Winning New Contact Centre Clients
Getting new clients to come on board takes patience. Time, effort and loads of ground work is required. You need to create a profile that convinces potential clients you really can deliver a competitive edge.
Establishing your professional credentials is very important. You must be able to clearly define what you do, how you perform against recognised benchmarks and how you differentiate service delivery for existing clients.
A portfolio of happy clients and meaningful testimonials is always worth building. Extensive networking is a platform for spreading the word about your capacities and those happy customers.
Professional integrity is paramount when pitching to new clients. The thought of outsourcing an element of their business is very scary to some potential clients. They must feel confident they can trust you with their most prized possession – their customer base.
Confidentiality and the aura it creates is critical. Clients can be particularly jumpy about handing over strategic business information to an outsourced centre. What if their data falls into the wrong hands?
Call centre managers might consider restricting new business development to only one key player in a particular industry sector. This strategy gives all clients comfort that competitors are not circulating within the one service or contact centre environment.
The ‘one major player per industry’ strategy might go against the grain of ‘economies of scale’ text book theory. If we have a workforce trained in airline reservations, surely it makes sense to pursue other airline business? It might make sense from an operating cost perspective, but it often makes no sense to the ‘other airlines’ wanting to safeguard and differentiate their competitive strategy.
Outsourced call centres chasing new business must become experts in the target client’s field. Business Development Managers must immerse themselves in industry cost data, competitor and market share analysis, and looming challenges.
The pitch then comes when the Business Development Manager has some innovative solutions and a comprehensive cost benefit analysis.
Developing and securing new business costs more money and time than most managers realise. Unless there is an extraordinarily low occupancy rate in a centre, the existing workforce will not have sufficient productivity slack to take on new clients.
A heavy duty commitment to training, development and skill-specific recruitment is usually necessary. As a business development deal comes close to fruition, the appropriately skilled, productive workforce must be ready for action.
Before attracting any new business make sure your centre has the telephony and technology in place to deliver on the promises you make.
Nobody knows the client’s business like the client does. But make sure when you knock on their door you are across the major issues of their industry and can convince them of your ability to handle their customers with care.
To make outsourcing their business to you, an attractive option, you need to have solutions to the issues they are yet to contemplate. Innovative, technologically savvy managers with an outcome focus can be a huge benefit in attempting to win new outsourced business.
