Blending the right set of vendor capabilities to deliver compelling customer contact solutions customers will want to buy. Staying one step ahead of the competition in delivering advanced call centre technologies is not as hard at it sounds.
The call centre is going through an exciting and speedy transformation, quite unprecedented in its long history. Emerging customer contact technologies and ever changing consumer landscapes and dynamics present new contact challenges and exciting opportunities for those companies specialising in selling and supporting the technology on which these call centres operate.
Delivering the whole package
Addressing these challenges and delivering advanced call centre technologies is, in reality, no different to how it’s always been. If you’ve been delivering call centre solutions for the last decade, then searching for that competitive differentiation that sets you apart from the myriad of other competing offerings is nothing new. The smarter organisations will have recognised this as the need to deliver Geoffrey Moore’s Whole Product (1).
The complete set of products and services that makes a proposition compelling enough for your customers to buy from you – and not your competition. The real difficulty – or genius – comes in understanding which products ‘augment’ the core offering to create a Whole Product more compelling than your competitor’s.
Multi-Channel is where it is at
If selling call centre technology is your core business today then taking a look at the principle trends affecting call centres in 2014 is as good a place to start as anywhere. Adopting and integrating cloud technologies, increasingly mobile consumers, customer feedback, intelligent callback and, of course, social media are all among them.
So if your principle technology partners is, for argument’s sake Avaya®, what technologies do you blend into that core capability that will maintain your differentiation – your next Whole Product. Chances are you’ll look at these principles driving call centre direction and recognise that a common theme across most if not all is that of multi-channel; the shift to customer contact in a manner and at a time that drives the right outcome for the business – be that a sale, a payment or a confirmed delivery – and also delights the customer.
Dare to be different
Your differentiation, the way you augment your core Avaya-based proposition, will depend upon how you blend into that proposition the multi-channel capabilities that the call centre of 2013 demands. Your Whole Product will be a best-of-breed capability that takes a blend of vendor capabilities and delivers a proposition so compelling that customers buy from you and not your competitor. No single vendor can genuinely claim to be both best-of-breed and end-to-end across the full scope of requirements and the differentiation for call centre tech providers will be in picking the right set of additional partners to provide the best-of-breed solution end-to-end. That’s the real challenge!
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