So you’re starting a contact center. Or at least you’re thinking about it.
As with any business, the more you know about your industry beforehand, the better.
SingleComm was founded by folks with decades of experience building contact centers from the ground up. Through our time in the industry, we’ve learned some key points that can help you get your contact center off the ground.
In this article, we’ll dive into:
Defining your goals & identifying your target customer
What is your contact center’s reason for being? Who do you serve, and how?
The answers to these questions will help guide the development of your overall strategy and objectives.
Defining your target audience is important because, even though you wish everyone would use your service, that’s just not the case. Zeroing in on your target audience allows you to tailor your offerings to give your customers the highest level of satisfaction. Plus, if you are going to market your service, defining your target audience lets you customize your marketing material to resonate with your ideal customer.
When defining your target audience, it’s helpful to think of one person and ask the following questions:
- What is this person’s job title, and what industry do they work in?
- Education level?
- What are their pain points with their current contact or call center solution or lack thereof?
- Who is their competition?
- How do they like to communicate?
- How do they best absorb information?
After you have a strong idea of who your ideal customer is, you can begin to look internally. The questions below can help you start to outline goals for your contact center.
- How will my business gauge customer satisfaction? We recommend a net promoter score (NPS). Your NPS measures how likely a customer is to recommend your service to others. It is a metric that companies like Apple and Scripps hold in high regard.
- What are my operating costs, and what do I need to achieve to become profitable?
- What is my ideal average handle time (AHT)? The average time it takes for an agent to handle a customer interaction, including talk time and after-call work. A lower AHT generally indicates more efficient and effective customer service.
- What is an optimistic first contact resolution (FCR) rate? The percentage of customer interactions that are resolved during the initial contact. A higher FCR indicates that customers receive the information and assistance they need the first time around.
- How will I keep my abandonment rate low? A lower abandonment rate indicates that customers can reach an agent quickly and are less likely to hang up or end text communications.
- What is my ideal occupancy rate? The percentage of time agents spend on customer interactions. A higher occupancy rate indicates that agents are busy and that the contact center is meeting customer demand.
- What is the cost of labor in your operating area? How will you attract, train and retain talent?
Monitor and measure performance and make a plan for improvement
After you figure out your goals, you need to make a plan for measuring them. It’s essential to keep in mind that goals, especially in the early stages of your contact or call center, are a moving target. You should always aim to improve. As you achieve your goals, you need to ask yourself, “what’s next, how do I improve?” Tracking your progress is essential for improvement. You need to be able to isolate variables and test. Otherwise, you’re trusting your business to chance and whims. In addition, you must be able to view and make sense of the data you are collecting. Don’t fall into the trap of collecting data without the intention of leveraging it. With features like multivariate testing and comprehensive analytics, SingleComm helps you identify actionable data, test variables, and optimize performance. In addition, SingleComm consolidates information that matters to your business for multi-center and cross-channel insights into convenient, easy-to-read dashboards. With SingleComm, you’ll be able to leverage data to make intelligent business decisions.Find the right software for your contact center
The right contact center software gives you an advantage over your competition and allows you to improve efficiency, provide a better customer experience, and make more informed business decisions.
The right contact center software helps with tasks like call routing, call recording, and customer data management. Your software should help agents handle customer interactions more efficiently and have the omnichannel capabilities to ensure excellent customer experience across all communication channels. Additionally, the right software allows managers to monitor and analyze data, which can be used to improve operations and make informed decisions. Likewise, the right software utilizes the latest tools, like AI, to help your contact center be more scalable and adaptable to changing business needs.
To find your ideal toolset for your contact center, you’ll need to compare options to one another and weigh them against your business goals while keeping your audience in mind.
You can use the guides linked below as a starting point. In each, we go into detail on how SingleComm stacks up against other popular contact center software solutions.
Onboard employees and invest in your contact center culture
Forbes goes so far as to say that culture is a company’s single most powerful advantage.
One of the biggest mistakes new businesses can make is undervaluing their employees and neglecting to put effort into developing a culture.
Even if most of you plan on running a virtual call center and your employees will be remote, your contact center will still have an internal culture.
Your culture will impact your business’s overall efficiency and employee retention rate. Keep in mind onboarding employees is expensive; it is better for your business to attract and retain talent.
Here are a few examples of factors that influence your contact center’s culture:
- Your mission
- Your manager’s leadership style
- Your team members’ attitudes
- Your commitment to an equitable workplace
Put thought into the kind of culture you want to create. As a leader, it falls to you to set the tone for the rest of your organization.
Get the most powerful contact center software solution available for your organization
SingleComm was built by contact center professionals for contact center professionals. Our robust feature set empowers your agents and helps your business run more efficiently. Schedule a time to learn more about SingleComm by clicking the link below.
Best of luck with your new contact center. We’re rooting for you.