To many companies, a call centre is merely a customer service necessity. But a contact centre can provide highly valuable information. If your company uses your call centre like a knowledge centre, you will have a tremendous source of information that can help you develop your products and your brand.
The adage that claims that if you want to know what is truly going on with your brand and products, you should spend a day with one of your customer service agents, has proved to be very true.
“We know that massive amounts of knowledge come into contact centres every day,” said Andrew Doyle, Managing Director, Jabra Business Solutions UK & Ireland. ”If we are smart in capturing these customer insights, this will position contact centre managers as key players in companies’ strategic planning.”
According to both Laura Bassett, Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at Avaya, a global leader in business communications and Sarah Stealey Reed, Content Director at International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), the contact centre will become much more of a knowledge centre in the future.
The contact centre is where your business has that vital direct contact with your customers and can collect important knowledge about the way your products are being used. From customer interaction, you can:
– Learn if customers are using your products as they were intended
– Be inspired to create new products and designs
– Learn if your manuals and guides are user-friendly
– Build thought-leadership marketing campaigns on real market insights
Can help drive revenue and product development
When seeing a call centre more as a knowledge centre “your contact centre can drive revenue and increase shareholder value by being an important tool when it comes to product development, creating the best possible customer experience and implementing the strategic objectives of your company,” says Laura Bassett from Avaya.
According to Sarah Stealey Reed from ICMI, the contact centre will gain tremendously from being used more as a knowledge centre than just as a mere customer service function: “There is no doubt that it raises the profile of the contact centre, if that is where we are getting the important information from and having the great discussions as to how we can develop our products and services even more,” she states and continues: “Furthermore, it will give the contact centre managers better access to resources and an important seat at the corporate table if management sees them in that light. To put it frankly, the CEO and CIO cannot afford to ignore contact centres anymore!”
