Is the cookie-cutter contact center dying out? In a word; YES! Why? Well, that’s the key question that we will answer as we examine how our industry has changed and how those changes have necessitated a more specialized approach in the contact center.
INDUSTRY CHANGES
The contact center has been around for a long time. In the early days of the industry, the services provided were quite simple such as order taking, order tracking, and answering basic product questions. Over time, the technology used in call centers became much more sophisticated allowing agents to better track customer activity, offer better insights into customer behavior, and expand the tasks that they could offer their clients.
As the tasks they could offer expanded, many contact centers used that as a selling point to attract new customers, offering the same package or suite of services to each potential customer. This plan worked great with a “certain kind of customer”; one whose basic needs were simple, such as retailers who sold products one time or airlines who booked flights one time. The contact with the customer was relatively short and there was typically no follow-up. As long as the customer got what they were after, that was considered a successful call.
However, as technology has continued to improve within the contact center, this has opened the door to a much broader range of industries who have come to appreciate the benefits of utilizing a call center. As the industry reach has expanded, this has necessitated that call centers become more adaptable to the various industries they serve. In other words, the services they offer a retail customer will look very different than the services offered to an Insurance customer. Call centers soon realized that the “cookie-cutter” approach to offering their services was no longer working.
THE RISE OF THE CUSTOMIZED SOLUTION
Improved technology that offered expansion into a variety of industries has given rise to the need of a customized solution for each client. For example, here at Centris we work with a number of different industries with specialties in the following:
- Insurance
- Healthcare
- Security
- Retail
Each of these industries requires a different approach to serving the customer and each approach requires that our agents be trained to handle the very specific tasks of that industry. One of the tasks that we perform for our insurance clients is that of First Notice of Loss meaning when a person gets into a car accident, one of our Centris agents will be the first person they speak to regarding their accident. It is important that our agent understand and empathize with the customer who is needing to settle their accident claim. This process can be even more intense in the event of a more serious accident where injuries have been sustained. How our agent handles the customer in this situation will be critical to their overall customer satisfaction and requires a completely different approach than that of order taking, tracking, or payment processing.
This is just one illustration of how the contact center has learned to adapt to meeting the needs of a variety of clients across a broad spectrum of industries.
At Centris, this is one feature that sets our call centers apart from many others. We provide a customized contact center solution by taking the time to understand our clients’ business and their customer. We then ensure that our agents get the proper training to handle the very specific needs of our many clients.
If you feel your company could benefit from a customized outsourcing plan, contact us and let us design a plan that will fit your needs.
