, statistical analysis, Importance-Performance
analysis and, perhaps most important, reporting. Together, this
information will allow you to communicate to the organization how
your operation creates value through your ability to meet needs
that drive retention, repurchases and account profitability.
People
No one would argue that, next to your customers, your people drive
most of your enterprise value. As a contact center executive, your
challenge is to align individual activity to enterprise benefit—and
to demonstrate the relationship to management. With most of your
operating budget allocated to staff, your credibility depends heavily
on your ability to show how your management of this very visible
corporate asset is adding to growth and profitability. The resulting
“golden thread” will show how your investments in recruitment,
training, retention and development improve employees’ contribution
to growth and profitability (by lifting employee productivity and
customer satisfaction). With a clear impact path, such general goals
as ‘bringing out the best in my people’ take on a purpose
that assures management commitment. The keys, again, are information,
tools, reporting and communication. The information is unique to
the task and needs to be carefully defined so as to permit the right
management focus. Required tools include people evaluation and assessment,
recruitment, training & development programs and performance
management systems.
Organization
The value of your organization is measured by the difference between
organizational output and the sum of the output of the individuals
that comprise it. It encompasses intangibles such as culture and
leadership and other variables such as team disciplines and business
practices. The synergies of teamwork are well known. The challenge
for the call center executive is understanding where to focus, actuating
the most important synergies and aligning them to enterprise goals.
Key tools include organizational assessments, personnel assessments
and performance management systems. Measures of its effectiveness
include leadership, culture, capacity for change and the like. Because
culture and leadership are so subjective, qualified outside help
is almost always more effective than using internal resources.
Process
Reliable, effective, efficient processes are the foundation for
quality and profitability. Sound processes have a direct bearing
on enterprise value through their ability to avoid re-work and produce
satisfied customers. Key information includes metrics that show
how your processes, use of technology and resources efficiently
optimize the value of your customer relationships—and thus
contribute directly to company growth and profitability. Essential
tools include business process (re)engineering (BPR) and Activity
Based Costing analysis.
Technology
Technology’s primary function is to automate processes. We
all have painful experience with “enabling” technology
that, at best, delivers bad service a few seconds faster or, too
often, makes bad service just plain worse. The key is to strike
the right balance between effectiveness and efficiency. At the front
end, you’ll need a rock-solid business case with system reports
that support the effective alignment of call center resources, processes
and behaviors to corporate objectives. Some tools that can help
include Activity Based Costing (to develop a financially rigorous
business case) and Customer Experience Engineering (to validate
user acceptance, adoption and value).
Performance Management
None of these practices matters without metrics that help you align
to, and track progress toward, enterprise growth and profitability
goals. Commonly used performance metrics—average peed of answer
(ASA), average handle time (AHT)and the like—only serve to
perpetuate the call center’s marginalization because they
have little to do with what management most cares about: growth
and profitability. Some sample metrics that might be used: Revenue
per call. Armed with these metrics, you can then show how your call
center drives growth and profitability, win budget dollars for your
initiatives and gain stature in the organization.
Find out how we can help you make your contact center a significant
driver of enterprise value. Contact us directly at 415-925-1515,
or online. |
