Digital transformation has touched nearly every industry over the past two years, as organizations looked for new ways to maintain their revenue streams in the face of a global pandemic. Now more than ever, revenue diversification is essential as businesses compete for the same customers. But where to start?
If it makes sense, some organizations might look at their contact centers as a potential revenue stream. “Monetizing customer service is the simplest way to transform your contact center from a cost center to a revenue generator,” says Prashanth “PVK” Krishnaswami, head of market strategy for Zoho.
We spoke with PVK about the potential benefits of a revenue-generating customer service model, the opportunities available in such a model and the things leaders need to consider when deciding if this strategy is right for their business.
CX: A Place For Solutions and Opportunities
When exploring how to turn your contact center into a revenue generator, first ask yourself: why do people come to customer service in the first place? Often, people reaching out to your contact centers are doing so because they have an issue and don’t know how to solve it. Thus, contact centers are the natural place to recommend solutions — which can be another product offering where appropriate.
Customers also want their problems solved quickly, which offers another opportunity to generate revenue. “There are plenty of customers who rely on your offering, and they may be willing to pay a premium for things like priority service or assistance to a specific channel, like phone or video,” says PVK. Research supports this: one in four customers would be willing to pay a premium if they could be assured of priority customer service.
Use Technology to Your Advantage
Technology solutions can be powerful tools when moving to a revenue-generating customer service model. Tech makes it easier to give context about the customer to your agents. The data, knowledge and intelligence generated during the customer lifecycle can then be added to CX workflows and agent interactions to anticipate customer needs and deliver on their expectations. “Technology helps bring together internal knowledge and makes it available to all employees,” says PVK. “Tech helps facilitate upselling by creating cross functional journeys. By giving employees the knowledge they need, tech breaks silos by allowing seamless transfer between departments. At the same time, by making customer intelligence available to your CX agents, they can sell to customers without needing to transfer the customer to a different department.”
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Use CX Revenue to Drive Product Insights
Transforming your contact center into a revenue-generating model goes beyond upselling. The contact center is often an overlooked area when it comes to generating insights for new products or services. “Your customer service communication is full of untapped potential,” says PVK. “It's a department you might not have considered as a way to learn about product strengths and weaknesses. When businesses use customer service to start making sense of how customers feel about their products, they get better ideas about how best to monetize solutions — as well as the best approach to building new products.”
Conclusion
Transforming the CX function into a revenue-generating service model isn’t for every company — there are plenty of factors to consider when deciding if such a model is right for your business. But for those companies where it makes sense, empowering your CX agents with customer insights allows them to sell to the customer with confidence, potentially transforming your contact center from a cost center to a revenue generator.
“For businesses looking into this, their most prominent challenge is the quality of service itself,” says PVK. “The service itself must be superlative to convince customers that it’s worth their investment.”
See how Zoho can help turn your contact center into a revenue generator at zoho.com.
