From Contact Centre To Profit Centre

Leadership guru Robin S. Sharma said “Business brilliance is pretty simple. Maybe not easy. And it begins with caring about the people who keep you going, your customers.”

With an aim to enable companies realise that customer service can be of much greater value, Biztech2.com in association with Aspect brought some of the prominent faces of the services industry in Bangalore under one roof. The knowledge forum, under the name of ‘Aspect Advantage: Join the relationship revolution’ provided the platform to engage in an in-depth discussion around how your business can gain an edge over competition through better customer experience.

It comes in as no surprise that customer expectations are constantly changing and going higher with each transaction. In such a scenario what your business needs is to be able to leverage the power of customer facing interactions with back-office integration, social, mobile and cloud technologies to keep pace with growing customer expectations. Thereby, allowing better engagement with the customer, leading to an improved customer experience.

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Starting with why engaging with the customer is so critical, Ivor Soans, Managing Editor, Enterprise Technology, Network 18 set the tone for the discussion. He delved on how businesses that ignore the power of today’s customers need do so at their own peril. However, forward thinking organisations will turn it to their advantage by building positive engagement, fostering brand advocacy, and investing in relationships for the long term.

But, who are these customers and how do you engage with them, and thereby, delight them with an improved experience? Organisations are today catering to the Gen X and increasingly moving to the Gen Y customer, who is growing up on smartphones, tablets, etc and is highly social media savvy. As the profile changes so does the dynamics of customer engagement. Nitin Bhat, Vice President, Consulting, ICT Practice, Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan said, “Companies should take into account the changing dynamics of consumer behaviour where mobile devices are playing a major role.”

Further elaborating on what the change means for businesses, Jim Freeze, Senior VP and CMO, Aspect suggested the need to give the choice of how to communicate to the end user, irrespective of device, medium or platform. And, this is no small deal. “With more than 70 percent queries made on the social media going unanswered, companies should realise the potential brand hazard that this form of media can bring,” Freeze elaborated. To this Sanjay Gupta, MD, Aspect India, SAARC, Middle East added that “This is an era of new age customer care, which aims to give customers flexibility in terms of reaching out to any company in a manner they want.”

This shift, in turn, requires businesses to move to a ‘next generation’ approach, requiring a significant change in the contact centre strategy and operations. Talking about the changing trends and their impact on the contact centre, Freeze said that the most significant advancement for contact centres has been the advent of cloud-based products, capable to leverage mobile devices.

Jonathan Jose, General Manager, Federal Bank, one of Aspect’s customers pointed out various real life scenarios which the bank was facing and how Aspect helped enabling the bank to manage its contact centre effectively. “Aspect helped the bank achieve greater customer satisfaction by providing 24/7 availability, call logging facility and IVR solutions,” said Jose.

Another factor that is changing the whole contact centre approach today is the concern over the slowing economy. According to Bhat, cost management and productivity enhancement aspects will take the centre stage for all contact centres. In agreement with him, Ashwin Vellody, Partner, Management Consulting, KPMG, suggested that the contact centres must evolve from being just a call centre facility to a more meaningful role both for the consumer and the company.

The evening came to a close with a consensus that today’s contact centre is about having a united front encompassing front office operations, back-office services, or tracking social conversations and deliver an excellent service experience through their contact channel of choice.