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Contact centers are increasingly being used to up-sell and cross-sell products. They offer an excellent platform to do so and gain valuable topline for the company. Since contact centers are a major cost center, it is in the best interests of a business that it tries to drive revenue through contact centers. The launch of a live up sell and cross sell program should be preceded by adequate employee training and a pilot program as well. Training is crucial in imparting the soft skills that can make or break a sales pitch. Agents need to say the right thing at the right time.

The major trend that contact centers have witnessed over the past few years is shifting of contact center operations to countries where labor is cheap. Since employee cost is a very high running overhead cost, a reduction in this cost is a powerful incentive to offshore contact centers. The flip side to offshoring is that very often customers complain about a drop in quality of service.

Businesses often miss a vital trick when it comes to harnessing the customer’s knowledge for furthering their business via product development or marketing. Customers who have a lifetime’s experience in using products and availing services are ideally placed to offer inputs on little tweaks and additions that can make a product that much more useful. Their interaction with the front-end gives them insight into customer-facing issues from the customer’s perspective. The operative phrase here is "customer’s perspective" and that is something companies often fail to tap into.

I have often wondered whether to call it a CRM solution or CRM software or as the title suggests as CRM software solutions. By whatever name we may choose to call it , an effective CRM implementation will only be possible if we take both software and solution as part of the system. Necessarily, we must consider the business aspects before even venturing towards CRM. The three broad aspects which need closer examination are data collection, classification and deployment. CRM software solution must be able to address all the three aspects effectively.

A hosted contact center with a third party raises visions of dollar savings for most businesses. However, there are certain factors to keep in mind if you wish to benefit from efficiencies that arise from a hosted contact center.