The contact center is easily the most expensive division of a company and therefore any investment – including contact center software – is evaluated with heightened scrutiny. Upper management may be putting the pressure on your decision making skills to ensure you only purchase the bare minimum of what you need to drive an effective contact center environment.

Without full knowledge of your needs and the benefits you can realize with the right contact center software, however, executives may be blocking your ability to purchase what you need for an efficient environment. Here you will find key benefits explained that can help in your campaign for a bigger contact center software budget.

In a perfect world, every contact center agent will have all information on any given caller right at his or her fingertips. A quick click of the mouse will pull up all interactions between the company and the caller, all services or products the customer has purchased and a full profile on the customer’s likes and dislikes.

Why is easy access to such information important? The average contact center live interaction can cost up to $5 per minute to complete. The longer it takes the agent to find information for the customer, the more money it costs the company to complete a call that is not sales related – meaning it does not directly drive revenue. If the call has taken too long in the customer’s mind, satisfaction is decreased, which increases the likelihood of churn.

Likewise, if a contact center software solution has been implemented that only calls up some of the customer’s information or does not easily integrate into the company’s database or other contact center technology, a call can take even longer to complete and the customer’s issue may or may not have been resolved. In such a situation, not only did the contact center invest in a solution that complicated the call, they also may have effectively increased churn as a result.

To avoid this problem from the onset, it is important to identify exactly what your center needs in a contact center software solution. And, just because you are operating a contact center does not mean you have the same needs as the contact center within the same industrial park. Take a snapshot of your organization and internal processes from the time the call comes in to the point of resolution. The contact center software solution that can streamline this process, reduce the customer’s time on the phone and increase first contact resolution is a right fit.

Introducing change within the contact center is never easy – even if your agents feel the pinch points of your current operation. There is always resistance to change and if you do not make the right selection in your contact center management software the first time, it will be that much more difficult to make the change the next time.

Budgets are tight and you cannot afford downtime within the contact center simply because you were too hasty in making your selection on your next contact center software solution. When you make the right choice the first time, you can measure the benefits immediately.