In June and July of 2011, 440 call center professionals from around the world shared with ICMI how – and if – they handle inbound and outbound as well as sales and service contacts in their centers. Our goal was to understand the industry’s practices around these activities: how centers account for resources and how their centers perform under current practices.
Key findings from the research include:
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Centers that are blending inbound and outbound calling today are in the clear minority — partly because they may not have had access to sophisticated tools that make blending feasible.
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Increasing customer satisfaction is a more motivating driver for blending than additional revenue alone.
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Most blended centers, and centers that would consider blending, are seeing or expecting a positive impact on both customer satisfaction and additional revenue generation.
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Inbound call centers that don’t account for (or aren’t even tracking) outbound calls may be experiencing drops in service level as a result.
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Centers have growing confidence that service agents could transition to a selling environment and vice-versa.
21 pages, PDF download (requires Adobe Acrobat or Reader)
TAGS:
Operations Management, Sales in the Call Center, Inbound Sales, Outbound sales, Blending sales and service, People Development, Strategic Value
