TRANSFORMING

FROM CALL CENTER

TO CONTACT CENTER

BEST PRACTICES GUIDE

 TRANSFORMING FROM CALL Best Practices Guide
CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER

Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3

Opportunities & Challenges of the Call Center 4

Creating a Modern Contact Center 10

Contact Center Application Selection Criteria 12

Analyst Bottom Line 14

Action Plan 15

About Demand Metric 20

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 3

Executive Summary
If loyal customers are the lifeblood of a successful marketing program,
call centers are the heartbeat. It is within the call center that happy
customers become either loyal advocates or disenchanted.

All too often, however, call centers are viewed by marketing profes-
sionals as an afterthought instead of a key to customer loyalty, customer
satisfaction, and as a lead generation.

Modern marketers must move from seeing Customer Care as a

secondary supporting function to one of primary importance to
marketing programs and lead generation, along with other digital
marketing and sales activities.

This How-To Guide challenges marketers to view the call center as a

potential source of revenue and lead generation as well as the hub of
Customer Care.

This report discusses the misperceptions around call centers, and shows
modern marketers how to transform their call center (cost center) into a
Modern Contact Center (profit center) by recognizing its strategy in lead
generation and customer experience.
OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES OF THE CALL CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 4

Opportunities & Challenges of the Call Center

Call Center Challenges
The traditional call center faces many challenges in the current busi-
ness environment. These include:

Increasing complexity, rate of change, and regulatory compliance Financial and downtime cost of agent replacement when lack of
issues, especially in Healthcare and Financial Services, which can training or skill make job replacement necessary.
diminish customer service agent performance.
Focus on increasing customer satisfaction at all levels of the organi-
Call center information resides in many systems where the volume zation, especially within Customer Care, but often without increased
of information is high and the velocity of change is rapid. It can be staff or resources.
difficult for employees to find the right information in a timely manner.
Increased contact velocity and volume. This trend also amplifies
Numerous IT systems that complicate business processes, which information erosion and accelerates the spread of misinformation
agents need to be able to perform in order to serve customers well. across multiple channels.

Training requirements that make initial agent on-boarding, as well

as cross-training and multi-skilling, increasingly difficult, time-con-
suming, and expensive.
OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES OF THE CALL CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 5

The Modern Contact Center

Forward-thinking organizations see the need for a tight alignment among Demand Metric defines the Modern Contact Center as:
Marketing, Sales, and Customer Care departments.

To demonstrate the need for this change, they are repositioning the the staff, strategies, and technologies that
call center as the primary contact for customer interaction. create a Customer Care Communications Hub
within the organization, where customer service
This is more than a cosmetic name change. The Modern Contact Center
is viewed, staffed, and resourced as a critical
shows a fundamental shift in strategic thinking and implementation. It
part of the customer sales journey, not limited to
impacts staffing, resources, organizational alignment, and the deploy-
after-sale support.
ment of new technology.

Demand Metric’s Customer Engagement Maturity Model highlights that

world-class organizations, “fully align marketing, sales, and customer
The Modern Contact Center is intelligent, forward-thinking, and central to
care with cross-functional responsibility for sales and revenue.”
customer activity. It is a true communications hub where knowledge, infor-
Furthermore, the Maturity Model identifies that World-Class organiza- mation, and solutions flow between the customer and the company.
tions also, “utilize comprehensive, end-to-end system integration of all
customer engagement related platforms with tight integration to CRM
systems, marketing automation software, and ERP systems.”
OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES OF THE CALL CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 6

The Modern Contact Center has five key characteristics that set it apart
from the legacy call center:

