Mark Tinucci, TeleTech
Some of you have been there before. You’re in the middle of a conference call with a potential technology or service provider who is promising big increases in productivity and customer service figures if you outsource with them. You even get a little excited when the rep outlines cost savings and return on investment (ROI) numbers. Yet, it’s likely that the sales manager on the other line still hasn’t answered your most important question: Will it make my life any easier?
This is the elusive question that, so far, contact center service providers have done a poor job of answering. So, why outsource your contact management? Beyond the benefits listed in the fancy marketing collateral, what real-life help can a contact center expert provide?
boosting customer satisfaction
In 1999, deregulation of the New Zealand power generation and resale industry opened the door for emerging energy providers to make their mark. Faced with the need to manage its growing customer base, one of these new providers outsourced its entire customer management operation, hoping to quickly gain a competitive advantage.
The program not only managed a 200 percent increase in customer acquisition since implementation, it improved the customer satisfaction rating by 12 percent in the first six months of the program. And, the program consistently achieved monthly service targets set by the company, even after an acquisition that doubled its customer base. All that, while handling more than 70,000 phone, e-mail and fax customer contacts per month.
This company is not alone, and the success story represents a growing trend-more companies than ever are turning to experts to help them manage their contact centers and improve customer satisfaction. Not only did the program deliver a very real and measurable ROI-it made company executives’ lives a little easier.
dealing with tomorrow’s technology
It can be one of the most frustrating parts of doing business in 2005: making costly investments in technology, only to find that the system has become outdated within a few years, or even months. When it comes to customer management, it’s an increasingly smart idea to solicit the help of an expert to help you navigate the technology landscape.
One of the most relevant examples of technology that will radically change the way we communicate is Voice-over-IP (VoIP). VoIP allows voice and data to traverse the same network, providing unprecedented flexibility in how companies route and handle customer contacts.
VoIP also lets companies establish one central automatic call distributor (ACD), which routes customer communication to the most appropriate agents in contact centers anywhere in the world, depending on staffing, geography, language and a host of other factors. A centralized VoIP operation not only takes the place of large, costly, technology-laden customer contact sites, it allows companies to easily shift their telephone traffic anywhere in the world, and more precisely address changes in customer demand.
VoIP users also save money by optimizing their contact centers for labor, rather than technology. A good example: Traditionally, companies are forced to overstaff each contact site throughout the world, ensuring they can handle every incoming call. However, VoIP lets these companies manage their contact center operations as a single unit, providing operations with much greater scale and eliminating much of the need to overstaff at each site.
The bottom line: Who will help you get the most out of new technologies like VoIP once they become standard? Using a hosted model for customer contact now can save headaches and help you remain flexible to address next year’s technology trends.
ROI to write home about
The utilities industry has suffered great volatility in recent years as companies struggle with deregulation, global competition, customer retention, knowledge management and other challenges. Seeking to restore stable growth, companies are looking for new low-risk ways to increase earnings and drive recurring free-cash flow. Most companies in this highly fragmented industry, however, do not have the resources to meaningfully reduce their operating costs without disrupting or degrading the quality of their customer management.
By allowing an expert to handle their customer management needs, utility companies can leverage scale, experience and technology to increase the value of their service offerings while lowering costs. Today’s sophisticated customer care systems use a broader range of tools to handle customer inquiries, including the Internet, interactive voice response and other self-help resources. These alternatives not only offer customer convenience, they speed up issue resolution and lower interaction costs. Outsourced services also help minimize staffing and training time and increase efficiency in back-office processes and fleet management.
Many utilities already outsource new customer acquisition with outbound contact center services. But, the most innovative companies are also using these outsourcers for their core contact center operations, including service, billing and new account calls. Traditionally, resistance to outsourcing in the industry has centered on concerns about cutting staff and infrastructure. Although, new models in the contact center industry now allow companies to employ a hosted, or “on-demand” service, which uses new technology and existing staff to build a sophisticated customer service program that doesn’t require layoffs or corporate turmoil.
In a market that is changing faster than ever, today’s utilities need a proven, dependable means of reducing costs and bolstering earnings, while providing access to the latest technology and customer service capabilities. Outsourcing contact center operations to an expert helps companies to do all of this and stay flexible to face tomorrow’s challenges.
Tinucci is the vice president, client partnerships for TeleTech, a customer management company in business since 1983. He can be reached at 303-397-8530 or [email protected].
