How to reduce cost in the Contact Centre

Contact Centre Managers face a real challenge when trying to reduce cost in the contact centre.  Maximising each and every customer interaction as well as keeping the day to day operation of the contact centre running, requires an almost genius balance of workforce planning, productivity, quality and efficiency in every day processes.

So here are our top 4 ways technologies help contact centres reduce cost without compromising on quality:

1) Workforce Management

Workforce Management (WFM) enables workforce planners to automate the process of forecasting and scheduling in order to cost-effectively allocate the right employees, with the right skill sets, at the right time.

Ultimately, this ensures costs related to overstaffing and understaffing are avoided and customer interactions are managed optimally and at least cost.

Self-service functionalities within WFM also enables agents to highlight work preferences such as over time availability and time off requests. Not only does this help cut administrative costs, but also helps improve agent engagement, workforce planning, and morale, leading to a reduction in agent attrition, saving the contact centre recruitment and training costs.

2) Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses robots to eliminate repetitive and trivial manual tasks which end up taking away from the customer experience, and works to deliver greater consistency over operational responsibilities. RPA ensures all of this is done with unparalleled accuracy and speed.

Through automating desktop activities, such as application launch, field entry, information copy/paste and template auto-fill and calculations, agents are able to focus on more challenging tasks such as ensuring a high level of customer service, ultimately delivering greater value to the business.

As well as this, cost savings with RPA can be made through automating manual and resource intensive back office operations. This includes organising and indexing electronic documents and sending automatic replies to pre-set requests, essentially saving costs related to administrative tasks.

3) Speech Analytics

Interaction Analytics (aka Speech Analytics), ‘listens’ to all forms of communications (including web chat, email, phone etc.) to spot pre-defined keywords and expressions that indicate problems and opportunities.

With 100% of interactions being monitored and categorised, only the most valuable are passed on for training. As a result, advanced and targeted agent training programmes will mean agents are notably more motivated leading to a reduction in agent attrition and an increase in specific KPI’s designed to reduce the cost to serve.

Likewise, being able to search through masses of interactions using keywords such as competitor names and pricing, and phrases that indicate customer displeasure, also means you can reduce customer churn and consequently loss of revenue.

4) Cloud Cloud Contact Centre Technology

With Cloud solutions organisations can avoid all the costs that come with deploying On-Premise technology such as hardware (servers, headsets or phone, computers, etc.), installation, configuration and implementation as well as all the future expenses of software upgrades and newer technology releases.

With a cloud based workforce management solution, you are able to avoid all the hardware/software headaches (and unexpected costs), allowing you to maximise your budget and deliver better customer experiences.

Moreover, Cloud-systems are set up on a subscription basis, meaning that adding or removing a users is as easy as deactivating a subscription, allowing you to ustilise the technology in line with your needs at that time.
For more information check out our latest article on Cloud V On-Premise Contact Centre Solutions.

Our goal is putting technology to work. For a more in-depth discussion on any of the technologies mentioned above which can help reduce cost in the contact centre, get in touch with our team. 

This article first appeared on the Call and Contact Centre Expo website –  3 technologies that will reduce cost in your contact centre