Intelligent Information Flow Context Aware

In the Modern Contact Center, information overload is Traditional call centers struggle with many information-
replaced by an intelligent information flow where the related challenges, including too much information,
information presented to the agent is right-sized for the irrelevant and out of date information, and constantly
immediate need and in the right context for the multichannel changing regulations, practices, and procedures.
environment.
Yet, traditional call center agents are expected to quickly
According to Demand Metric’s recent study, the Enterprise (within milliseconds) find the right information for the
Digital Marketing Benchmark Report, “The B2B enterprise customer.
is very likely to use multiple digital marketing strategies, with
Context aware functionality enables higher levels of
over three-fourths using three or more strategies.” Clearly,
performance because it filters information by key criteria
the digital marketing environment has become extremely
(employee role, type of inquiry, customer history, etc.)
multi-faceted, which the Modern Contact Center can help
to address specific issues with relevant information in
to integrate further.
real-time.
Additionally, customers’ needs are met through the
Relevant information is offered based on corporate process
intelligent application of data effectively mined in real-
and compliance rules and guidelines. Context aware
time. With the intelligent information flow, agents don’t
functionality also supports the intelligent information flow
need to search for information from every database, and
by enabling rapid information retrieval, understanding,
training on effective information access replaces rote
and training (while filtering out nonrelevant ‘noise’).
memorization of facts that often change frequently, making
their memorization problematic.
OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES OF THE CALL CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 7

Multi-channel Increasingly Cloud-based

Information in the Modern Contact Center flows freely Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications provide users
between the customer and the company, regardless of with cost, flexibility, and scalability benefits.
touch point or device, offering greater message consistency.
Updates to cloud-based software are ongoing. The days
Customer information is shared by all internal points of of multiple software versions and “dot” releases are
contact, including Marketing and Sales and Operations. numbered. Cloud applications are future-proof. In addition,
hosting customer information in the cloud instead of, or in
This omni-directional information flow increases the
addition to, on premise increases availability and disaster
quality and speed of customer service activity and sets
recovery.
the stage for the Modern Contact Center’s role in lead
generation. Contact Center agents always have access to the most
relevant information no matter where they are located.
This eliminates the need to constantly update manuals
Virtually Supported and other materials as things change, while easing the
Organizations are increasingly leveraging the power burden of supporting the increasing number of home-
of the cloud to outsource or decentralize key business based agents.
processes. A result of this is the proportion of agents now
Cloud-based Contact Centers support the range of
working from home is growing.
mobile devices that most customers use today, making
The power of the cloud to eliminate geographic the experience with the Contact Center transparent to the
constraints is a boon to Business Process Outsourcers customer and increasing engagement.
(BPO) and their clients.
OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES OF THE CALL CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 8

Role in Lead Generation

The Contact Center has a critical role in demand generation, as well The Contact Center can be an influential component of the lead genera-
as lead nurturing and post-sale opportunities (renewals and upsell and tion process and the overall buyer’s journey. In Demand Metric’s recent
cross-sell opportunities). This role is driven by several key needs: study, the Sales Experience Quality Benchmark Report, “70% of the
time, it takes months or years to restore the relationship after a bad sales
Creating loyal satisfied customers who will provide direct referrals
meeting.”
and social influence in favor of the company or brand due to excep-
tional customer service. Furthermore, the study found that, “In about half the cases, the vendor
is eliminated from current and future opportunities as a result of a bad
Providing the customer care view in the company’s holistic picture
sales meeting.”
of customer experience, which can be used to determine better
performing offers and calls-to-action for Marketing. If Contact Center teams are trained and equipped at the front end of
this meeting process, their existence will benefit the overall buyer’s
Offering suggestions for product/service improvements that drive
journey and lead nurturing process to avoid these common pitfalls.
the customer, product, or brand into new market niches. The Modern
Contact Center should be recognized as an “in-house” focus group. When the Modern Contact Center is fully equipped at the front end,
they can help ensure a consistent message is delivered to customers
Supporting the entire customer journey, especially the postsale
throughout their journey, and capture prospect information to be shared
experience.
with Sales and Marketing.
OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES OF THE CALL CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 9

Benefits to the Modern Contact Center

The Modern Contact Center offers several key benefits for the Modern
Marketing Organization. These include: Given these advantages, it is time to rethink the call center’s
role in the organization and, particularly, its role in supporting
Reduced time agents spend in information discovery to increase
marketing efforts to drive new leads and revenue.
the speed of response to customer inquiries.

Better personalized interactions via Contact Center activity inte-

gration with CRM and Marketing Automation profiles to customize
emails, offers, and calls-to-action.

Better multi-channel access through the integration of social, email,

mobile, live chat, and call records to determine customer behavior for
lead generation.

Increased behavioral analytics when Contact Center data is included

in the marketing metrics mix.

Preservation and constant capture of institutional knowledge in

Customer Care, Marketing, and back-office functions.

