What are the best practices for profitability analysis in customer service call centers?

1 Define your profitability objectives

Before you start analyzing your data, you need to define your profitability objectives and metrics. What are you trying to achieve with your customer service call center? How do you measure success? Some common objectives are increasing customer retention, satisfaction, loyalty, and lifetime value, as well as reducing churn, complaints, and service costs. Some common metrics are revenue per customer, cost per call, margin per call, return on investment, and net promoter score.

2 Collect and classify your data

To perform profitability analysis, you need to collect and classify your data according to the relevant dimensions and categories. For example, you may want to segment your customers by industry, size, location, behavior, or value. You may also want to categorize your calls by type, duration, complexity, outcome, or channel. You need to ensure that your data is accurate, consistent, and complete, and that you have the appropriate tools and systems to store and process it.

4 Analyze your profitability results

Once you have allocated your costs and revenues, you can analyze your profitability results and compare them with your objectives and benchmarks. You can use various methods and techniques to perform profitability analysis, such as contribution margin analysis, break-even analysis, variance analysis, or profitability ratios. You can also use graphical and visual tools, such as charts, tables, dashboards, or scorecards, to present and communicate your findings.

5 Identify your profitability drivers and levers

Based on your profitability analysis, you can identify your profitability drivers and levers, which are the factors that influence your profitability positively or negatively. For example, some profitability drivers may be customer loyalty, service quality, operational efficiency, or product differentiation. Some profitability levers may be pricing, marketing, cross-selling, or cost reduction. You need to understand how these drivers and levers affect your profitability and how you can optimize them.

6 Implement your profitability improvement actions

The final step is to implement your profitability improvement actions, which are the specific actions that you take to enhance your profitability based on your analysis. You need to prioritize your actions according to their impact, feasibility, and alignment with your objectives and strategy. You also need to monitor and evaluate your actions and their outcomes, and adjust them as needed. You need to involve and engage your stakeholders, such as employees, customers, and partners, in your profitability improvement process.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?