The Modern Call Center: What Price Neglect?
A framework for capturing the significant value stranded in your contact center
 by John Reynolds
The customer contact center (or call center) is arguably the most under-exploited resource in the modern enterprise. Originally conceived as a means to consolidate and automate “routine” customer transactions, contact centers today are suddenly ideally positioned to drive the next wave of enterprise value creation. This “perfect storm” of opportunity springs from radical leaps in our understanding of customer relationship management and the expanding capabilities of enabling technologies.
As a contact center executive, you're in an ideal position to realize this potential. In this article, I'll describe six dimensions of contact center-driven value, how each can be aligned to drive performance at the enterprise level, and what some tools available for helping you maximize the impact of these value drivers in their organization.
The Six Dimensions of Contact Center-Driven Enterprise Value
There are six Value Drivers through which your contact center creates value for your enterprise. “Enterprise value” (or market value) as defined here is primarily a function of revenue growth and profitability. The contact center's value to the company is therefore a measure of its ability to drive revenue growth and profitability at the enterprise level. The Value Drivers are the primary means by which the contact center can translate its activities into enterprise level value creation.
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Customers. The ultimate drivers of company value, customers alone determine how much you sell and at what profit. And since your contact center probably accounts for the lion's share of your company's customer interactions, you have the unique means to drive some pretty dramatic results at the enterprise level. Sure, customer satisfaction surveys are important, but they don't do much to tell you 1) what leads customers to buy more of your products / services--and to recommend your company to others--and 2) how to organize your resources, processes and behaviors around those needs.
An essential starting point for this understanding is a Customer Value Analysis incorporating Actual and Potential Customer Lifetime Value. This tells you what's at stake. A Loyalty Driver Map, prioritized by customer segment, tells you where to focus your efforts. Surprisingly few companies apply these ideas to their call centers, but with this information you can show how your call center can deliver huge gains for the enterprise by meeting needs that drive customer retention, repurchases and profitability. These disciplines are embodied in Intervox Group's Customer Value Optimization and Customer Touchpoint Mapping delivery frameworks.
Fig 1: Contact Center Enterprise Value Drivers (see how how Intervox Group Services and Solutions map to Value Drivers)
- Employees. No one would argue that, after customers, your human resources are your most valuable asset. With up to 70% of contact center operating budgets spent on staff, it makes sense that targeted investments in this area can pay off handsomely. The key is to show how recruitment, training, retention and development efforts lead to revenue growth and profitability (by way of lifting employee productivity and customer satisfaction). Essential tools for driving value at the enterprise level will include recruitment, training & development programs and performance management systems that track individual and group contributions to growth and profitability.
- Organization defines how individuals together create the synergies that lead to enterprise value. It's the difference between the sum of individual contributions and that of the whole. Organization encompasses such intangibles as leadership, culture and teamwork. Effectiveness is measured in terms of leadership and decision making, structure, communication, capacity for change and the like. Consultants can add value via organizational assessments and engagements that focus on development and change management.
- Process. Organizational goals and objectives are met consistently through well defined and executed processes. Process effectiveness determines efficiency and productivity, which in turn affect revenue growth and profitability. Adopt metrics that show how your processes, technology and resources efficiently optimize the value of your customer relationships—and thus contribute directly to company growth and profitability. Essential tools include process mapping, design and optimization. Intervox Group's Contact Center CATScan uses activity cost based analysis to address process efficacy issues.
- Technology. Technology’s primary function is to automate processes. If processes aren't effective or relevant to begin with, then technology still delivers sub-optimal service, only faster or cheaper. The key is to strike the right balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Among Intervox Group affiliates are many seasoned technology architects who can create a rock-solid business case and fit the right technologies to a very complex set of tasks. Activity cost based analysis (see Contact Center CATScan) is very effective at identifying the highest-return technologies.
- Performance Management. None of this activity does much good without the ability to track, communicate and re-incorporate learnings into the organization. All too typically, call center management perpetuates its own marginalization in the way it characterizes its performance. Average Speed of Answer and Average Handle Time have little to do with what management most cares about: revenue growth and profitability. Why not better align your activities and communication around those goals? Not only will you find it easier to win budget dollars for your initiatives but you'll also enjoy a boost in stature in the organization. (For a summary of Intervox Group's delivery framework incorporating these ideas, see Services and Solutions.)
The cost of the neglected call center is getting too high for companies to ignore. An urgent, compelling case for focused investments in the call center can be made through methods that couch its contribution in terms of enterprise revenue growth and profitability. Much of this opportunity is unique to the call center, and the consultant can play a major role in helping clients capture stranded value by better aligning the operation with enterprise goals and objectives.
John Reynolds is Founder and President of Intervox Group.
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