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depicted as “best-in-class,” outpaces
all others, including year-to-year
improvements in revenue, retention,
satisfaction, cost per customer con-
tact, first call resolution and number
of SLAs met.
All told, Aberdeen cites three
main categories of performance
benefits that intelligent contact
centers provide. For starters, they
enjoy superior customer experience
results indicated by the ability to
decrease the number of customer
complaints year over year (7.9 per-
cent for best-in-class vs. -1.0 per-
cent for all others).
“As such, they observe sub-
stantial annual growth in customer
retention rates and customer lifetime
value,” argues Minkara.
Secondly are the benefits that
relate to operational results, includ-
ing metrics such as agent utilization,
number of quality SLAs met and aver-
age handle time. “Managing opera-
tions to improve these KPIs ultimately
help contact centers reduce customer
service costs,” continues Minkara.
Aberdeen figures show “that intel-
ligent contact centers maximizing op-
erational efficiencies reduce service
costs by 5.2 percent year-over-year,
compared to 1.1 percent increase by
all others,” said Minkara’s research
report. Put together, the results sug-
gest that intelligent contact centers
improve the customer service experi-
ence while simultaneously lowering
customer service costs.
Even better, the third area of ben-
efits is financial results. Aberdeen
figures suggest that companies with
best-in-class contact centers enjoy
more than twice the year-over-year
growth in annual company revenue
than the all others group (12.7 per-
cent vs. 5.6 percent).
The Cornerstones
of Intelligence
So how does a company deter-
mine the IQ of its customer support
resources? Aberdeen researchers
have identified four building blocks
that businesses can use to help
construct a performance-enhancing,
intelligent contact center.
Being that customer support
resides in an omni-channel world,
where multiple systems (CRM,
ACD, IVR) and channels (phone,
SMS, live chat, email) are integrat-
ed across the enterprise and experi-
ence to provide a unified view of the
customer, it’s no surprise that the
first building block is the seamless
flow of data across the organization,
or workflow optimization. And one
of the primary upsides of workflow
optimization is a personalized cus-
tomer experience.
In turn, intelligent contact centers
are 31 percent more likely to use
customer contact data to direct cus-
tomers to the appropriate channels,
show Aberdeen surveys. “This is
done by using ACD data in combi-
nation with account data within the
CRM system to optimize customer
routing,” Minkara explained.
Companies also can build specif-
ic workflows so clients within higher-
spending categories are quickly con-
nected to a high-touch channel (i.e.
phone) without having to go through
IVR, or a workflow can route clients
to a preferred support channel, as-
suming that information is available
within the CRM platform. Companies
with intelligence contact centers also
are 61 percent more likely to route
support interactions based on com-
plexity, showed Aberdeen.
Beyond customer interaction,
optimized data flows can help busi-
nesses streamline operations, such
as with agent scheduling. Aberdeen
found that intelligent contact centers
are 77 percent more likely than all
others to use self-service data when
forecasting agent demand across all
channels, meaning companies active-
ly monitor the number of customers
using self-service portals such as a
website, IVR or an online community,
and apply this insight when projecting
agent demand across channel.
The next principal component of
intelligence in the contact center,
says Aberdeen, is the empower-
ment of agents.
“Data shows that intelligent
contact centers truly understand
the importance of empowering em-
ployees with timely and relevant
insights needed to do their jobs,”
said Minkara.
Source: Aberdeen Group
Performance of Intelligent Contact Centers Outpace “All Others”
Year-over-year percent change
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
-2%
12.7%
5.6%
9.9%
4.0%
8.5%
3.2%
8.3%
7.9%
5.2%
-1.8%
-1.0%
-1.1%
Annual
company
revenue
Customer
retention
Customer
lifetime value
Number of
quality SLAs
met
Improvement
in number of
customer
complaints
Improvement
in average cost
per customer
contact
Best-in-Class
All Others
38
Channel
Vision
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September - October, 2016