Now, more than ever, online retailers need a knight in shining armor in the call center. Online shoppers expect competitive prices, easy payment options, quick delivery and free returns, but the real differentiator is customer service. So much so, that a whopping 91 percent leave following a poor customer service experience and 89 percent will run straight into the arms of your competitors. 

Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whether it's October-December, February-March, or April-July, for many companies seasonal spikes drive a lot of business and are a welcomed opportunity for increasing sales. However, seasonal peaks can also present a huge challenge when it comes to balancing agent workloads.  To handle these spikes, you’ve probably needed to hire seasonal agents to supplement your regular contact center teams.

The customer experience has become an increasingly important competitive differentiator for insurance companies. As the contact center is the primary point of contact for many customers, it plays a key role in defining the customer's relationship with your brand that inevitably impacts the profitability of the organization. A study by the CFI Group showed that nearly 61% of insurance customers who have had a bad contact center experience will consider switching companies, and 26% said they will definitely switch companies because of a bad contact center experience.

In the retail industry, the call center is regarded as an extension of the storefront, increasing the access point to the customer.   And yet according to a recent Forrester report, when asked about their most recent call to a retailer's call center, only 73% of consumers said they were satisfied with the interaction, while 87% said they were satisfied with their most recent visit to a retail web site. These results suggest shortcomings in how retailers provide customer service, said Kerry Bodine, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is a main benchmark used in the telecom industry to measure the revenue potential of their customers.  In today's fiercly competitive landscape, service providers are increasingly battling high churn rates and low ARPU - significantly impacting the profitability of their call centers and the bottom line.  

Only 19 percent of customers are satisfied with the service they receive on the phone from support contact centers.  

(Source: Forrester Consulting, EMEA 2011 Consumer Preference Report – Contact Centers)

Let's take a moment to let this sad statistic sink in. 

And yet, despite a high level of dissatisfaction, 80 percent of people surveyed responded that speaking with a support agent is still their preferred channel of communication.

So what do today's customers expect from support call centers?

As we discussed in our blog post Telecoms Crack Down on these 8 KPIs with Performance Support, Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is a key metric for any telecom operator and one that is of rising concern in today's saturated and cut-throat competitive market. Telecoms are struggling with increasing, or even just maintaining, ARPU levels as new entrants are focusing on increasing the number of subscribers and reducing prices to do so. This has the effect of reducing ARPU for all operators as everyone is forced to reduce their prices in order to maintain their market position. As a result, telecoms are challenged with inventing new and better ways to drive ARPU to ensure the profitability of their call centers.

I was going to start this post with a breakdown of 'a day in the life of a call center agent', but then I realized that I only needed to share the first 4 minutes of an agent's day for you to get the picture.  It goes a little something like this:

Organizations rely on their sales team to grow and call centers are no exception.   Ramping up sales in the call center can provide a valuable outlet to help companies meet sales quotas and drive sales effectiveness.  In preliminary results of ICMI's survey on call center types, 47.3% of respondents noted that their call center does some type of selling, cross-selling or up-selling to customers.

Successful organizations have a clear picture of their overall objectives and goals for their business. In the telecom industry, this generally requires a balance of maximizing profits, maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction, retaining high-performing staff, recruiting new talent, and driving new business.