Here’s the secret to success: Align the business strategy, the contact center operations strategy, and the contact center technology strategy to build credibility for technology project prioritization.
The business strategy examines opportunities for increasing revenue and establishing operational advantages for superior efficiency and competitive advantage.- The contact center operations strategy refers to the work required in the contact center to support business goals.
- The contact center technology strategy includes the roadmap of systems and applications required to enable the contact center to achieve the defined operational goals.
Strategies are aligned when you can readily map the relationship between business and contact center goals, and when the technology enables both. When strategies are aligned, the contact center budget is synchronized with plans for business growth and change. The center builds business cases for tools and receives a reasonable priority for funding.
The following table provides two examples in which projects are defined through aligned strategies. The business strategies and drivers create the need for technology.
| Strategy Component | Revenue Growth Business Strategy Example | Cost Reduction Business Strategy Example |
| Business Strategy | Best sales and service Customer focus Attract customers who value personalized service | Cost reductions More efficient sales and service delivery Increase margins Maintain differentiation |
| Business Drivers | Be preferred provider (loyalty, ”wallet-share” or “closet share”) Grow high value customers | Lower operating costs Deliver service equal to or better than competition (based on key metrics) |
| Operations Strategy | Provide differentiated service Have customer-focused processes (efficient, but not time driven) Have customer-focused metrics (e.g., customer sat, FCR) Offer media choice, 24×7 | Reduce costs (e.g., lower handle time, lower live call volumes) while improving/optimizing service Expand self-service Expand proactive service |
| Technology Strategy | Multimedia routing, reporting, and view of customer interactions CTI-enabled CRM, with integrated KM (across channels) Skills and data-directed routing Performance optimization and analytics (speech, text) Personalized scripts tied to customer relationship, opportunity Self-service with ASR, personalized applications Quality monitoring with screen capture Customer satisfaction surveys Premise sourcing with IT ensuring quality and reliability, and business enabled to administer day-to-day changes | Synchronized and expanded web and IVR self-service Proactive outbound notifications Knowledge management to support web FAQs, suggest responses for web chat and email, reduce live agent handle time, and optimize FCR Cloud sourcing to reduce IT resources required for ongoing support and maintenance |
For additional information – including suggestions for building your business case and exploring options – read Achieve Contact Center Goals Through Strategic Synergy and Realism.