The decision-making and forward-looking financial considerations surrounding customer experience is highly complex in today’s business climate. The hard cost of continuing to operate by old rules, from in-house contact centers and traditional BPO methods, along with a labor shortage, yield a tough outlook for organizations in every sector.
Compounded customer support stressors
The nation’s GDP was slowing back in 2020. As Covid-19 wreaked havoc around the world, billions of lost revenues became another terrible outcome. Roughly 90% of global contact center agents were forced to work virtually, which created added stress for a vital segment of the workforce that was already stretched.
Being a traditional contact center worker has ranked as one of the top ten most stressful jobs in the global economy. The work grind in brick-and-mortar contact centers is widely known to contribute to employee stress, anxiety, and burnout that hinders business operations more than ever with unplanned absences, staff turnover and labor shortages.
In recent years, customers have adapted to using digital channels for customer care—either by choice or necessity. As a result, they have inundated businesses with the highest rates of contact arrival at every hour, each day. The forecast doesn’t show this slowing anytime soon.
Trying to keep pace with the current customer demand is taxing on the leaders examining and forecasting costs. Organizations are impacted by the labor shortage, supply chain issues, as well as catching up to customers’ preference to engage in digital channels. None of these issues is expected to be resolved in the near-term.
Gig-based CX changes your financial outlook
Organizations must rewrite the rules of traditional customer care management, gaining a new outlook and reducing costs. Business leaders can no longer continue tolerating customer service failures and the associated financial losses, as well as the risk of declining [or flat] customer satisfaction ratings.
The Ins and outs of customer support cost
Pricing for customer service support is highly variable without any off-the-shelf option. Instead, solutions are custom-tailored to the needs of each business and brand. Traditional models of CX outsourcing use the following for cost structures:
Longer service contracts, based on months, years, or campaign timeframes.
Good-to-know:
The best services come from providers who take time to understand your needs.
Analyzing your contact traffic, starting by gauging the volume of calls per month.
Good-to-know:
High contact volume is best managed through a custom contract that delivers all the add-on services you need.
Understanding the
fees, such as
per-call or per-minute, to optimize savings.
Good-to-know:
Highly specialized legal and medical services typically carry higher rates.
Adopting and developing new rules for support agility, managing demand as it moves up and down, and flexibly deploying resources can be attached through gig work and technology platforms which improve the customer experience.
There’s great value in the availability of Gig-CX at this historic time. A Gig-CX solution drives down cost and generates greater organizational agility.
Transformative cost savings
Arise’s network of 70,000+ gig-based Service Partners and their agents are helping to reinvent workforce planning for Brands looking to improve the cost forecast.
In addition to achieving a 32% reduction in overall cost with Arise Virtual Solutions, Brands enjoy these cost benefits:
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Up to 200% unparalleled intraday flex
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Increase revenue up to 6% through quality improvements
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Improve utilization up to 30%
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Enable the potential for reducing FTEs by up to 14%
Customer care quality goes up, cost per call drops down
A telehealthcare provider demonstrates the effectiveness of Gig-CX as a smart investment to drive down costs and elevate quality.
The provider, already renowned as a top performer, wanted to continue to address patient satisfaction and reach its goal of hitting an annual patient satisfaction score of greater than 80 percent. Through a partnership with Arise, the high-quality customer service delivered by knowledgeable and thoughtful agents helped the organization to achieve true patient satisfaction.
You can only imagine what Service Partners on the Arise® Platform were able to help this healthcare provider achieve:
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Managed 139% of first calls in the first year, enabling call volume to increase nearly 70% from the prior year
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Reduced year-over-year average handling time by 15%
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Reduced loaded cost per call by 21%
Number of patient calls that Service Partners on the Arise® Platform managed for a telehealth care provider over one year, an increase of almost 190,000 additional contact arrivals, compared to the prior year.
The telehealth organization’s patient satisfaction score, soared above the goal every month of the year, by an average of 10%. The client’s overall call attainment was 113% of goal.
Their results and the insights from contact center work combine to illustrate the difference Gig-CX makes when weighing the cost of investing in new approaches, delivering excellent support to customers at a reduced cost today and preparing for the road ahead.
Bottom line on Gig-CX flexibility and utilization
Gig-CX enables Brands to achieve flexibility for each business day, manage demand variability, and deploy the resources necessary. Arise clients realize a reduction in overall cost and better organizational agility.
Our clients benefit from 30 years of experience and a vast network of Service Partners on the Arise® Platform. During critical periods of uncertainty over the past two years, Arise successfully leveraged its expertise for numerous clients operating across ten key sectors. We stand ready with access to the support resources, knowledge, technology infrastructure, workforce management tools, operational excellence, and measurement models needed to support you too. Please schedule an appointment to learn more about how Arise can deliver results for your organization.
Blog Sources:
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/74307/Doellgast28_Making_call_center_jobs_better.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2022/03/15/15-stats-about-post-covid-customer-service/?sh=6324b28014fd
