Achieve customer satisfaction with a contact management center

Customer Support and the entire Relationship Management has become the top priority for every customer focused financial services organisation. Companies have identified that increased competition in the market can cause serious impact on the sustenance, profitability and growth.
By providing excellent customer services and managing the relationship in a proactive and timely manner, a business can make the existing customer stay with the company, resulting in continued revenues and chances for repeat sale. A properly equipped contact center can help a business in delivering excellent customer care and a robust way of managing customers.
A CONTACT MANAGEMENT CENTER In order to manage customer interactions in an efficient and effective way, companies dedicate facilities with teams and resources. This model of handling customer contacts and relationships through a convenient "one-window" facility for all customer interactions and services is known as Contact Management Center. It is a specialised Contact Center set-up with integrated CRM applications and functionality.
Over the years, there has been a substantial increase in the number of customer contact centers. Organisations are actively considering the set-up of contact centers in order to provide personalised services through a one window facility to their customer base. Companies that already have working contact centers are considering expanding in size and functionality to the growing customer needs.
HOW DOES IT WORK? A Customer Contact Management Center is a facility where the existing and potential customers contact whenever they require information about products, to find out specific account status, to lodge complaints and to provide you valuable feedback. A contact center is connected with telecommunication channels and information networks. A group of trained customer service representatives or agents are responsible for answering contacts, register complaints. The Contact center supervisors provide assistance to the agents in customer interaction, evaluate and improve quality and performance. The management reviews the contact center trends and service levels, plan strategies to introduce new and improved services.
THE BUSINESS NEEDS A Contact Management center can serve a business in many areas. A company can have one or more centers performing various inbound and outbound functions. Contact centers are primarily used for the various purposes such as Customer Services to provide support, register complaints, maintain relationship, to conduct product sales by providing answers, booking new orders, set appointments and for marketing campaigns to support promotional campaigns, products, outbound reach. Increasingly, the Contact Management center is also being used for Alert service to provide announcements, reminders, alerts and notifications to the customers.
EXPECTED BENEFITS A business can expect many immediate and long term benefits from a Contact Management Center. These include Improved customer satisfaction by enabling faster access and response, quality services, knowledgeable interaction, Increase in staff productivity with the right tools to do the job, integrated information on desktop, Documentation of all activities and events by recording all activities, interactions, events and situations and Reduction in cost using cost-effective technology, automation, unified interface, simplified management.
SETTING UP YOUR OWN CENTER One of the most critical factors in the success of a contact management center is the planning aspect. If the contact management center is established with proper planning and vision, then it is easy to achieve results in operations, growth and customer satisfaction. A sound strategy requires proper planning and execution of the areas including Physical infrastructure for premises, facilities, work and break areas, power supply, Communication lines such as telephone, fax and other channels and, most importantly the Human resources with representatives, back office users, supervisors and managers.
THE TECHNOLOGY ASPECT In order to manage the team productivity, service quality with efficiency, control and documentation, a Contact management center is usually equipped with proper technology, systems, applications, connectivity and integration. A typical contact management center solution consists of Hardware items like Servers, gateways, workstations and headsets, Software solution with business applications for banking services, complaint registration and lead routing, communication handling, user and resource management, workforce monitoring and reporting.
These systems and software applications are integrated with your database, applications and communication networks. Depending on the scope of the contact management center, additional items like multimedia channel gateways for non-voice channel handling, call recording and self-service IVR might also be considered.
CHOOSING A SOLUTION The technology and solution that you select for your contact management center has the greatest impact on the capabilities it can offer and the results it can deliver. The contact management center requires many features such as financial services, complaint registration, lead capture applications, communication handling and routing, self-service automation, voice mail, call recording, CTI, channel connectivity and data integration.
A complete solution from a single provider provides end-to-end fully integrated functionality. It reduces the deployment time and complexity involved due to the management of multiple vendors, individual subsystems, ordering and delivery timelines, technology roadmaps. Such solution cost less to own and maintain in the long run.
Third International E-Banking & Mobile Commerce Conference & Exhibition in Bangladesh "June 15, 2011", Pan Pacific Hotel, Dhaka, Bangladesh