The contact center is the acid test when it comes to delivering competitive service. Take a look at how top performers are prioritizing technology investments to stay ahead.

Enabling technologies get customer data into the hands of service agents, giving them the information they need to answer a question, solve a problem or sell additional products. A recent study of 44 contact centers* revealed best practices of top performers, including where they are placing priorities.

• Focus on biggest channels first. While the web and email are rising in popularity, voice remains the dominant customer touchpoint. When budget is limited, top performers give priority to interactive voice response (especially self help implementations) over email and interactive web enhancement.



• Make the first call the last call. Getting to resolution on the initial call makes good business sense. This practice has been shown to have the most notable impact on cost reduction. If you improve or implement one best practice this year, this is the one.



• Training. Leaders provide ongoing Just-In-Time training to keep agents educated on new applications, changes in customer service policy and as a forum to share success stories and new ideas for service improvement.



• Set quality goals. The best performers set quality metrics around technology initiatives, and by doing so, consistently deliver at lower costs than average performers.



• Optimize call wait time. Top performers don’t let wait times exceed 20 to 25 seconds. They invest in reporting & scheduling tools to balance customer demand with proper internal staff levels.



• Track calls. Centers that have good call-tracking systems deliver higher customer satisfaction rates and overall cost performance than those that do not. The study shows that incident tracking saves contact centers an average of $2.20 in handling costs per customer.



• Present single customer views by integrating data from all customer touchpoints (an action largely driven by the Internet and email).



• Health checks. Top performers regularly audit interactive voice response (IVR) performance through “checkups” to monitor wait time and call flow.
  

Conclusion:

Top performers drive initiatives with service quality metrics, and in doing so reduce operational costs, improve customer satisfaction and agent performance. Leaders also align technology investments with specific service goals.

*Gartner, “Prioritizing Investments in the Contact Center”, July 2003.