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\nContact centres originally existed to service customer enquiries. They were built as a cost centre. Customer services was seen as one of those things you just needed to do, and efficiencies were around measuring calls handled by agents and little attention to outcomes unless you considered RFT (\u201cRight First Time\u201d).<\/p>\n
The paradigm changed when it was realised that happier customers spent more and told their friends. This generates a tension between customer outcomes and cost to serve. Many are still in the transition. This second paradigm is enhanced by digital transformation where self-service and chat enable an easier experience for customers as well as efficiencies for operators.<\/p>\n
Contact centres as CX early warning systems <\/strong><\/p>\n The third paradigm is the realisation that the contact centre is not a separate entity to the business, but an inter-connected window into the operations of the business where customers have been motivated enough, for positive or negative reasons (and unfortunately mostly the latter) to contact the business to resolve some part of their customer experience. It can be seen as an equivalent of the \u2018cost of quality\u2019 for a manufacturing business.\u00a0Let\u2019s call it COD or Cost of Deviation from customer journey.<\/p>\n When viewed in this way, there are several opportunities for recognising the COD. For example if we think about a telco which has various enquiries, some service recovery will cost the business more than others and some will have more of an impact on customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n For example resetting a password might cost just the operator time of \u00a35, but correcting an invoice might cost \u00a350 and obviously something more material such as a handset issue or network issue will have a more material impact. By adding the true costs and weights, even if only approximate, gives a better picture of the business.<\/p>\n This model can be further refined by comparing survey results with contact centre enquiries for different issues to see if there is a \u2018multiplier\u2019, for example for some issues such as mouldy fruit from a supermarket, some customers might just throw away the product and not call in, and of those, some might be more motivated to shop elsewhere whereas others may carry on if it\u2019s not recurrent.<\/p>\n From surveys, it might be calculated that the multiplier for mouldy fruit is 10:1 i.e. 10 people are affected for every one person that calls in. The ratio might change for a more expensive item or for a more serious issue such as food poisoning. So, after pulling this together, the cost of the contact centre might be \u00a3100m per annum, but the service recovery costs in terms of rectification, credits and churn might be an order of magnitude greater than that e.g. \u00a31Bn pa.<\/p>\n Fixing these different issues will present different challenges, particularly if they require cross-functional processes or the costs aren\u2019t easy to identify in any one department\u2019s P&L. However there the first rule of control is that you can\u2019t measure what you can\u2019t manage so having an Early Warning System (\u201cEWS\u201d) of the issues and their true COD will give you the head start to take decisions.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Dan-Somers.jpg\")
Dan is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of