How many of you have had a negative experience with a contact center? I am guessing all of you. If you have called a contact center in the past twenty-five years, chances are you have had a negative experience because the industry as a whole had dropped the ball for a while. It seemed like every contact center had switched to the mentality that saving money was the most important aspect. The problem with this is that the logic is flawed. By simply cutting funding and encouraging employees to complete calls more quickly and work towards other metrics, the companies ended up shooting themselves in the foot. The primary issue with this mentality is that it fails to consider some critical costs to the organization.

It is very hard to quantify the true costs of losing a life-long customer. Unfortunately, one terrible experience with a call center can do just that. A surprising statistic about call center behavior is that 82% of customers stopped doing business with a company because of bad customer service. This is up from 59% just four years ago. Even more alarming is that 92% of customers form their opinion about a company based on their call center. That means that even if you are heavily investing in all other aspects of your wonderful business, you may not reap the benefit because your customers have made up their mind based on your weakest attribute. Even in a down economy, 85% of consumers will pay more for the company that provides them better customer service, proving that there is very little reason to still believe that your business will benefit from cutting costs in your contact center.

The modern and correct approach to a contact center is placing ultimate importance on creating a positive customer experience. You want to do everything you can to make your customer believe that you did everything to help them in a timely and respectful way. If you do that, chances are good that your customers will be willing to look past other shortfalls, like a less superior product or a higher price. If you put the overall satisfaction of your customers first, your business will benefit greatly.

So we now can all agree that saving money on your contact center isn’t the best way to improve your business, but that isn’t the only thing to consider. In order to provide your customers with the best possible experience in the modern world, you are going to need to open up more avenues of communication. No longer do people only communicate with companies by calling or writing a letter. Modern advances in communication have brought modern expectations. Some people will want immediate support. Other customers will want to be able to show you the problem. Some customers may want to take a very passive approach to the problem and let your employees do the leg work. That is why you need to offer social media avenues in addition to the typical call centers.

The idea is to make your customers as comfortable as possible. Invest in your people. Invest in your infrastructure, and focus on providing your customers with quality support. If you do that, your business is sure to reap the full benefits. And if you would like to learn more ways that you can improve your business’s contact center, please check out our Creating Today’s Carefully Calibrated, Customer-Focused Contact Center whitepaper.

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