Creation of an Information Hub that allows interconnected depart-

ments to benefit from Contact Center information.
CREATING A MODERN CONTACT CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 10

Creating a Modern Contact Center

Successfully transforming the call center to a Contact Center that better
supports marketing programs and lead generation requires a series of
well-orchestrated steps.

Follows these four best practice steps to begin this transformation:

STEP 1 Evaluate Your Call Center Operations

The first step in creating a Modern Contact Center is to evaluate the

current role your call center has in your marketing and business strategy
efforts. These questions are central to that evaluation:

What role does the Contact Center play in your Sales, Marketing, Is that information timely and accurate?
Product Management, and Operations today?
How well are customer activity records (CRM, Marketing Automation,
What impact is Contact Center data having on strategic business, and Customer Service) integrated?
product, and marketing decisions today?
Is the Contact Center staff trained and prepared for all multi-channel
How well coordinated is the information flow internally across interactions like social, mobile, and video?
Marketing, Sales and Customer Care, the back office, and/or the
Is there a process for identification and handoff of potential revenue
Contact Center?
opportunities from the Contact Center to Marketing and Sales?
Do all departments have access to the right information at the right
time? If not, why not?
CREATING A MODERN CONTACT CENTER TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 11

STEP 2 Change Your Point of View STEP 3 Create a Strategy for Alignment

The second step in call center transformation is changing the percep- Alignment among Marketing, Sales, Customer Care, the back office,
tion within the organization. It’s much more than a rebranding or a name and the Contact Center is a critical best practice for success. Alignment
change from call center to Contact Center. must occur on strategy, process, systems, guidance information, and the
information flow.
Rather, it’s a new perspective: thinking of the Contact Center as a
central Communications Hub for Customer Success. For this to occur, it Organizationally, a cross-functional team with an executive sponsor and
requires an “outside in” perspective, which involves taking the perspec- champion must be designated.
tive of the customer and their journey, not the perspective of the organi-
Intelligent information flow is particularly important in the multi-
zation and its products, systems, and processes.
channel environment. The added velocity, volume, and complexity of
For this reason, we recommend strategically positioning the Contact multi-channel communication, especially social media, increases the
Center as part of the Customer Success organization (with cross-func- risk of misinformation spreading in ways it otherwise would not.
tional responsibility), which highlights its role in the customer journey,
Be sure to develop an efficient and consistent process for information
the development of customer relationships, and loyalty & advocacy, as
access and delivery, as well as provide proper training for customer
well as demonstrates its ability to increase customer lifetime value.
service agents tasked with addressing customer issues in a multi-
channel environment.

STEP 4 Choose the Right Systems, Platform, & Applications

A fourth best practice in call center transformation is choosing the plat-

forms and tools that can support the foundation of a communication and
customer success hub. Use the selection criteria listed on the next page
to evaluate potential platform vendors.
CONTACT CENTER APPLICATION SELECTION CRITERIA TRANSFORMING FROM CALL CENTER TO CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 12

Contact Center Application Selection Criteria

The Contact Center applications your organization selects will help
determine the quality of your customer care user experience.

While the Modern Contact Center touches on and extends to all infor-
mation related systems, this guide focuses on business process guid-
ance and information access systems and platforms that improve
customer service performance.

Evaluate potential solutions according to the following criteria:

1 Intelligent Information Flow. Does the solution support the intel- 3 Context Aware. The knowledge base should recognize agent
ligent information flow? If so, the solution should be right-sized. profiles and information needs, and respond with relevant infor-
This means that the solution should be able provide the right infor- mation filtered by details such as role, screen activity, experience,
mation at the moment an agent needs it, and should be able to and expertise. This means every agent is presented with the best
present that information in the right context for the multi-channel information for their current task.
environment.
4 Ease of Use. The Contact Center platform should offer advanced
2 Speed of Information Access and Retrieval. With the intelligent global search and intuitive “wizards” for information retrieval that
information flow, speed of information access and retrieval is do not require detailed training and education of Contact Center
dramatically improved with a guided learning system that takes staff. Independence from, or minimal reliance on, internal IT
the agent through the process by recommending the next action support is highly desirable.
or task. This type of “guidance system” gets agents up to speed
faster with less training and support, and eliminates unproductive
search by providing the most current and relevant information
from the repository in real-time.
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