Be the technology advocate for your company’s call center.

Be the technology advocate for your company’s call center.

In the video below, Mike explains how keeping the “status quo” or trying to “reduce cost” is actually misaligning your IT team with the leadership team. Your executives are hired to grow the company, and they’re (sometimes secretly), looking to you to tell them how they can use technology to do so.

Want Mike’s recommendations on which cloud contact center software vendors your company should quote? Click below to ask him today.

About Mike

Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. You can also hear him as the host of the popular Information Technology podcast, ITsmiths with Mike Smith. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

I wanted to make a video on something I’m seeing out there too often when it comes to call center. And it’s in regards to the mentality that some it professionals have when it comes to shopping for call center software for their business. I think sometimes we’re getting too caught up in the cost factor or I should say too caught up in the price factor and not caught up in company growth and cost.

Ask me about vendors

But before I get too deep into it, quick plug, if you’d like my recommendations on the best call center software vendors or contact center software vendors for your organization, don’t Google it, just reach out and contact me via email or by phone (714.593.0011). More information on that at the end of the video.

The Typical Call Center Inquiry

All right. So what I see a lot today is, companies will call me and they’re looking for a new call center software solution.

Maybe it’s because their current on-prem PBX is end of life, and that’s tied to their call center software, or maybe they’re just tired of their call center software currently, and they’re looking for something new. But they’ll call me and say, “We just want phone calls. And all we do is phone calls.”

And I’ll say, “Well, what about the new capabilities out there with a lot of the new solutions?

Omni-Channel Contact Center

I’m not sure if you’re aware of them, but now we can incorporate multi communication channels into the call queue, not just calls.” For instance, you can add a website chat into the call queue, or you can add text messaging into the call queue, or you can add emails into the call queue. What that does is it allows you to manage those forms of communications with your organization better. So it allows you to add multiple forms of communications for customers to reach out to you.

So say customers don’t want just call you. They want to text message your company for whatever reason, or maybe your employees want a text message for help desk or anything like that, or maybe they want to chat with you guys online. It allows you to add those into the call queue, but even better, it allows you to manage those forms of communication better. So for instance, if someone sends your company an email for customer service, you have a way, a central way to manage how fast you’re responding to those emails and what are the metrics behind it?

How many people are emailing you? All that stuff, whether it’s text message, email, web website chat, phone calls, it’s all in one portal. So a very useful tool.

Artificial Intelligence for Contact Center

And then there’s other things like artificial intelligence that can, on phone calls, pick up on customer sentiment and decide if a customer’s really upset, or really happy or saying certain keywords, and it can take a snippet of that phone call and email it to a manager so that they can listen to that recording.

So they’re not having to listen to random recordings of phone calls. They’re listening to specific segments of phone calls. Maybe something that was said that made a customer mad, where some training is required, or maybe something that was said to a customer that’s really good that made a customer ecstatic. Also, training required where you guys can note down, “Hey, what’s making our customers really happy. And what can we do more of?”

Single Agent Call Routing

There’s also some cool technology that allows if somebody’s calling in, it allows them to be connected, first priority, to the person that they spoke to last, or give the customer the option to do so.

So there’s just so much cool technology out there, right?

And I’ll explain that to the person calling in and looking for the new solution for their company.

The Budget Response

…And they’ll say, “Oh, that’s all great and everything, but that’s really expensive. It’s maybe like $100 per user and that’s just way out of our budget, and I think we’re just going to do what we’re doing today, which is just phone calls,”

Which I totally understand that mentality because they’re working with a fixed budget. They’ve been given a budget. They know what their budget is for the year. It’s a large company, typically, they have quite a few contact center agents.

And they think the prospect of going to a cloud solution, let alone a cloud solution. That’s going to cost $100 or so, or more per agent is just astronomical. There’s no way they can cost justify that.

Management’s Mentality

But I wanted to stop there and change our mentality a little bit and let you in on the way I see it in terms of perspective. I totally understand that perspective, and that IT’s professional is typically being very ethical for their company.

They’re trying to be cost conscious for their company. They’re working with a budget. They’re doing the right thing in their mind, and they’re working really hard to do so. But in terms of what management, what the other levels of management are looking for from the IT department is different than that. And although management may sometimes object to wanting to increase budget, the leadership of your company is really looking to grow the company.

