Reduce costs. Managing customer service requests and queries is expensive.
Running a contact centre, with all their resource-heavy requirements, is difficult to do cheaply.
But what scope is there for reducing contact centre costs – without affecting the customer experience?
Some of the support functions that keep contact centres running are the areas that offer the greatest potential for controlling costs.
Does your contact centre overspend on any of the following?
Outdated IT
If your contact centre runs on old technology, it is likely to require more maintenance and more adaptations to make it operable alongside more modern solutions. Not only will you experience more downtime, and service interruptions, but you may have to pay more to fix bugs or develop new features for software running on obsolete code.
While shifting to new platforms can seem expensive, comparisons should be drawn so that you can see precisely how much you are losing by sticking with legacy solutions. While a platform transition can be a time-consuming project, it is usually a case of short-term pain for long-term gain.
Cloud solutions
How much of your contact centre IT is hosted on your premises?
Hosting your own services isn’t just expensive, it also makes it harder to keep updated, because you must manually download and install updates, which must be managed by your own IT team. Because of this, it’s not unusual for contact centres to run on unpatched applications which are then more vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Hosting your own software means you have to dedicate some of your real estate to server storage, and spend thousands each year on electricity, maintenance and hardware. And because you’re in charge of the servers, you also have to account for their physical security – in an environment that might not be very secure.
Cloud solutions are the compelling alternative to this situation.
Instead of trying to manage the hosting, security, updates and maintenance of your software, you could entrust all these demands to the company that develops the solutions. Instead of always running the previous version, you always have the most up-to-date and secure software. Cloud-hosted software is not only more secure and more reliable, but you can instantly eliminate all the costs associated with running your own servers.
Supplier rationalisation
Do you have multiple suppliers delivering hardware, software and support services to your contact centre? This spending inefficiency will translate directly into increased costs. You are paying a high price for the inconvenience of having multiple providers who offer overlapping services.
Reviewing your contracts and considering how to reduce the number of service and support providers can help you get a smoother provision of essential services – and also cut costs.
Contact one of our team or visit our Managed Services page.
Mark is Head of Managed Services at IPI and has over 30 years experience in engineering and operational leadership roles in IT, Communications and Managed Services. Mark has delivered Contact Centres globally on Avaya, and supported some of the most complex Avaya products and solutions with vast experience in the operational and technical aspects supporting these solutions.
Mark is passionate about building and leading successful engineering, operational support and implementation teams and is focused on delivering operational excellence.
