{"id":76253,"date":"2009-02-20T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/seven_trends_driving_contact_center_innovation\/"},"modified":"2009-02-20T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T18:00:00","slug":"seven_trends_driving_contact_center_innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/seven_trends_driving_contact_center_innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Trends Driving Contact Center Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"
With so much attention being focused on the recession, we risk losing sight of important enterprise goals and what can be achieved even in challenging economic times. Times are tough and could very well be the worst they have been in the United States in the last fifty years—we’ll leave it to the forensic economists to tell us just how bad this economy was, after we survive it. Managers can sit back and wait for the hard times to pass, as many are doing; or they can treat the economic challenges as an opportunity to advance the objectives of their company and, in doing so, build their own careers. <\/p>\n
It’s much easier to sell to someone who has already initiated contact with the organization.<\/p>\n
This recession could be very good for contact centers, as was the case during the last US economic downturn in 2000. At that time, some of the more innovative managers in sales and marketing departments reached out to their peers in contact centers and asked for their help in the effort to meet revenue generation and customer retention goals. They reasoned that it’s much easier to sell to someone who has already initiated contact with the organization (even if it’s to ask an unrelated question) than to have to first contact someone before trying to sell to them. <\/p>\n
Marketing managers also realized that contact center agents were often their last line of defense in retaining customers. Sure, it would be better if their customers were loyal to their brand, but if customers were tempted to wander, marketers didn’t have much to lose by asking their contact center to try to retain them. Neither sales nor marketing anticipated strong results from contact centers, but it seemed worth a try, as their traditional approaches were no longer working all that well. <\/p>\n
The last recession gave contact center managers an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to do more than handle customer inquiries, resolve problems and take orders. When empowered, many contact centers proved adept at retaining customers and generating incremental revenue. (Many contact centers have been involved in these activities for years, but have not been recognized for their accomplishments.) <\/p>\n
Customer-Centric Business Trends<\/b><\/p>\n
While the recession is a top concern for customers and executives, innovation and change continues. The following are the main trends driving change in contact center and service organizations.<\/p>\n
Contact centers are evolving to meet the needs of their companies. They are increasingly viewed as essential corporate players, capable of making a major contribution to the bottom line. This is a major shift from current perception of contact centers as expensive cost centers that hurt profitability. The pace of innovation depends on the culture of each company and the willingness of sales and marketing leaders to embrace these changes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With so much attention being focused on the recession, we risk losing sight of important enterprise goals and what can be achieved even in challenging economic times. Times are tough and could very well be the worst they have been in the United States in the last fifty years—we’ll leave it to the forensic economists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6485,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82,98,88,91,95,36,14,9,83,85,87,101,115],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6485"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}