Most companies today believe that the job of the contact center is to answer customer questions. While it’s true that this is the core mission of the contact center, it has so much more potential, and few companies are taking advantage of that potential.

According to a recent study sponsored by Forbes and Oracle (News - Alert), even companies that offer high quality customer support are making this mistake.

“Most companies, even those deploying sophisticated technology across channels, still view customer service through the traditional lens of simply serving the needs of the customer,” according to the research.  “Even when serving customers is seen as a strategic goal for the entire organization, few companies seem to be leveraging customer service as a true organizational strategy. But those that do are reaping the rewards.”
 

What are these rewards? For starters, the contact center is the origin of a great deal of customer data, and nearly every other department in the company should be gasping to tap that data to yield insights into how to improve business processes. Marketing, for example, should practically live in the contact center, particularly as many customer support channels today (think social media) cross both marketing and the contact center. Sales should be integrated, as well, and able to make hourly use of customer intelligence gathered by the contact center. 

Taking full advantage of the contact center’s resources, however, means it needs to be properly integrated with the systems, processes and missions of the rest of the company, and the Forbes study found that usually isn’t the case: only 38 percent of respondents indicated that customer service is an organization-wide strategic goal at their company. Only 15 percent of respondent companies stated customer service a key component of their marketing message or brand.

According to a recent blog post by Jack Loechner of the Center for Media Research, it’s about executives having tunnel vision when it comes to customer support. Truly forward-thinking companies get that an enterprise-wide approach to customer support yields value in many ways.

“Businesses that say they are making excellent progress toward modern customer service are more likely than their peers to see retention and reducing turnover as a primary business objective for customer service,” wrote Loechner. “They are also much more likely to view customer service through the lens of brand differentiation and improving competitive position or market share, and to realize the value of customer service in improving product or service offerings.

Building a customer support strategy that underpins the entire organization isn’t something that can be accomplished in a weekend. Technology is necessary – it simply can’t be done without the right hosted contact center solution and critical applications – but not the final word. It also takes a willingness to change on the part of department heads and executives, who must resist running isolated power fiefdoms that compete with one another.

So while it IS a big job, for the small percentage of companies who do manage to put customer service front and center, below, above and everywhere in between, the rewards are well worth it.