How to turn your customer care operations from cost to revenue center?

Seeing customer care operations merely as a cost-inducing business activity could make companies miss the powerful profitable opportunities a well-optimized customer experience operation creates. You can harness these opportunities by transforming your operations from a cost to a revenue center with the right resource allocation, employee training, technology and processes.?

Before I outline the steps you should take to develop a customer experience operations strategy that boosts your net revenue, let's make sure we are on the same page when it comes to measuring the success. I identify two key performance indicators that can help assess the effectiveness of your approach: Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Net Economic Benefit (NEB). The former indicates the number of referrals, and the latter is a sum of cost savings, increased sales and retention. I took a more in-depth look at NEB in one of my previous articles .

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Maximizing NPS and NEB depends on human, business and technological factors. Both metrics reflect your customer's experiences, and improving them can positively influence your revenue.

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Delight, engage, nurture

When laying out your strategy, start by prioritizing customers' contacts at every point of the journey, from the introduction to closing the deal and post-sales support. Making every contact count is the first step in delighting your clients and increasing your NPS. However, you must go further to ensure each contact turns into a long-term, profitable relationship. Our goal should be to achieve more than just customer satisfaction in their interactions; we should aim for customers who are so satisfied that they are eager to buy more of your products and services.

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Ignite growth through resource allocation

Think about the most impactful areas of your business, and allocate your resources where they are most likely to bring profit. To maximize their efficiency, develop a workforce management system based on the top contact drivers and seasonality. Adequate distribution of your resources means your sales team will have more opportunities to meet and anticipate customers' needs where and when they have them and, as a result, improve pipeline and sales performance.

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Strengthen customer relationships with cross-sales and up-sell

To increase your net revenue, look at your customer journey to find cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. To seize these profit-generating moments, give your employees advanced tools and business models to carry sales successfully. With the right strategy, training and tools, your customer experience operations teams can become basic and mid-market sellers.

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Empower your workforce with technology

Automated analytics tools can provide relevant intelligence, enabling your sales team to gain a deeper understanding of what to pitch and when based on propensity analysis of customer data. That way, the sales team can address problems and close a deal without scheduling a subsequent call.

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What are the actual benefits?

A telling testimony of the ideas contained in this article comes from a leading consumer electronic brand that wanted to maximize its annual sales while maintaining the quality of support and customer loyalty. They sought to optimize the 'out of warranty moment' in a way that thrilled their customers. The solutions implemented involved designing a sales strategy, training teams on up-sell opportunities and introducing a loyalty sales program whereby clients were offered a new version of the 'out of warranty' product with a discount. The outcomes were striking. The company achieved €8.5 million in revenue in just one year through its contact center's loyalty sales in the Benelux region, and in three years, the growth was fourfold.

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Grow your revenue with the right partner

Partnering with a third party for sales or customer care operations should be an ROI-driven decision, not a cost-driven one. When choosing your partner, make sure they can upskill agents with core sales skills required to be successful and that they are supported by automation technology providing correct intelligence. Finally, ensure you align on the accurate reporting, including key service metrics and additional sales KPIs, such as revenue per agent or average sales per call.?

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The right strategic approach can give your business a competitive edge, helping you sell more and grow the market share. I'd greatly appreciate your thoughts and comments on the most effective strategies you implemented to turn your customer care operations into a revenue-generating center.