Optimizing the role of an outsourced call center

Optimizing the role of an outsourced call center

What is the best possible way to optimize the role of an outsourced call center? What more can an outsourced call center do for the company beyond just answering inbound inquiries? How can or does an outsourced center build customer equity?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    When you register, you'll begin receiving targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers on the latest customer relationship management (CRM)and call center technology issues today. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest issues facing this fast-changing industry.

    Hannah Smalltree, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchCRM.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchCRM.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

At some point, human judgment will always have to be accommodated in your customer-facing processes. It's impossible to serve customers well without it, and generally the more important decisions are the ones that require the most judgment. For a customer, the most vital problem or difficult issue will often involve some type of crisis situation – a situation that is likely to be unusual or at least one that you haven't already anticipated. This means that almost by definition, any issue of utmost importance to a customer is likely to be something that "falls through the cracks" if you operate entirely by pre-documented processes and procedures. You won't be able to specify it in advance.

Because of this, nowhere will your corporate culture play a more important role than in dealing with customers, because it often requires conceptual-age, non-routine skills such as empathy, creativity, and sensitivity. You simply cannot anticipate and plan every variation of customer contact. Many companies try to cut costs by call center outsourcing and automating their more routine customer service tasks, but most have to find out the hard way that it's a big mistake to outsource judgment calls. Nor is it the best idea to hardwire all your policies and processes into "the system."

Hear more in Creating Customer Value, a SearchCRM.com monthly podcast series with Peppers and Rogers.

This was first published in October 2007