Connected devices, mobile technology, and the evolution of PAAS and SAAS (aka "The Cloud") allow us, as professionals, to innovate faster than ever before. However, companies today are becoming increasingly focused on the excitement and ease of rapid innovation — and forgetting how new developments align with their company strategy and support their bottom line. 

We’ve noticed this trend specifically among Customer Service organizations. Just because it’s easy to quickly implement or re-engineer their contact centers doesn’t mean organizations can ignore the fundamentals of customer service. In this blog, we’ll discuss the top three reasons contact center projects fail — and how to make sure your organization succeeds.

Mistake 1:
Building a contact center from technology specs instead of business goals. 

Start by defining the goals of the contact center and how success will be measured. Questions like “What am I actually trying to achieve with this contact center?” and “Why is it important to the company?” should asked long before “How will it be delivered?” 

The most successful contact centers start a project by setting clear business goals, such as: 

• Drive higher rates of return business by proactively engaging existing clients with helpful information about their product.
• Increase Net Promoter Score (NPS) to drive brand awareness and new customer sales.
• Manage more customer enquiries by outsourcing case management to the customer community.
• Become industry leaders in sales and service by providing an amazing customer experience across any channel of communication.

Technology and rapid development should not be confused with a leading customer engagement strategy. Technology is only the enabler; without a strong strategic foundation to guide and inform development, your organization will not meet its business goals.

Mistake 2:
Building a contact center purely for case management.

The true nature of customer engagement lies in understanding what a customer needs before they know they need it — not just resolving cases as they arise. It certainly isn’t easy to know how to proactively engage your customers, but here are a few ways to get you started:

• Analytics & Triggers can constantly monitor customer behavior and predict when a customer is about to have an issue. These tools can alerts agents to proactively reach out to a customer before the issue arises, or even communicate directly with the customer. Product or service incidents are inevitable, but going to your customers with a solution before they even know they have a problem is a great way to show them that you care. 
• Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) allows your team to create valuable content as a byproduct of solving customer issues. As content is more frequently used by agents to solve customer issues, consider making that knowledge public-facing, a move towards customer self-service. When external, allow your community of customers to enhance and improve the knowledge for you. 
• Build a Community for your customers to engage with each other and product experts from your team, and reward or recognize collaboration and contribution. Most importantly, don’t fear the potential for negative conversation. If your clients want to say something negative about your product or service then you should want to hear it!

Mistake 3:
Focusing on cost-per-call stats rather than on customer effort and experience.

This one is simple: always be customer obsessed. Being able to count on a contact center to provide a rep who is understanding, efficient, and armed with the right information and tools is much more valuable to a customer than being rushed through a call in under 60 seconds. It’s that agent’s effort and focus on the individual customer (or lack thereof) that will make all of the difference.

So remember… 

1. Technology was never advanced by people reading through specifications and wondering what they could build with something already available to them.
2. Knowledge comes from the greater community, your staff, your customers and your prospects. Knowledge that comes from only one person is an opinion.
3. Without your customers, your contact center is simply redundant.

Contact us today to find out how a Service Blueprint can help focus and revamp your service organization.