Dedicated to managing this relationship, customer relations centers play a strategic role. But how do you improve the customer experience while optimizing costs? Here are the answers.
What is a customer relations center?
Before exploring the question of improving the customer experience and optimizing costs, a definition is in order.
Customer relationship center: definition
A customer relations center is a structure dedicated to the remote customer relationship management. This is a key contact point The customer relations center establishes a link between a company and its customers or prospects. Contacts can be :
- IncomingCRC responds to customer calls;
- OutgoingCRC calls customers or prospects.
The role of the customer relations center is to contribute both to customer satisfaction and to the development of the company's sales. To achieve this, the center's missions are diverse: prospecting, acquisition, assistance, customer support, satisfaction, retention...
The CRC is a a strategic lever for value creation and represents a fundamental pillar of communication and customer relations.
What are the differences between a customer relations center and a call center?
Often confused, customer relations and call centers are in fact two different systems serving a common goal: customer satisfaction. To improve customer satisfaction, they use different means:
- Visit call centeror call center, manages customer relations through a telephone communication
- Visit customer relationship centeror contact center, manages customer relationship through different communication channels: telephone, email, instant messaging, social networks... The customer relations center therefore offers a comprehensive multi-channel approach.
Customer relationship center: challenges
Against a backdrop of increasing competitiveness between companies, CRC is facing a number of challenges. Among them, two are particularly important:
- Improving the customer experience
This may seem obvious, but it's actually more complex than it sounds. CRC must continually adapt to new consumer practices and expectations, to offer them increasingly high-quality service, and to prevent them from turning to competitors.
- Optimizing customer relations costs
Here again, the stakes are relatively obvious. Nevertheless, the issue remains crucial: the customer relations center must remain profitable despite often high operating costs.
Customer relations center: how to improve the customer experience?
The importance of improving customer relations
Over the past few years, companies have become much more mature in their approach to thecustomer experience. In particular, the democratization of the Internet and the rise of e-commerce have made them more aware of the importance of service quality. At the same time, consumers have become increasingly attentive and demanding: they now want a privileged relationship with the company. When you know the close link between customer satisfaction and company salesIt seems obvious that improving customer relations is a major challenge.
So it's only natural that customer service has become a major differentiator. Why is that? Because if you don't solve your customer's problem, you can be sure that they'll tell everyone around them. As the saying goes a very satisfied customer will tell 1 person about you, a satisfied customer will tell no one about you, and a disappointed customer will tell 10 people about you. ".
Your customers can therefore be both prescribers and detractors: it all depends on the experience you offer them. What's more, 72% of consumers turn to competitors after just one bad experience with a brand. In this context, customer relations centers have the onerous task of successfully improving customer relations by providing an appropriate response to every query.
Contact center: improving customer relations through multi-channel management
In 2020, the average customer used 4 communication channels when dealing with customer service, representing 25% more than in 2019. This growth testifies to the change in usage. There are more and more points of contact between the company and its customers every year.
Customer relations centers must therefore adapt to these new practices, by investing in new technologies. various communication channels email, telephone, chat, post... This multi-channel management makes it possible to offer customer relationship smooth and seamless, adapted to consumers' new communication habits.
Customer relationship center: improving customer relations by optimizing process management
To satisfy your customers, theprocess management optimization is no longer an option. It's a necessity to make a difference in the eyes of consumers. In particular, customer relations centers need to :
- Optimizing peak activity management
A waiting customer is an unhappy customer. It doesn't matter to him if the customer relations center suddenly has to handle twice as many requests as usual. Whatever the context and seasonality of its business sector, the CRC must guarantee continuity and quality of service. It is therefore necessary to optimize the management of peaks in activity to avoid emergency management, which results in waiting times for the customer.
- Optimizing human resources management
Consumers expect to be listened to, advised and accompanied. The customer relations center must ensure that it has the right number of advisors, at the right time, to anticipate needs and give each customer the time they need.
Customer relations center: how to optimize costs?
Customer relations center: optimize costs and improve customer experience by reducing response time
This first step enables the customer relations center to take a 2-in-1 action: reducing response time improves the customer experience while optimizing costs. Visit rapid processing of incoming requests contributes to customer satisfaction... and loyalty! This loyalty has a double benefit for CRC:
- It optimizes customer acquisition costs: retaining an existing customer costs 7 to 8 times less than acquiring a new one.
- It reduces the number of complaints: a loyal, satisfied customer calls on customer service less often, saving CRC considerable resources.
Reducing response times to customer requests is therefore a particularly effective way of optimizing CRC costs. But how do you go about it?
First and foremost, the digitalization of customer service is an interesting opportunity, since it allows you to centralize information. You provide your advisors with all the tools and information they need to process requests: customer or prospect identification, purchase history, history of past exchanges between the customer and the CRC...
The more information the advisor has at hand, the more likely he or she is to solve the customer's problem on first contact. In this respect, one of the key indicators of customer relations is the First Contact Resolution rate, or FCR. It needs to be as high as possible to avoid "ping-pong" exchanges, which waste a lot of time - and money - and lead to high levels of customer dissatisfaction. If they get a satisfactory response from the first contact with the customer relations center, customers don't need to contact the company again, which has positive effects both financially and organizationally. Advisors don't have a second request to deal with, allowing them to devote their time to other customers, or to participate in the sales strategy that generates profits.
Customer relationship center: optimizing costs through the right management channels
While the telephone has long been the preferred channel for customer relations, the contact center's scope of action is no longer limited to this single means of communication. What's more, the emergence of new channels represents a real opportunity to optimize costs. The telephone is the most expensive communication channel. It is therefore preferable to use it only for complex customer requests or strategic prospect canvassing. Social networks, instant messaging, chatbots, emails... customer relations centers have every interest in diversify their communication channels. In addition to meeting customers' needs and habits, these channels are less expensive than the telephone. The customer relations center thus optimizes its costs while improving the customer experience!
Customer relations center: outsourcing, an efficient and cost-effective solution
Finally, outsourcing represents an effective lever for improving the customer experience while optimizing costs. This involves outsourcing all or part of the business to an external service provider. This strategy offers a number of advantages:
- Optimization of internal costs for training, recruitment, absenteeism, etc.
- Maintain a geographic culture and preserve the economic base by choosing in-shore outsourcing.
- Significant cost reductions and more flexible opening hours (24/7) for offshore outsourcing
- Teleconsultants' industry expertise
- Reactivity in setting up operations thanks to an efficient and agile professional contact person
- Flexibility in response to specific needs thanks to an adaptable contractual relationship
- More time devoted to the organization's core business
Would you like to optimize your costs and improve the customer experience by outsourcing your customer relations activities? Business process outsourcing company, Vivetic Group helps you transform your customer relations center to optimize your operations and increase your profits..
Vivetic Group is :
- Expertise in specific business sectors
- Quick to react and set up
- Greater flexibility in human resources management
- A certified service provider
- A relationship of trust
- 100% French customer relations through local outsourcing at our Toulouse and Marseille sites
- Significant cost optimization and 24/7 availability thanks to our offshore site
Discover all our solutions to help you implement an effective customer experience optimization strategy.
