I joined Percepta in 2000 as the business was being created after 13 years of working in the automotive industry managing costs and budgets…needless to say the transition was both strange and exhilarating! Strange because I was providing services on the other side of the manufacturer/supplier ‘model’, and exhilarating due to the company size and culture breathing life into great ideas, finding ways of turning concepts into reality quickly and innovation becoming a habit and not something just to be planned in. In my time with Percepta we’ve come up with 5 essential steps to turn contact centres into profit centres, and I’d like to share them with you today.

1. What drives the business?

So many centres are measured by average handling times, abandonment levels, average speed of answer etc but in reality those on the other end of the phone have little, if any, understanding of them. By doing something as simple as listening to the customers and what hurts/motivates the business we could find the real critical measures. These tend to be satisfaction, loyalty, saving, revenue…always something the clients and customers want to talk about in their day to day business.

One of our customer service centres uses customer loyalty as their critical measure, resulting in the team developing a whole new range of ideas on how to link the resolution of customer issues with the purchase of a new product. I suppose the question you really have to ask yourself is “is the business better off if I improve this measure”. If you’re unsure of the answer – it’s not a critical measure!

2. Critical Measurements in Service Level Agreements

Even if you can’t control them 100%, they need to be included! If you aren’t prepared to risk your neck then you’ll never change the mindsets on what’s important. This step took some gigantic leaps of faith for us and the client! We were agreeing to be measured and paid, by things we weren’t in complete control of but this has led to us feeling what our clients feel…if they suffer from a product recall or brand damage, so do we; but we work together to resolve these issues.

3. Costs

We’ve had to open our minds wide on this one and make sure we understand all the costs associated with our operations…not just the obvious ones but all the real costs too just like the financial accountants would. By doing this you begin to see how much each operation is responsible for spending and what the upside has to be to make it viable.

We took the same approach in understanding the benefits of the operation on our business and how to measure this in financial terms so everyone agreed with the calculations. Some are about money we have avoided spending…others are about the increased sales we’ve influenced, but all are in financial terms. If you don’t know the true costs and benefits the operation won’t get profitable on its own. It takes dedicated focus by everyone involved to achieve it.

4. Balance

Like many organisations we’ve balanced scorecards for almost everyone in the company, and these are used to align people to the operational objectives. The success of these is to ensure that the Critical measures are translated into the primary drivers of their success so that everyone knows the contribution that they can make overall.

Our operation in Europe proves that this system works. Every member of the operational team can tell you their contribution to the Critical Measure of Customer Satisfaction for the last month, 3 months and even six months! On top of this, they could also tell you their financial expenditure, volume and quality measures…they know when they are doing a job that’s making a difference to the business.

How many businesses do you know where everyone involved is focussed on the business benefits?

5. Success

Everyone likes to be rewarded and recognised for achievements. We have taken this and implemented it into our business, but linking it to the critical measures of business. We have a club that employees become a member of when they achieve certain levels of customer satisfaction. 75% of staff are in these and want to maintain their status and go further. By making it fun for the employees and recognising their achievement we have reinforced the importance of the measures and have made sure that on any piece of correspondence they feel they can make a difference to the customer.

How does your business go about turning their contact centres into profit centres? Or how do you go about motivating the people within your company to achieve results? Let me know your thoughts below and don’t forget to share this post with your colleagues by clicking the ‘like’ button