The Real Costs of Doing Nothing

Sarah Murphy at 8×8 explains the real cost of doing nothing.

“Do more with less” is the new corporate mantra.

In light of sustained competitive pressures and demanding customer and employee expectations, CIOs and CFOs are increasingly scrutinizing their organization’s infrastructure investments.

And while the focus is on “doing more with less” across the board, customer communications and employee engagement needs have never been higher or more challenging.

Future-ready organizations understand that the most significant business asset is their customer base, and superior customer experience is what will drive value in the long run.

Companies that get CX right consistently outperform their peers on several critical dimensions, including customer loyalty and revenue.

“For the third straight year, customer satisfaction has been ranked the top business priority—more important than product/service quality, revenue generation, information security, employee retention, and investor satisfaction.” – Metrigy Customer Experience Transformation Study

But here’s the thing—solving a customer’s problem often requires help from outside a contact centre. It can require an intelligent backend system and insight from different areas of the company, and nothing is more frustrating to customers than being bounced around and having to repeat information.

Contact centre agents can no longer be on an island—they need to be integrated with the rest of the company.

Consider how sticking with outdated, siloed, or disparate solutions can hold you back from delivering five-star CX.

Implications of a “Patchwork Quilt” Approach

Perhaps your current system has served you well. And if it’s already paid for, companies have a certain incentive to stick with it.

You might even “bolt-on” new services to keep the system on “life-support.” But in addition to really biting deep into already stretched IT budgets, this status-quo scenario could put your business at risk.

Connecting individual vendor platforms and maintaining separate communication tools requires considerable effort from overburdened IT staff struggling to make an older system work in a digital-first, customer-first world.

Key questions to ask:

• Does the current stack serve my current and future business needs from a customer experience and an employee engagement perspective?
• Is it setting the business up for success and helping create a competitive advantage?
• Does the current system drive customer loyalty and revenue?
• Are users delighted? Do they have the tools to do their best work?
• What financial impact do the questions listed above have?

The REAL Cost of Doing Nothing

While on-premises communications systems offer full control over the hardware and configurations, they require specialists to provide system maintenance, making it costlier than cloud communications.

Integrating on-premises platforms with popular business apps and CRMs incur substantial manual activity costs. Human error in managing legacy systems can adversely impact staff productivity and risk reputational damage as customer complaints increase.

Trying to wrestle new functionality from on-premises communication tools is expensive and lacks the agility and hassle-free advantages of cloud alternatives.

Furthermore, connecting individual vendor platforms and maintaining separate communication tools requires considerable efforts from overburdened IT staff struggling to make an older system work in the digital world.

Achieve Faster Time to Value and Lower TCO

Forward-thinking companies using cloud communications are realizing not only reductions in costs and operational expenses but are also spending less time setting up IT hardware, adding employees, and training.

However, it’s not just about the cost. Regular system and security updates guarantee the latest functionality, enabling teams to work together whether in the office, in the contact centre, or the field from any device or location.

The cost of doing nothing in the current business environment is unaffordable and a step backwards.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of 8x8 – View the Original Article

For more information about 8x8 - visit the 8x8 Website

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.