5 Tips for Contact Center Budgeting
by Inova Solutions
It’s that time of year again – time to finalize your contact center’s budget. The process of creating an annual budget can be time-intensive and frustrating. No doubt you have been instructed to improve operational efficiency and customer service next year – but with limited resources to do so.
How should you go about tackling the budget proposal, and pitching it in a way that gets your team the resources they need to be successful? Here are five tips to get you started.
1. Prove your value.
It is very difficult to obtain adequate funding for your contact center if executives do not understand the value the center brings to the company. So your first step is to meet with the appropriate stakeholders and share your successes from the past year. Don’t know where to start? Your vendors are a great resource. They, too, are eager to prove that their technology solution is contributing to your bottom line and may be willing to help you prove operational improvements. Your ACD provider or real-time reporting vendor may be especially helpful, since they are familiar with key performance indicators.
In your budget proposal, be sure to align spending with corporate goals. The CFO will be much more likely to sign off if it is clear that the contact center is a strategic entity and an important contributor to the bottom line.
2. Include all current expenses.
You’ll need to tally up the basics from this year and project your need for next year:
- Infrastructure – This includes network, facilities and utilities (don’t forget to account for depreciation).
- Human resources – Since salary and benefits can represent up to 70% of contact center budgets, this section merits serious consideration. Be sure to include not only salary/benefits, but training programs to combat poor performance, recruiting expenses to attract top talent, and also calculate what your attrition rate costs you in terms of productivity loss.
- Technology – Include cost estimates for new systems and services as well as maintenance contracts for existing systems. When evaluating new systems, don’t let sticker shock hold you back from purchasing a solution that will pay off in the long run. Carefully calculate the total cost of ownership of the system, and divide it by the expected lifetime of the system. The costs may seem more manageable in this light. In addition, what is your expected call center return on investment in the system? Some technology products pay for themselves if they improve productivity or efficiency by a measurable amount.
Get in touch with your vendors to get quotes and find out about any new product or service offerings for which you should set aside dollars. It’s better to know about these items now, rather than have them surprise you in the middle of the next budget cycle.
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