When marketing teams hear the words ‘contact center’, they often hear very different things. And they’re usually split into two camps. 

Marketing teams view the contact center in very different ways.

First, you’ve got the Yannys of the marketing world. The marketers who are fundamentally disconnected from the contact center. They view it as unrelated to their job, an uncontrollable channel that is beyond their reach. 

And the others, the Laurels, who can see the real potential of the contact centre. Those who understand that a close relationship with it, and ways of optimizing on the call, have benefits not just for the contact center, but for marketing teams too, and, importantly, for your customers.  

And this is what we were on stage talking about at the Travel Marketing Conference recently. We were saying that it’s time marketers took back control. 

If you missed the presentation, here’s a quick summary of the talk:

There’s historically been a disconnect between marketing teams and contact centers

It’s not just your customers who get frustrated with contact centers, it’s marketers too. Legacy systems, disconnected from your own martech stack, along with differing KPIs, make working together a challenge. And let’s be honest, you don’t feel like you can have control over the way a phone call ‘lead’ is handled. You’re handing over responsibility to a call handler to finish your hard-earned work.

Why the contact center could be the secret weapon of marketing teams everywhere

Think about how important CX and brand reputation is for you all; a recent Walker study says that ‘by the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator’. Being able to optimize what happens on a call could see phone calls being even more valuable than they currently are. 

Our research findings into the future of the contact center

Last year we conducted some research into the future of the contact center. The research revealed a number of insights, but the three most pertinent were:

 
– The holy grail of the contact center is anticipating customer needs so engagement is more efficient and proactive
– The future role of the contact centre agent is as a specialist consultant
– People – and human relationships – are not going away. 
 

So whether you’re a Yanny or a Laurel, one thing is clear. Human-to-human phone calls aren’t going anywhere. The future lies with an enhanced contact center, where the customer is placed at the center. Savvy marketers recognize how important the phone call is, not just as a valuable conversion point, but as a means of enhancing the experience offered to customers.

Call tracking in the travel industry is vital to understand where customer calls are coming from.