When is the Right Time to Use a Contact Center?
This is a question that many entrepreneurs will ask themselves as their enterprises start to grow. However, it is not a question that can be answered by growth alone. There is no critical mass of size or revenue that will dictate when a contact center should be used by a business. Instead, it’s more about the frame of mind that a business owner has about how they want to serve their customers.
There are any number of typical types of customer contact that can be handled by a contact center. Incoming sales requests, support, market research and customer feedback, handling of returns, billing inquiries, even collections can all be handled by a contact center.
When you handle these types of customer requests over the phone in a small company, the workload tends to get spread around out of necessity. This means that employees that were most often hired to complete other jobs within your organization may spend minutes to hours handling phone tasks instead – a reality that often leads to an employee who have a difficult time finding the time to complete the tasks you actually hired them for.
So, why would you want a contact center? Simply because it helps your customers to be happy with the service that you provide them with a wide range of interactions. If you want to be able to resolve a wide variety of customer issues through a unified channel, a contact center can be the answer.
You also don’t have to rely on a contact center that only offers one type of contact. Modern contact centers can utilize:
- Telephone calls to a variety of departments
- Email communications
- Live chat services
- Mobile communications
And more. Each communication with your company through any of these channels offers an opportunity to influence how your company is perceived, which is something that a contact center can aid you with.
A big issue with the way customers communicate with businesses today is that they desire convenience in every regard. This means they want to be able to reach out and have their issues dealt with any time of day, through any channel, with a very quick response time. This is what a contact center offers. How do they manage it?
- Through using highly trained staff members
- By using standardized processes and scripts that ensure a consistent customer experience across interactions
- By using cutting edge contact center technology to provide the best possible service.
To establish an internal contact center, more than half of your investment will go towards the dedicated staff required for the operation. The smallest portion of your expenses will be the equipment required to operate the center, while the network and the overhead costs comprise the remainder of the investment.
Another option is to hire a contact center and to contract your communications out to them. This will usually be billed on a monthly basis, and allows you to ensure a consistent, professional communication experience for your customers from the moment you initialize your contract.
An inbound contact center is the answer when you’re looking for ways to improve the experience of your customers without a massive outlay of cost or effort, creating a dedicated client base that will become advocates for your brand.
