The importance of inbound Call Center Strategic Planning and Budgeting Tools in Optimizing Customer Experience

Key areas of focus for leading corporations are Customer Experience (CX), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and cost reduction. CX and NPS results generally rely on contact center measures such as service level, customer satisfaction, and quality to evaluate service performance. Often, employee rewards or executive bonuses are linked to these results.

Recent advances in contact center technology involving strategic planning and big data applications enable organizations to understand how budgetary decisions impact CX and NPS results better. In addition, business requirements to manage these results must also extend beyond the contact center and incorporate the back-office operations.

For most organizations, the contact center is viewed as the central area of the business in which CX and NPS results are managed. However, a contact center is a dynamic multimedia environment that is complicated to understand. Many businesses lack the necessary strategic planning and budgeting tools for executives to recognize accurately how decisions made by departments outside the contact center will ultimately impact CX and NPS results, shareholder returns, and executive bonuses. Decisions made in areas such as HR, Finance, Training, Marketing, Product Development, or Operations can make a notable and collective impact.

Strategic planning solutions using big data technology are the key to giving clarity to your executive teams about how decisions made by all departments will impact service results for months or years in the future. Such solutions can provide the analytical methodology to quickly and accurately determine the best ways to achieve cost reductions and effectively manage service results concurrently.

In most mature organizations, there is a rigorous process for creating annual plans and budgets. However, the contact center, generally a multi-million dollar area of expense, most often is not systematically accounted due to limitations with common strategic planning and budgeting tools. Given the complexity in the center, combined with the enormous costs associated with poor CX and NPS results, this has become a major area of business focus.

Since the early days of data collection and analysis, organizations have collected and analyzed data for operational efficiency and business forecasting. This has created a symbiotic relationship between information and technology, and given rise to the term “big data.” However, that term has been extensively misunderstood, misinterpreted, or miscommunicated, particularly in relation to customer experience and contact centers.

Inbound call centers need smart technology that is designed to consolidate data from telephony, workforce management, payroll, email, chat, back office, and casework systems. Collected data can be organized, validated, and used effectively in analysis, budgeting, and reporting. This provides an agile and accurate planning tool that enables management to evaluate the customer experience impacts of various service strategies by using “what-if” scenarios.

Executives responsible for contact centers need the accuracy of information that GPS navigation systems provide to airplane pilots. After all, centers are like mega-million dollar planes that require fine control to maneuver. The more accurate the real-time analysis, the greater chance you have of landing successful Customer Experience (CX) and Net Promoter Score results.

With stakes so high, flying blind or relying on gut instinct is not acceptable. The key to navigating risk and optimizing performance is using contact center strategic planning and budgeting solutions leveraging big data technology. Doing so provides the fast and accurate information necessary to make informed decisions quickly and with business confidence.