Call centers used to be seen primarily as cost centers through which businesses could respond to customer concerns. But today’s contact centers are multichannel hubs that can leverage analytics to put big data to work and drive new revenue opportunities for organizations.
Big data, as InfoCision Chief of Staff Steve Brubaker (News - Alert) explains, is information too large and complex to manipulate or organize manually or with standard methods. With the right tools and expertise, however, this information can be broken into digestible chunks and used to improve operations. With the help of a contact center specialist like InfoCision (News - Alert), Brubaker adds, any size of company can convert big data into big new business opportunities.
“Although it may seem like an overwhelming task, a multichannel marketing partner like InfoCision is equipped with the technology and know-how to sort through the noise and pull out actionable data from the mountain of information contact center interactions create,” says Brubaker.
Organizations can, for example, leverage big data to predict future consumer behavior so they have the appropriate products and promotions prepared for their target customers.
“With that information, companies can create special offers that include predicted product and related items, opening the potential for a bigger sale,” says Brubaker.
Businesses also can benefit from big data to more quickly identify customer trends to solve problems and build on successes, he adds. The ability to access, filter, and analyze data, and do customer segmentation, also opens the door to personalization.
“As a business collects more information it is better able to segment customers into groups with shared characteristics and plan accordingly,” says Brubaker. “Marketers can even create unique scripts for different populations based on what is most likely to succeed.”
New data collection and analysis capabilities also allow contact centers and the larger enterprise to make the most out of customer service feedback. That can serve both to improve contact center performance, and to fine tune existing processes across an entire company, and in the process drive contact center services ROI.
“For instance, if feedback reveals that there’s a consistent mistake in the billing department and customers are calling about it repeatedly, then the contact center needs to recognize this trend and alert the necessary personnel,” says Brubaker. “In many ways the contact center can serve as the gatekeeper for customer sentiment, helping to educate other divisions about ways they can do their jobs more effectively and remedy common customer issues.”
To enable that to happen, he adds, companies need to invest in state-of-the-art call center solutions that can aggregate and decipher data, making it easier to address problems in real time, or close to it.
Today’s state-of-the-art contact centers also use call blending, customer relationship management systems, skill-based routing, and experienced employees, Brubaker notes.
Call blending boosts productivity by allowing contact center workers to make outbound calls when inbound activity dips.
As for customer relationship management, it includes customer profiles, screen pops, and custom scripts that contact center representatives can use to generate the maximum value out of every call. Having CRM information prepared can allow for faster call resolution, better upsell potential, and increased customer loyalty and satisfaction, for example.
Skills-based routing, meanwhile, ensures that the most complex calls are handled by the best agents and that inquiries about billing or product development go to the appropriate personnel, says Brubaker. It also pays to hire mature individuals, and to take the time to train them to do the job, he says.
InfoCision has brought all of the above capabilities together to create its special sauce that helps clients deliver quality customer experiences and better position their businesses for future success.
“Today’s consumers reach out with a wide range of needs and our goal is to provide a positive customer experience and continue the relationship,” says Brubaker. “The key to taking advantage of these opportunities is making sure representatives either have the answers to questions at their fingertips or the means to quickly get the call to somebody who can help.”
Edited by Maurice Nagle
