Shopping for a contact centre? The first step is to understand how important this purchase is to the business, and then work out your contact centre strategy.
Read our eBook “How to Choose a Contact Centre – Buyers Guide” for advice on tackling key challenges and templates to help you understand your needs, as well as tailored examples of successful implementations.
Why does your Contact Centre Matter?
Your contact centre is no longer just about delivering whatever it is that your business needs you to provide for its customers (whether goods or services). It is also the face of your brand: the front line that outsiders engage with. Your team’s performance gives them that good or bad experience that they’ll inevitably associate with your organisation or your product – and increasingly they will tell the world about it, either to the benefit or the detriment of your brand and your business.
Getting it Right is getting Harder
Experts keep telling us that the pace of digital transformation accelerated thanks to the pandemic. And that’s both good and bad news for the contact centre. On the one hand, there’s a brave new world of technology that suddenly everyone clearly sees the value of. On the other hand, if your organisation doesn’t have that technology it’s not a good look. Your customers have had more great experiences with other businesses, and therefore they increasingly expect high standards from you. They expect slick self-help when they want it, and proactive and prompt personal engagement when they don’t. They expect you to understand where they’ve been and what they came for (just like Amazon) and what they liked, and what they didn’t.
Bottom line, they want you to try harder at looking after them.
And that escalation in service is not possible without the right tools.
So, does every Organisation need the Same Thing?
While a contact centre is universally critical to any business, every organisation is different. Requirements come from within and without; from the industry, the business, its environment, and the people, shaped by the culture and expectations of both customers and staff, at all levels. Your business drivers are defined to fit these requirements, and if ‘one size fits all’ worked, we would all use the same contact centre solution – which is far from being the case.
Where’s that Crystal Ball?
Another aspect of shopping for a contact centre solution is the spectre of the future. Anyone buying technology is dealing with the dichotomy of cost versus lifetime. Technology is not cheap, and as we all know from our mobile phone or other gadget purchases, one must be realistic about its lifespan. Operationally it’s at the mercy of its incredibly fluid technological environment, while functionally – well, your needs WILL and definitely SHOULD change.
That said, there are ways to prepare sensibly for the future. If your organisation has not caught up yet with all the digital transformation of recent times, you will have time now to assess what is working for other businesses, and what is likely to be a good next step for you. And, as we said at the start, in order to do this, you do need to understand your strategy.
Building a Strategy for your Contact Centre
If that sounds daunting, you will actually be surprised. To build a strategy you ‘just’ need to decide what is important – and when. Don’t spend time specifying the tools you think you’ll want; concentrate on your needs, and the right tools will become clear. Understand your challenges and your goals and prioritise these. Examine your resources and your resource needs, and match these to your requirements and your timeline and priorities. Once you start thinking about it like that, you’ll find this is all stuff you already know, and it’s just a matter of laying it all out.
And here’s where we can help! Check out our 2021 Contact Centre Buyer’s Guide eBook, and specifically our Strategy Work Sheet that’s included in the eBook.
This will help you plan where to invest, and when, to ensure you end up with an efficient and effective operation that’s designed to deliver an optimal customer experience to your customers in the modern age
Get your copy: How to Choose your Contact Centre – Buyers Guide
Other resources to consider
Enghouse Interactive offers a portfolio of the latest customer experience tools to help your organisation meet your customer needs.
Check out some of our pages for more information:
Download Buyers Guide
