Three reasons a strong hub is a smart investment

If you want to grow a successful customer management operation, you need to have a strong hub-and-spoke model, where a centralized hub ties together your customer management functions and all of your call centers – the “spokes” – to provide consistent, comprehensive oversight for all your suppliers.

A strong hub will benefit your business in three major ways:

1. A strong hub is a catalyst for improvement.

Many companies haven’t focused on building a strong hub, but it’s a powerful place for investment because of its span of influence. With a strong team and the right technology in your hub, you can achieve an impressive multiplier effect.

A hub with a staff of 10 can impact hundreds of customer agents, which in turn will impact thousands of customer interactions each week. The resources you put into your hub will have a domino effect and reap benefits across your entire operation.

2. A strong hub maximizes vendor performance.

A common assumption is that you just need to find good suppliers and they will manage things appropriately. But if you have much experience working with call center suppliers, you know that one doesn’t necessarily provide the other.

When we help clients move from a decentralized, self-managed approach to centralized infrastructure with a significantly greater level of intraday and daily oversight, they typically see significant improvements. One company we work with reduced its call abandonment rate from 20% to 5%. Another reduced cost-per-acquisition by 30% based on improved sales.

These performance gains are a direct result of greater oversight. When companies invest in a strong hub and embrace a centralized approach to vendor management, they put themselves in a much better position to drive intraday, daily, weekly and monthly performance.

3. A strong hub improves customer experience.

Not only can a strong hub improve performance numbers, but it can also greatly improve overall customer experience. Why? Because strong oversight – especially at the intraday and daily intervals an effective hub will support – ensures greater consistency across calls and interactions.

Additionally, the hub manages variation, conducts root cause analysis to correct systemic customer pain-points, and drives metrics such as First Call Resolution (FCR) – all of which drive customer loyalty.

–Bryan DiGiorgio

Bryan DiGiorgio is President and CEO of CXO Global Solutions.