Contact Center is accurate, but it’s only part of our story

Originally published on LinkedIn on March 30, 2026.

For more than two decades in this industry, contact center was a term I used every day, almost without thinking.

At Percepta, I realized I wasn’t saying it at all, which made me step back and consider why.

A traditional contact center suggests a place that handles calls, answers questions, and resolves issues one interaction at a time. That work still matters and always will. But at Percepta, that is only part of the picture. Much of the value is created in specialized operations that sit deeper in the customer journey and closer to the outcomes our clients care about most — revenue, cost, risk, and long-term loyalty.

In automotive especially, the customer experience is more complex than it appears from the outside. The brand promise sits with the OEM, but the experience is often delivered through a network of independent dealers. When something goes wrong, customers do not separate the two. They expect one answer, one standard, and one experience. Delivering that requires coordination and consistency across multiple stakeholders, not just responsiveness in a moment of need.

Coordinating across OEMs, dealers, and customers requires more than a traditional contact center model.

The work spans the full ownership lifecycle from onboarding through ownership, warranty, and renewal. Because we operate across that journey, our teams build a deeper understanding of the product, the systems, and where issues tend to break down. That foundation enables more specialized work, from technical support and warranty expertise to connected vehicle, OTA, and EV support. It allows us to stand up new capabilities as the industry evolves, including building a dedicated EV support team from the ground up in 2022. And, it allows us to relay what we see on the front line back to product and engineering, making patterns visible and enabling issues to be addressed at the source.

At the same time, there is a layer of work behind the scenes that carries significant weight. Warranty adjudication, claims handling, compliance, and escalation management all require precision and experience. Getting those decisions right protects the brand, supports the dealer network, and avoids costs that extend well beyond a single interaction.

This is not transactional work. It is specialized expertise.

It takes time to build the knowledge, the judgment, and the integration required to operate at this level. It requires people who understand the product, the customer, and the operating environment in equal measure. That kind of expertise is built through experience and continuity, which is why investing in the employee experience matters. It also requires strong alignment between people and technology, each reinforcing the other to deliver consistent outcomes at scale.

Depth of understanding also shows up in how we support dealer operations. In one case, a global automotive brand was managing a fragmented environment across dozens of systems and more than 100 dealer applications. By centralizing support, we created a single point of coordination and clearer visibility into recurring issues. That allowed us to identify root causes, improve processes, and support dealer teams more effectively, including targeted training. The result was a 50 percent reduction in login-related volume and a measurable drop in critical issues, along with greater consistency across the network.

While in Sofia this month, I met with our manager for pre-approval on extended warranty repairs. The work is highly specialized. Real-time decisions that determine whether a claim is approved, how quickly a repair moves forward, and how costs are managed. It requires deep knowledge of policy, product, and local market nuance, applied consistently at scale as one team supports seven markets. What stood out was the discipline behind it. Clear processes, sound judgment, and the ability to deliver accurate decisions quickly, with 97% of requests handled within 30 minutes. The EU team is operating at a 15x return on investment through more accurate repair qualification and getting decisions right the first time. The team also has an average tenure of more than four years, which reflects both the complexity of the work and the experience required to do it well. Work like this sits at the center of the operation, directly impacting cost, dealer efficiency, and the customer experience.

Basic inbound service is where most people start when they think about this industry. It is visible, it is necessary, and it plays an important role in supporting customers day to day.

But it is only one part of a much broader model.

The work that sits around it — specialized support, technical expertise, coordination across OEMs and dealers, and the ability to resolve complex issues — is where the impact becomes more meaningful. That is where costs are avoided, revenue is supported, and the customer experience is shaped in a lasting way.

Language shapes how we think about the work. If we continue to describe all of this as “contact center,” we risk managing it too narrowly and measuring it in ways that miss the broader impact.

The work extends across the full automotive ecosystem and into specialized operations that sit beyond the interaction itself.

It is where customer experience is strengthened.

It is where business performance improves.

And where meaningful value is created.