Most businesses rely on contact centres to interact with their customers. But the costs of maintaining a contact centre can be high. It is due to the need to install telephone lines and hire customer service representatives (CSRs) to handle customer inquiries.
As the world economy continues its move towards globalisation, businesses seek new ways to increase profits and reduce costs. The best way to reduce the operational cost of an organisation is to focus on optimising the cost of contact centres.
Since the cost of contact centres increases with every call, even a small change can help you save a significant amount of money. However, it doesn’t mean you can compromise on customer support.
How To Cut Down Contact Centre Costs?
Upgrade Software: As your business grows, your contact centre is likely to experience an influx of customer calls. This can put a strain on your current system and lead to long wait times and frustrated customers.
Software upgrades usually offer organisations new features and functionality that can help to cut down on contact centre costs. For example, a new contact centre software upgrade might include an interactive voice response (IVR) system that can automatically route and respond to customer queries. This can help to free up staff time as they will no longer need to route calls manually.
In addition to IVR, you may also get features like automatic call recording, real-time call monitoring, and detailed reporting by upgrading your contact centre software. This will help organisations cut costs and improve their efficiency.
Provide Enhanced Self-Service Options: Self-service options make it easier for customers to get the information they need. This can be done through a variety of means, such as an IVR system, an online knowledge base or even a chatbot.
Self-service options reduce the amount of time agents spend on the phone, as well as the number of calls that need to be handled. It will save them time that they can further use to handle more complex enquiries. As a result, organisations will be able to reduce operational costs without compromising on customer support quality.
Provide Ongoing Agent Training: As the world progresses, technology gets more sophisticated, and customers’ expectations grow higher. In order to keep up with the competition and deliver excellent customer service, businesses need to continuously train and upskill their customer service agents.
A well-trained contact centre agent is able to provide a better service to customers, which can help to reduce the number of calls and queries received by the contact centre. In addition, a trained agent is more likely to be able to resolve queries the first time around, again reducing the number of calls received by the contact centre.
Moreover, providing ongoing agent training will also help to reduce staff turnover within the contact centre, as agents are more likely to be satisfied in their roles and feel supported by their employer. This, in turn, leads to reduced recruitment and training costs for the contact centre.
Adopt Cloud Communication Platform: A cloud telephone system is a VoIP telephone system that is hosted by a service provider, such as RingCentral. The RingCentral cloud communication platform works by consolidating multiple phone lines into a single cloud-based system, which can then be used by employees at multiple locations. This can help reduce the need for multiple phone lines and associated costs, such as long-distance charges.
Additionally, the RingCentral cloud communication services can help reduce the need for on-site hardware, such as PBX systems, and can provide employees with access to features that they would not otherwise have, such as call forwarding and voicemail.
The Bottom Line
Reducing the operational cost of your contact centre doesn’t have to be difficult. Following even a few of the aforementioned tips can help to reduce the overall cost of running a contact centre and free up the budget to be invested elsewhere in the business. However, before you go ahead, make sure you know about RingCentral’s pricing in Australia.
