Digital is driving dramatic changes to the contact center outsourcing (CCO) industry. Indeed, our recently completed buyer study – conducted over three years via surveys with more than 140 organizations and a large number of executive interviews – made it abundantly clear that outsourcing drivers are shifting away from the traditional (such as cost savings) to a digital orientation for capabilities such as analytics, access to better technology, and multi-channel solutions. Buyers now expect a lot more from their CCO engagements to delight their digitally-savvy customers.
While the importance of digital drivers has risen, service provider performance has remained below par on the new-age KPIs such as innovation, better insights, and proactiveness. As enterprises are now looking to associate with providers that are customer-centric, innovative, flexible, and able to serve as long-term strategic partners in their growth, providers must differentiate themselves by focusing their attention on improving their performance in these areas.
So, what do providers need to do to cater to these changes in buyer expectations and, in turn, survive in the fast-evolving contact center outsourcing industry? Here are our three key action steps:
- Invest in new-age digital offerings – First, they should invest in new-age technologies and the required processes, roadmaps, and consulting capabilities to support buyers along their adoption paths of these tools. These investments will go a long way in ensuring that they are well placed to meet the expectations of prospective clients.
- Be proactive in solutioning – Buyers have highlighted proactiveness as an area of improvement for providers, irrespective of their size. Strong focuses on prescribing and implementing innovative solutions that help buyers achieve their overall business goals can create differentiation and improve buyer satisfaction levels.
- Adopt a consultative approach – With innovation and better insights among the top capabilities buyers are seeking from their providers, a consultative engagement approach is critical. As discussed in our previous CCO blog, adopting this type of partnership will assist in providing a seamless customer experience across multiple touchpoints.
To learn more about the evolving contact center buyer expectations and the corresponding provider performance, please read our recently released CCO Market Report 2017: “How Good are CCO Providers in Providing Digital Customer Experience.”
