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March 2009 | Volume 27 / Number 10
From The Analysts Desk

Study Shows Companies Need New Strategic Metrics

By Susan J. Campbell,
Contributing Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions


The performance of the contact center can make the difference between retaining the customer base and driving up costs in an attempt to replace lost customers. As a result, contact center managers are often capturing performance variables and measuring against established criteria.




A new survey on performance management released by Genesys (News - Alert) Telecommunications Laboratories indicates that businesses need a new set of strategic metrics to retain customers and drive sales. The research determined that UK firms are more likely to adopt strategic metrics than other regions to better assess customer service delivery and retention, yet there is still work to be done.

Contact center managers tend to use traditional metrics, including call duration or average speed to answer, to assess the customer experience. Unfortunately, only 30 percent of contact centers actually measure revenue per call, which could in fact provide more useful customer intelligence.

Nearly one third of UK businesses surveyed are currently taking actions to address performance management and reporting in the next 18 months. These contact centers have also implemented proactive business management strategies to enhance end-to-end customer interactions.

“A downturn can be an opportunity for an organization to gain a competitive advantage. Some companies will certainly have to close their doors, but those with more focused efficiency strategies, meaningful employee performance measurements and customer-related targets, have the potential to thrive in the current climate,” commented Keith Pearce, Marketing Director, EMEA, at Genesys.

The research also found many businesses still do not measure revenue from customer care interactions. While 77 percent of UK respondents reported that the contact center plays a role in revenue generation, only 33 percent of customer service professionals and 28 percent of C-level executives said that their customer service is measured on revenue per call.

“Now more than ever, businesses should assess how performance is measured and how employees and customers are managed,” continued Pearce. “And our research shows that UK firms are taking the lead here and embracing strategic metrics more readily than their global peers.”

“A much higher proportion of UK businesses (55 per cent) track customer expectations compared to only 48 per cent in other regions, with over 28 per cent of companies in the UK planning to link business drivers with customer behaviors,” Pearce said.

In this economic climate, more than ever contact centers need to focus more clearly on measuring revenue per call. Businesses of all sizes and in nearly every industry are cutting back and paying closer attention to the cost of operation. In order to protect current contact center operations and continue to deliver a high standard in customer service, these companies must more accurately measure overall performance.


Best-in-Class Companies Optimize Marketing Across Multiple Channels

As contact centers play an important role in the marketing efforts of a company, many struggle to optimize online and offline marketing campaigns across a number of new marketing channels. Aberdeen (News - Alert) has published a new study that examines the efforts of Best-in-Class companies.

In executing their marketing efforts, companies tend to keep silos of information in separate channel-centric technologies. When combined with distributed marketing efforts, the organization discovers increased challenges to managing multichannel marketing efforts.

The contact center is playing a key role in these marketing efforts, but as more sales and marketing channels continue to emerge, multichannel campaign performance is becoming increasingly difficult to track and monitor.

Aberdeen discovered in its study that Best-in-Class companies are 1.5 times more likely to address these challenges by utilizing next-generation solutions that enable cross-channel optimization across an enterprise.

Aberdeen’s report found that top performing companies currently execute multichannel campaigns to extract maximum value from their marketing investments. When companies combine organizational capabilities and marketing technologies, top performing companies can positively impact the return on marketing investments and customer profitability.

“Traditional multichannel marketing is largely a function of delivering multiple separate campaigns across multiple channels,” explained Ian Michiels, Research Director at Aberdeen. “Best-in-Class companies are executing structured, collaborative cross-channel campaigns, and they are deriving extraordinary results from these tactics.”

“The challenge of executing, measuring, and optimizing multichannel marketing has far reaching implications that affect marketing performance, measurement, and customer retention and acquisition,” Michiels added.

The contact center operation is critical in the retention of the customer base. The center cannot effectively do its job if contact center agents are consistently struggling between disparate systems to gather customer information.

It is important for the organization to leverage each and every customer interaction to capture information and plug it back into internal business intelligence to maximize offerings for clients. In addition, contact center agents are better equipped to serve the base and upsell where opportunities arise.

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