Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash
Investing technology into cloud, contact centres and processes are now important to business success. They allow organisations to improve the way they interact with customers, improve experiences, and proactively manage processes and systems. Even though traditional purchasing and evaluation metrics can’t fully capture their value, they are essential parts of a business. These investments go beyond budgets and standard department requirements into sustainable and strategic technologies that offer long-term flexibility.
Not all contact centre investments are created equal though and not all succeed in achieving their goals. Contact centre investment should include three important considerations to ensure long-term success.
It’s important to consider best practice when investing in contact centre solutions to ensure that the spend is relevant and that the results are what the business expects. The first thing to consider is the underlying drivers for the decision-making process – who is making the decisions and what are their goals? The second is the platform selection, and the third step encompasses considerations around using cloud.
Drivers for decision-making
Budget is one of the biggest underlying drivers. Organisations have a few guidelines around what their investment needs to achieve when it comes to performance and success criteria, but often don’t balance these against the actual needs of the company as a whole. Budget and saving money can easily dominate the decision-making process and can impact purchasing – this can lead to cheaper, easier or less strategic choices. It’s critical to select a product based on what is best for the business.
Instead of simply looking at price, you need to look at the return on investment (ROI) and gain a holistic view of the total cost of ownership (TCO). This can make a significant difference in terms of investment deliverables over the long term. The challenge is incentivising the team in the right way so that all decisions positively impact the business in the long term.
ROI equals real results
While every contact centre solution is different, it’s possible to get up to ten times the ROI if the investment is savvy and factors such as TCO, skills and structure are taken into consideration. Companies should challenge vendors to provide a ROI and then do a proof of concept that showcases how the solutions meet these promises.
This will not only streamline decision-making, but it will clearly show the benefits of the system against expenditure. Most importantly, you get the chance to work with the vendor and see if they are capable of adding value beyond handling escalations.
