Outsourcing Vs. Contact Center Automation
Contact centers can be expensive to run, and are often seen as cost centers; however, the ability to up-sell services and products to customers can offset operational expenditure, and effectively reduce the average cost per call handled.
Methods of reducing contact center running costs include outsourcing and automation. Outsourcing to other countries can reduce operational expenditure by as much as 30%, however, differences in culture and language can prove problematic for customers, whose dissatisfaction can lead to customer complaints and loss of business. Also, it is more difficult to up-sell to customers from foreign contact centers.
Automation in a contact center can also reduce operational expenditure by around 30% though the introduction of technologies such as customer profiling, CTI, and IVR using speech recognition. The use of automation in the contact center promotes efficiency, allowing contact centers to be located in the country from which the call is originated. Customer satisfaction can be monitored by the use of customer survey applications. The information from survey applications can be used to improve customer service.
Read more about this topic: Interactive Voice Response
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