Afiniti CEO Larry Babbio: Four Signs You Could be Losing Out on Millions From your Contact Center Every Year

Innovative contact center technology is adding millions to the bottom line. Is it time your company did the same?

A typical contact center handles tens of thousands of customer conversations a day – and Larry Babbio, CEO of the contact center AI company Afiniti, knows those moments are opportunities to increase customer spend and loyalty. But, all too often, customer interactions are seen not as a business opportunity, but as a problem to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

Smart organizations see contact center conversations as an opportunity to drive revenue — while also increasing customer satisfaction. With the right technology, a mid-sized business can typically bring in millions in extra revenue every year.

As cost pressures rise for businesses and consumers, now is the time to switch from a cost mindset to a profit mindset. Here are four signs your business should be rethinking the role of your contact center:

1. Your Contact Center is Seen as a Cost Center, not a Revenue-Generator

Many businesses still see the contact center as a burden on the bottom line. That’s where Babbio thinks it's important to start looking at the contact center as a profit center, rather than a cost center. 

Instead of being pushed to cut costs by 10% year after year, what if your target was to bring in 10% in revenues — and to do that by delivering a better customer experience?

Major businesses use Afiniti’s AI to pair customers with agents based on historical patterns of success — leading to more productive agents, happier customers, and better business outcomes. 

As Afiniti CEO, Babbio understands that customer experience has a direct impact on the top line. “Traditionally, contact center routing has run on a first-in, first-out basis. The customer gets put through to the first available agent, regardless of whether they’re a good fit,” he said. “We use machine learning to find the most successful agent-caller pairing, increasing the odds of providing a better experience, and of generating consistently higher revenue per call.”

2. Your Contact Center Leaders are Incentivized by Time, not Value

If your organization is still incentivizing contact center agents for how quickly they can get customers off the phone, chances are you’re leaving millions on the table.

Speed matters, obviously. But if an extra five minutes on the phone translates into keeping a customer subscribed for another 18 months, that’s time well spent.

Recent studies show 54% of customers would stop using a brand after just one bad experience. Other studies show that customers that have a positive customer experience stay five years longer. This is why an investment in creating better experiences creates longer term value for customer and agent.

Such outcomes aren’t based on gut feeling, but hard data. For example, Afiniti switches its technology on and off throughout the day, allowing contact center leaders to see the measurable difference its technology makes for a particular metric — be it revenue, customer lifetime value, or first-call resolution.

3. You’ve Not Factored in the Price of Agent Churn

Traditional performance-based routing is known to burn out the top performers and demotivate the bottom ones. The result? Churn at both ends that dents the bottom line. It can cost thousands to recruit and onboard a new agent, and even then it can be weeks before they’re productive.

Afiniti’s AI gives every contact center agent the opportunity to be more successful by pairing them with customers they’re more likely to “click” with. Not only does the agent walk away satisfied for having successfully solved someone’s problem — they also potentially walk away with a commission. And this all happens at scale.

When pairing customers with agents, Afiniti’s AI applies equal standards of service across all interactions, such as limits on agent utilization and call wait times, so all agents are more likely to have positive interactions with customers. 

Satisfaction on both sides of the phone drives revenue for the business, meaning you don't need to cut costs unnecessarily.

4. Your Pitch Takes Longer than Five Minutes

Forward thinking leaders make the case for focusing on profits, not costs – and for deploying the technology that enables that. But as with any investment in technology, you need to be able to pitch the business case to your CEO in five minutes or less.

When you are able to clearly demonstrate the results of an AI-based tool, you can ensure it is delivering the metrics that the business cares most about. This also allows for reconfiguration if things aren’t working as expected.

Know how much revenue a new technology could bring, know the impact of the technology on the day to day of agents and the contact center, and importantly know the risk.

If you can demonstrate measurable upside – and if the risks are zero or close to zero – your CEO has no obvious reason to say "no".