“Our business is about technology, yes. But it’s also about operations and customer relationships.”
Michael Dell
Technical contact centres could be seen as a cost centre, the source of expense to the OSS vendor. As such, they are usually resourced to match (ie lower-end resources, under-resourced, etc). But what if the mind-set of the vendor were to change? Every contact with the customer is an opportunity to build trust and build a relationship. If contact centres were seen as a pre-sales unit and/or product development (R&D) unit, would it be staffed differently?
A customer who has called the hotline has initiated the conversation and wants to be supported, validated, acknowledged and even won over. Even if the call is to make a complaint, it provides an opportunity to resolve the complaint and build a future advocate for you product. These contacts also provide early indications of industry trends for future product development.
With this in mind, would you staff your contact centre with high value resources, or continue to outsource it?
At the end of each call, will that customer be an advocate (positive word of mouth) or an antagonist (negative word of mouth)?