Develop a Mindset of Ongoing Change to Produce Meaningful Results
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
Most call center owners and managers want to see innovation in their call center. They yearn for leading-edge solutions that will promote quality and drive client loyalty. These are lofty goals. And they are also equally hard to realize.
In truth, connecting call center innovation with actionable outcomes presents a challenging situation. So, instead of seeking big, revolutionary business overhauls, look for simpler ways to integrate innovation in the day-to-day operation of your call center.
Each time an innovation opportunity presents itself, don’t first seek ways you could tap it to revamp your operation. Instead look for ways call center innovation can provide incremental change to what you already have. Here are three considerations.
1. Enhance Existing Services
With each new opportunity that presents itself, consider how it can enhance what you’re already doing. This is simply looking for new ways to do what you’re currently doing better.
For example, when voicemail first came on the scene, the industry assumed automated message taking would replace people doing the same thing and would do it for less. Yet these fears were unfounded.
Yes, this did happen to a small extent, and some visionaries built new businesses around this ground-breaking technology, but most operations adapted the technology to enhance what they were already doing.
The result included voicemail message retrieval, customized greetings, and personalized auto answer to list a few common innovations.
Each one expanded what the call center could do. So, look for these types of opportunities with each new solution that presents itself.
2. Offer New Services
Another consideration when call center innovation presents itself is to consider what new services you could offer because of it. This is what many outsource call centers did when voicemail came along.
They continued offering their agent voice services as they always had. And they now had a new service using voicemail technology: automated message taking and delivery.
Voicemail didn’t replace what they were doing but added to it in the form of a new service.
3. Expand into New Markets
Sometimes an innovation can allow you to expand into new markets. For example, as answering service software became more sophisticated, it allowed its users to move into telephone order taking, appointment setting, and database integration.
Conclusion
Call center innovation need not happen in huge, revolutionary jumps. We can better apply innovation as manageable tweaks on a consistent basis over time.
This is the best and easiest way to find new opportunities for your call center.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine, covering the call center industry.
Read his latest book, Call Center Connections.
