Is Your Contact Center Capable?

Most of today’s retailers have some sort of contact center department which supports customer service and sales. This is not surprising with the shift of customers shopping online. Retailers now need to ensure their contact centers are capable to compete within this multichannel world.

Agents must be able to take service and sales via phone, email, online chat panels and even social media. As greater emphasis is placed on the contact center, it becomes ever more the critical factor to delivering the company’s reputation, achieving projected sales and meeting customer satisfaction. This is where a simple simulation model can provide key insight into the design and operational effectiveness of your company’s contact center.

Why simulate your contact center?

As customer demand increases and shifts towards multichannel capabilities your company might be faced with an outdated contact center structure.

The dilemma remains the same: calls come in and must get handled within an appropriate amount of time. The difference is that there might be greater volume and that this volume might come from various contact channels. This is why many companies are revamping their analogue contact center departments and internal processes with digital routers.

Despite these changes most of the performance metrics, such as inbound volume, service level, abandonment, agent occupancy, and average answer speed amongst others, remain the same. With this change in customer shopping habits, contact center managers should be asking key questions:

1. Is our contact center capable of multichannel orders?
2. What is our priority when it comes to multichannel orders?
3. Do we need more agents with additional contact channels?
4. What is our current contact channel volume?
5. What is the trend via contact/order methods?