CRM implementation in inbound Contact Center: Issues and Challenges

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a concept that has been giving opportunity to both internal and external customers of an organization in exploring critical information. The contact center is a unit of CRM that helps in integrating valuable information through company’s telephone system, chat groups, Interactive voice response, facsimile transmission, electronic data interchange, voice over internet, web sites and e-mail touch points. All these will result in satisfying customer self services for new product purchases, assist in up-selling and cross-selling and creating customer loyalty, value and profitability. Disappointedly, despite the enormous increasing acknowledgement of CRM importance, very little literatures have focused on the impact of CRM applications on inbound contact center performance. This book argued on the need for managers to relook into their over concentrations on operational variables as a measure of efficiency. It also explains the positive impacts of knowledge management and technology based CRM on first call resolution (FCR) and caller satisfaction within the inbound contact centers. Key benefits for practitioners and academia are also discussed.