Customer management can be viewed as the need to improve your organisation`s customer knowledge and customer communication, and the management of the customer interface. It is easy to make the connection between these objectives and what is one of the hottest channels for customer management: the call centre.
The call centre has in some instances been seen as synonymous with customer management, but it is in effect just one of the channels through which a company can choose to operate a customer management strategy.
With the rapid progress in call centre technology and an increasingly demanding customer base, the function and scope of the call centre is changing rapidly into that of a communication centre.
This is a fully integrated contact centre that forms part of an integrated channel strategy. It can manage telephonic, e-mail, fax and postal communication, and is linked into the company`s other customer channels such as the Web and e-mail, and into the back-end systems.
The call centre can play multiple roles in a CRM strategy.
For companies that have historically used middlemen to interact with their customers, the call centre can be the channel through which to build a direct relationship with your customer base. Having a direct communication channel to the customer is key to an organisation that wishes to learn more about its customers and leverage the relationship.
Increasing customer retention is often the primary objective of introducing the call centre as a channel. Competition is stronger, customers have more demands and more choice of supplier.
It is now generally accepted that it costs considerably more to win new customers than to retain and grow existing customers. Customer retention is also a relatively easy achievement to measure when implemented through the call centre and has an immediate bottom-line impact.
Improving your customer retention through the call centre may require both reactive (inbound) and proactive (outbound) campaigns. Inbound calls from customers could be for product information, support, re-purchase, additional services, contract renewal, complaints, compliments - in short anything a customer would like to ask or tell your company.
Outbound calls could be made to your customer base to welcome them to your service, thank them for purchasing your product or even answer their five most likely questions before they have to phone in and ask. Imagine the impression a company would make when three days after you sign a contract with it, a company representative calls to thank you, and provide you with additional information that you are likely to need in the first couple weeks of service.
Reducing servicing costs through the call centre channel is also an attractive option for organisations that have higher costs associated with servicing the customer through traditional channels such as a salesforce, than revenues from those customers.
Cost reduction
However, introducing the call centre as a cost reduction exercise will only be successful if the cost of servicing the customer through the call centre is known and can be managed. The objective is to balance the two and to ensure that it is costing less to service a customer than the revenue that customer is contributing.
In the call centre environment, this is best achieved through the measurement of the cost per call minute. Specific projects can then be focused on reducing components of this cost until the customers serviced through the call centre become profitable.
Call centres can also be used for outbound, proactive customer acquisition campaigns. Using the direct approach via a call centre can reduce the cost of customer acquisition. These campaigns can also be used to grow the customer`s contribution to your organisation through cross- and up-selling campaigns. However, campaigns must be targeted, using the information built up on the customer to ensure that additional products/services or upgrades are relevant and attractive to the customer.
How should you approach the introduction of a call centre channel into your customer relationship strategy?
There are two ways in which an organisation can introduce call centre capabilities into its channel strategy. One is to build the call centre capability in-house, and the other is to outsource the call centre requirements to a company that provides this service.
There are various criteria that should be used to make the insource versus outsource decision (fodder for a future column!) depends on a company`s requirements, as well as ability to project usage, and implement and support the relevant technology and people.
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