Procurement’s Role in Contact Center Transformation

Customers today are moving at a faster pace than businesses, so you need to raise the bar with your contact center transformation when it comes to customer experience. 

But, in most transformation initiatives, contact centers have historically been overlooked and underfunded. 

Businesses that don’t transform their contact centers end up driving up their costs. Why? Because disconnected agents spend about 15% of their day trying to find information to resolve customer issues and improve the customer experience.

But how can procurement help offset the contact center transformation process? 

We’ll explore the role procurement plays in:

• Aligning stakeholders
• Setting goals
• Setting KPIs to track goals

Let’s get started.

Aligning Stakeholders

Procurement teams face the challenge of getting buy-in from business stakeholders. 

To achieve change, procurement must ensure all business units and/or stakeholders are aligned in both needing/wanting the change, and what the goals of that change are. 

When leaders aren’t on the same page and ready for change, such a project can come to a grinding halt. 

Some companies view procurement as the department that shapes the direction of cost leadership. However, departments can have different views, often seeing procurement as a difficult lot that focuses too much on saving costs, gatekeeping, negatively impacting brand perception, and damaging creativity.

To win over key stakeholders with procurement business objectives, you need to manage relationships with internal stakeholders for better cross-functional relationships. 

Specifically, you should:

• Hold meetings with stakeholders to ensure you understand their business objectives and value drivers for each team
• Establish what good contact transformation looks like for each part of the business 
• Learn to speak their language to gain influence. Find out what’s important to them, their challenges, and how you can help
  
  

Setting Goals

Contact center transformation is a key aspect of successful digital transformation and customer experience. 

For this reason, procurement professionals face increasing pressure to streamline several processes while reducing costs, ensuring supply chain continuity, and offering more agile approaches for purchasing technology.

By setting procurement goals and aligning them with stakeholders’ departments, you can achieve cost savings, stakeholder buy-in, and an easier contact center transformation process.

Understanding and setting goals at the outset will help you develop the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) needed to make decisions throughout the transformation.

And while procurement’s role is often viewed from a cost standpoint, it’s still important to consider costs within the context of desired KPIs or outcomes for such a large change.

When procurement’s goals are aligned with business objectives, you’ll focus your efforts on the right areas in the contact center transformation process. 

Setting KPIs to Track Goals

Once you identify the business goals for the contact center, the next step would be to set KPIs to track those goals to develop a prioritized, incremental approach to the transformation. 

Meet with executive-level staff to cover overall organization goals and allow the departmental and front-line staff to bring up requirements and any pain points. 

Include all stakeholders at all levels of the business to understand their issues and determine which priorities best streamline the new contact center.

Without KPI targets, you won’t know whether you’re on track to meet the company’s goals for the contact center transformation. They also help you know what you’re striving to meet and develop the strategies to meet them.

Transform the Future of Your Contact Center

As more companies move to online solutions to meet customers’ demands, contact center transformation is a leading priority. 

For some, this means adopting completely new strategies to accommodate the shift, but three things still stand: the need to cut costs, maximize profits, and maintain sustainability.

At ACLIVITI, we work with procurement teams during contact center transformations to help companies with their transitions. We’re true experts in CCaaS transformation and know how to build confidence at C-suite level to create alignment between business leaders. 

Our program oversight ensures you get the promised outcome over a multi-year transformation.

Reach out to us today to learn more.