Page 2 - Coredial Cloud Report Fall 2019

2 CoreDial Special September 2019
“The Business Solution Mindset”
Teaching SMBs Why They Need Contact Center Solutions
SMITH
David Smith, Founder, InFlow Analysis
For any business to enhance customer experience and engagement, it’s critical to invest in an integrated contact center solution that’s directly tied to specific business processes such as sales, marketing, support, and
even accounting and human resources. These processes oversee interactions with internal and external constituents, and people-focused businesses need a serviceable medium to connect to their most valuable assets — customers. For SMBs (companies with 25 to 500+ employees), a contact center solution is vital for the growth of the business. A contact center solution democratizes the ability to improve the customer experience, regardless of the size of the organization.
Selling contact center solutions to SMBs requires transitioning from a transactional to a more advisory relationship. Channel partners have to develop more consultative relationships to realize true success. Positioning contact center technology as a means to improving critical business processes like customer experience, recruiting, or accounting, and approaching the conversation with a “business solution mindset” is critical to successfully selling these services. SMBs need complete, straightforward solutions that can be fully integrated into their existing environments with little, if any, disruption. They want ease-of-implementation, ease-of-use, and simplicity when adding new capabilities or features as business needs warrant.
I typically advise organizations to approach technology decisions from the standpoint of what specific business problem or outcome they want to address. The solution has to serve a strategic purpose, and the resulting answer may require multiple products. Approaching the due diligence and decision-making process with a solution mindset however guides not only what tools and/or services are needed, but also how those technologies should be integrated to provide the desired business impact or anticipated resolution.
SMBs Already Use Contact Center Processes; They Just Don’t Know It
In my experience, many SMBs who aren’t currently using a contact center solution have actually created and implemented contact center-related processes without even realizing it. These processes are often manual and ad hoc, but they deal with various aspects of organized communication workflows aligned with customer interaction. And while these processes are inherently
contact center-esque, without a formal contact center solution through which to execute, they’re typically inefficient and present layers of hidden costs. They may include a small distributed staff of agents, like in an insurance agency, whose workflows are based upon structured communication processes with customers, colleagues, outside vendors and other constituencies. Such a communication structure profile is prime for improvement and optimization with contact center technology. If the right contact center solution is chosen, it can be implemented quickly and with minimum cost, without friction or business workflow interruption, and just as importantly, a channel partner can easily deploy such a solution at countless businesses with a similar profile.
SMBs represent the majority of businesses in North America and globally— well over 99 percent, in actuality. It is not a niche space or a vertical market.
It IS the market. In fact, the segment incorporates many verticals. The typical SMB department or workgroup has needs similar to a 1,000-person contact center found in larger enterprises. But in working with SMB decision-makers, it goes without saying that they don’t want a solution specifically labeled “SMB.” They want solutions to address their business’ unique needs and challenges, but want to know the products they’re buying have the capabilities even the largest companies would be confident using.
Technology and services providers have to recast how they look at, market, and sell solutions into these workgroups and “non-traditional” contact center environments It’s a relationship- and partnership-based approach where
the partner plays the role of trusted advisor, and has the advantageous opportunity to offer something tangible that will instantly impact business performance. This can help transform any organization into a more productive, customer-centric, and efficient entity. Contact center technology
is not the sole domain of the enterprise. Rather, it is an essential offering that can immediately improve essential business processes, and serve as a catalyst for helping partners expand revenue streams and create added stickiness with customers.