While organizations are increasingly recognizing and understanding the importance of strategies that optimize the value of every customer interaction, less than 25 percent have fully implemented these strategies in key areas. This finding is from a new survey by Genesys (News - Alert) Telecommunications Laboratories.
In studying customer service organizations, Genesys found that the business goals of creating and operating contact centers at maximum efficiency remains top priorities for a large number of businesses, especially in dynamic environments. The contrast is that the goals of complete optimization remain largely unmet.
The most critical areas for improvement for these companies are in such areas as the ability to effectively cross-sell, prioritizing customers according to their status, and matching customers with the best agent.
The global survey included 1,390 contact center managers and customer service executives from 19 different industries and 76 different countries. According to the survey results, some of the most advanced strategies that companies are deploying to optimize effectiveness and efficiency in customer service have been identified.
"While great leaps in efficiency and quality have been made over the past decade, contact centers are still in the early stages of evolution," said Arnaud Kraaijvanger, vice president of marketing programs, Genesys, in a company statement.
"The purpose of this survey was to investigate how contact centers around the world optimize customer interactions and more proactively manage customer relationships. We found that many contact centers are employing innovative strategies, but there are substantial untapped opportunities for contact centers to evolve even further."
Key findings from this study reveal that an increasing number of organizations implement contact center management strategies that simultaneously address effectiveness and efficiency of customer interaction.
The study also found that 28 percent of contact centers manage average handle time by actively directing agents to spend longer on interactions during troughs and the reverse during peaks. Another 11 percent of contact centers actively manage cross-selling opportunities.
Only 11 percent of contact centers actively manage cross-selling opportunities and 17 percent use voice call-back. Another 26 percent of contact centers expand the agents’ role to include managing interactions through other channels.
In addition, contact center management is integrating all available technology and business processes in order to manage agent productivity, prioritize business objectives and respond to changes in customer demand.
At the end of the day, all contact centers can benefit from optimizing every customer interaction. The challenge is to identify weaknesses in doing so and find ways to turn those weaknesses into opportunities. Once it becomes habit, the organization will gain benefit from the integration and it be an automatic practice. Until then, much is to be learned within the centers to maximize these opportunities.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Want to learn more about contact centers? Then be sure to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. The papers are authored by industry leaders, who, in turn, receive qualified sales leads from interested parties. Check here for the latest in CRM information. Internet Protocol (IP) | X | | IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
|
