Turning Call Centers into Profit Centers
The consumer backlash against unsolicited telemarketing and e-mails coupled with ever-increasing competition for customer attention has forced companies to take a new look at their inbound call centers.
Long considered a profit drain and necessary evil, inbound call centers are now seen as a critical link between an organization and its customers. Companies that have relied strongly on a carpet-bombing approach to marketing in the past are now using their inbound call centers to better target customers at the right time with the right offers.
The call center business model has historically been based on reducing the amount of time spent on each call in order to reduce costs and personnel. The quantity and not the quality of each call was the driver. Operational efficiency, in this model, was the over-riding goal -- not customer satisfaction, customer retention, cross-selling or up-selling. Rarely was a call center's operation tied to an organization's business goals or strategies.