They’re not looking to stay status quo. They’re being hired to grow the company. The CEO is being hired to grow that company. They want company growth. They want increased profits.

Customer Service is a Key to Increased Profit

And one of the big keys to increased profits is having incredible customer service. If you can have incredible customer service, you’re going to get really loyal customers, who will pay more for your company service.

If it’s really easy to work with your company, if you’re really managing how fast people are responding, and they know that they can email you and they always get a response within one hour, or they call you and they always get somebody picking up, and they always are professional. And they always know what to say to make you happy, and they’re never unprofessional, and every time they send you a text message or interact with you on your website, somebody is right on spot, contacting them right away, getting back to them. The ball never gets dropped.

That’s exceptional customer service, and we have technology out there that can enable that.

And if there’s technology that can enable that, even though it’s expensive, the cost is nothing compared to the improved profitability your company can have. If you develop a reputation for impeccable service with your customers, if your customer is getting a customer experience that’s so far and above any of your competition, they will be so loyal to your company and pay so much more for your product.

Some examples

It’s ridiculous. We all know it. We experience it on a regular basis with the companies we work with. Think about working with airlines, or think about working with any type of business where customer service is involved, or your bank or things like that. Why are you loyal to a bank, or maybe you’re not loyal because the service is lackluster and you could care less.

Is that how your customers think of your company when they try to text message you or email you?

Do they think of your company’s customer service as eh, or are they ecstatic about it?

And if they’re ecstatic about it, that’s the basis for which your company can grow exponentially!

IT is Supposed to Teach How Technology Can Lead to Growth

So as the technology advocate within your company, that’s what executive leadership is looking for from the IT department. They’re looking for people to come to them with new ideas and new ways that technology can be leveraged to really grow your company and change the culture or elevate your customer experience levels way beyond your customer’s expectations. Really blow them away with your level of customer service.

So that’s the mentality to have. Even if you’re working within a budget, leadership is looking for someone to come to them and explain why their budget should be increased, and how it’s going to help the company. So that’s the mentality, I think, that really everyone should have is, “Hey, from the technology department, how can we really help our company grow?”

Watch your Career Take Off

And I can tell you what if the IT department has that mentality in going to executive leadership, that’s somebody who’s going to be getting a raised. That’s somebody who’s going to be getting promoted. That’s somebody who’s going to be elevated in terms of, you’re going to be included in the executive meetings. When leadership’s talking about how to grow the company, they’re going to be bringing you in.

Because you’re not somebody who’s trying to shrink the company or keep the status quo. They’re going to see you as somebody who’s in leadership, who’s really got the company’s best interest in mind, who’s really trying to help the company grow in every which way. That’s somebody who’s going to be at the leadership table.

They Expect it from You

So I just wanted to kind of explain that from a leadership standpoint. I’m somebody who’s owned a small business for over 20 years, and I can tell you no executive leader who’s worth their weight or no business owner is trying to shrink their company or keep the status quo. They all want to grow, and they’re relying on people who have expertise in certain areas to come to them with ideas, but they’re not going to come to you with the idea because they don’t know the idea exists.

They need you to come and advocate for that technology to say, “Hey, this is what we need. Yeah, it’s expensive. It’s $100 per agent,” or whatever it is, “but the amount of profit our company can make, that will pale in comparison to what we pay per user for our contact center agents. That’s ridiculous. You’re saving a tiny bit of money to lose out on a huge opportunity to make a lot more money in profit.”

So just something I wanted to talk about really quick that I thought might be interesting for some folks to hear, because I know coming from the technology side, everything is all about the technology. And sometimes we don’t talk enough about leadership within the company, and what the executive leadership is really looking for, and how to kind of approach them with that type of mentality. And I think it’s worth talking about.

Ask me which vendors to quote

So hope that helps a little bit. And again, if you’d like my recommendations on the best vendors that your company should be quoting for your contact center, especially for cloud contact center, reach out and contact me, on email or by phone (714.593.0011). Don’t Google it. I’m a broker for all the major service providers out there. And I can tell you, based on your company’s requirements, the small handful of vendors that your company should definitely be quoting.

I can also tell you which vendors you shouldn’t be quoting and why. And the nice thing is, is that the vendors pay me my broker fee. So it’s free to you. There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t at least reach out and get my opinion. So I hope that helps. Don’t forget, again, to subscribe to the channel and hit the like button if you thought this video was useful, and I will catch you on the next one.