Is Your Call Center a Strategic Asset or a Victim?

The call centers came into being to handle fairly simple tasks such as providing basic services to customers and taking orders from prospective customers. But the advent of toll-free services in 1970s created a whole new way for customers to reach the call centers and with this increased the responsibility of call centers to manage the influx of calling. At that time, gaining greater efficiency was the main concern of the call centers. The emphasis was on getting the calls handled as inexpensively as possible while still meeting customer needs.

But now, when time has changed, the emphasis should be on maximizing the value of the call center’s contribution to the company’s future. So as a call center manager, you need to look at the enterprise as a whole and determine how the call center can be best positioned to produce the strategic results needed. Don’t think of Marketing as the enemy because they embark on campaigns that increase call center workload without warning. Instead, embrace Marketing as an important function that the call center must join with to exploit opportunities to grow the business. That will maximize the call center’s ability to handle the calls and the effective utilization of marketing capital. Also, you need to help your Product Development teams to figure out ways to improve the offerings so that customers don’t find that they need to call as often. Work with billing to identify ways to make the invoices more easily understood by tracking the most frequently asked questions and discussing them in regular meeting. In other words, become part of the solution, rather than a victim.

First of all, you need to get consensus on the value every call has and then take a look at the tradeoffs of various staffing levels on that value. You might find that your speed of answer goal is not the one that would provide the greatest profitability. And you would also realize that selling management on more staff to increase profitability is sure a lot easier than based on an arbitrary speed of answer goal.

In call centers, approximately 80% of profits come from less than 20% of the customer base, but many companies don’t know which customers are the profitable ones. The call center can identify those customers who call frequently so that the company can figure out ways to serve them more profitably. Perhaps these customers need to be up-sold to a more profitable product/service, charged differently for services, offered only self-help options, or even encouraged to take their unprofitable business to a competitor.

So, in order to get maximum profits you must try to get a place on the planning committee and show that your call center is the "voice of the customer" and a strategic asset to your company. It will surely improve your life and your agent’s lives. People would then also aspire to work in your call center and view your team with the due respect.