Contact centers are growth centers

This is a guest blog from Nina Godlewski, a marketing writer at Textline.

Your contact center might be seen as a necessary but costly aspect of your business, but with a little bit of strategizing and reimagining, you can transform into a revenue center.

Tools like business texting can work in addition to your other communication channels to make your company communication more efficient. This can improve the customer experience and help bring in those long-term customers with high lifetime values.

Why can contact centers cost so much?

There isn’t one single reason why your contact center is causing such a drain on your business finances. In all likelihood, there are a few reasons.

But don’t worry, that simply means there are more ways to turn your contact center into a revenue center for your business. Some of the reasons you might be losing money on your contact center:

High turnover.

The average turnover for contact centers is estimated to be 30 to 45%. That high rate is due to the challenging work, the fact that many contact center roles are entry-level, or that the burnout is high. That rate is the percent of agents who leave their roles; you can calculate your own contact center’s turnover here.

Your agents are spread too thin.

Chances are, the agents working at your contact center are spread pretty thin which can lead to customers feeling undervalued. It’s important to note that 17% of customers will leave a company or brand after one bad experience, so keeping them happy is paramount.

You can only do one thing at a time.

Your agents aren’t superhuman and they can only realistically handle one phone call at a time. This can lead to longer wait times and customers losing patience before their issues are resolved.

How to turn your contact center into a revenue center.

Now that we understand why your contact center might be leaving money on the table, let’s take a look at how to change it.

Offer your customers highly personalized concierge experiences.

Offering concierge-style personalized communication and care can improve the contact center experience for your customer. When your customer has the best experience with clear immediate calls to action, they’re more likely to be loyal to your business and bring in more value over time. You can create these meaningful and two-way conversations over the phone or with business SMS. Texting can be especially useful for those conversations that require sending photos or links to your customers to help them.

Be one step ahead of your customer’s needs.

A great way to help keep customers happy is to anticipate what they’ll need. When you’re a step ahead, your customers have a better customer experience which also leads to a higher lifetime value.

For some businesses and customers, anticipation might look like noting what customers order on a regular basis and checking in around their usual order time. Or it could look like sending tracking information as soon as you have it so customers don’t need to contact you. These can help lower the number of inbound contact center touches and keep your customers happy and feeling cared for.

Make communication easy and fast.

Using business SMS can be a quick way to easily communicate with customers in their native texting app. With business SMS, 90% of messages are read within three minutes of being received. Using business texting can also be an efficient way to set up a time for a phone conversation. When you can communicate with very little friction you can get higher rates of engagement from your customers which again, leads to higher lifetime value.

Be the expert customers are looking for.

Lastly, your customers are looking for the best experience and the most relevant information to make their buying decisions. By offering them your expertise from your contact center you can create a relationship where they trust your business. The trust encourages customers to continue their relationship with your business. When you’re the expert and your customer trusts you, they feel they get the best product and make the most informed decisions while shopping with you.

Your contact center does not have to be a cost center. Traditionally, organizations have been using contact centers as a means for providing customer service without incurring in too much cost. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Organizations can leverage contact centers as a strategic asset and turn them into revenue centers, actively contributing to the group’s financial success.