September 1998 Hot Topic:
Call Centers as a Strategic Tool for Optimizing Customer Acquisition, Retention and Service

While it is important to expand your customer base, substantial resources and energy should be dedicated to the "care and feeding" of your current customers. Hence comes one of the "hot" business trends of the late '90's: Customer Relationship Management.

Corporate America is talking less about selling products and more about keeping customers. As communications tools and technologies become more interactive, companies can build individualized relationships with customers. Business goals can be set relating to share of customer, customer-contact outcomes and customer satisfaction measures. Good marketing becomes good conversations with potential, current, and even past customers.

We are finding that more and more businesses today are trying to find ways to better manage their customer relationships (see the July/August '98 FAQ on Customer Satisfaction Surveys). After all, we all know that keeping customers is far less expensive and more productive than trying to acquire new ones.

In order to better deploy Customer Relationship Management, many of our clients are re-examining how they touch the marketplace and interface with prospects and customers. Think for a moment about how often your organization interacts with customers ... Face-to-face? By telephone? By letter or printed material? By e-mail, fax?

Reality for most organizations is that 75-95% of all customer contact takes place over the telephone. So, whether you have a formal, integrated "call center" operation or more dispersed customer service, help desk, or telesales/telemarketing functions, the telephone -- and the people taking/making those calls -- are critical components of your "face in the marketplace."

So what does this mean? It really means that the "customer interaction center" need no longer be viewed as a corporate expenditure. Call centers are a key strategy -- and a strategic tool -- to optimize customer acquisition, retention and service.

• A well-equipped call center addresses the ever-increasing demand from people who purchase products and services by telephone.
• Well-trained customer interaction employees contribute to the estimated 82% of unsatisfied customers who "buy again" when their problems are resolved quickly and effectively.
• A strategically positioned call center operation can raise your bottom line.

If you follow the trends for a competitive enterprise, including the "mass customization/1-to-1" customer relationship revolution, you understand the importance of building and sustaining committed relationships with customers over their "buying lifetimes." For leaders of call-intensive organizations, the beauty of the modern call center, with its attendant technology, is in the absolute currency of performance metrics for product/service marketing and sales effort ... and for the performance of the call center operation itself.

And by their very nature, modern call centers provide managers with immediate feedback on what customers are calling about -- what products are generating interest, what promotions or commercials are driving orders, what service problems or common questions may be arising and so forth. This valuable data enables the organization to respond immediately to the customer base and to disseminate valuable market/product feedback throughout the organization.

Call Center Best Practices -- A Few Key Points to Remember

Practice Customer Care: In a competitive market, attracting and retaining customers is a critical organizational goal ... and strengthening the customer's primary point of contact is a top priority. A teleservice center is a customer interaction hub; the challenge for the business is to devise and optimize a hybrid strategy for integrating other business channels effectively. Teleservice/telesales is a strategy... not just a function. Customer satisfaction/retention can also be called "opportunity management," which includes a leadership goal of formalizing the strategy across multiple marketing and sales channels as much as possible. Be sure to identify the right performance measures... and measure the right behavior and results (includes identifying the costs of turnover). Do the metrics -- have a benchmark so you can measure current performance and improvement to baseline performance. Don't put good technology on top of bad processes.

Two Top Tips to think about "before" the implementation is underway...

For new call centers, put a budget for temp staff in place so temps handle the routine clerical stuff while you focus solely on call handling/call processing for the first few months. If possible, get a dedicated systems analyst to gather and analyze call center management reports (based on measurable criteria that is meaningful to each internal stakeholder) ... and feed information to various departments in a timeframe that enables them to act effectively. Putting this position in the budget for implementation is the best bet.

If you have a question or would like more information on Call Centers or Customer Relationship Management, or if you would like a sample of her report on Call Center Best Practices , contact Linda Wilson, our resident expert on the subject. Contact Linda at 713-877-8130.

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