The goal of any efficient contact center ought to be arriving at excellent, cost-effective customer support. For many contact centers, however, the journey is fraught with complications, expenses and mistakes. Increasingly, successful contact centers are approaching top-notch customer support – either inbound or outbound - as a journey. And as any traveler knows, a successful journey begins with a map.

A recent Five9 (News - Alert) infographic may help companies begin to map out that journey. If you consider the starting destination the “call center depot” and the final destination either “100 percent satisfied customers,” or…even more specifically…”checkout,” in the case of a sales call center, then there are a number of steps along the way to achieve before the journey can be considered successful.

The Outbound Journey

The successful outbound call center begins with the premise that “We need to make more contacts, not hire more people.” This path begins with the right kinds of dialers: predictive or progressive. This can boost the chances of making a contact more often, ensuring that no calls are dropped, and staying in compliance without outbound regulations. From there, it’s a matter of connecting the right people in the right sequence.

Campaign and lead management tools are the next part of the journey, ensuring that once a connection is made, agents have the right tools at their disposal to identify the customer, understand his or her needs, and present a sales premise that the customer will find compelling.

“These tools let you set up and manage calling lists, and also help you find just the right mix of higher and lower priority contacts to your team,” writes Five9.

The Inbound Journey

The inbound portion of the map often starts with the premise, “We need to match inbound contacts with the right team member.” This allows the call center to provide the best and fastest support at the least cost without incurring customer frustration. It often involves a well set-up interactive voice response (IVR) unit to help customers begin the process themselves. The ACD lets you set up routing rules so that each inbound contact goes to the right person. Next, priority routing can be used to help the people with the most urgent needs head to front of the queue. Screen pop helps ensure the agent has all the right details on the customer to provide the best possible service.

The journey is greatly enhanced with the use of a cloud-based contact center solution, according to Five9.

“Cloud contact centers let you add and subtract resources just like they let you pick and choose tools when you need them. You pay only for what you need,” according to the infographic.

Using a well-crafted map, companies can achieve the elusive goal of providing customer support that gets people talking – in a positive way – without expending unnecessary resources.