Reevaluating the Term Contact Center in CX Small Teams | ElevateCX

Reevaluating the Term Contact Center in CX Small Teams

A team member of my just said something to me in a 1:1 that really made me step back and think. I often use the term contact center to describe my cx team. We're small, under 20 people, hyper focused on offering a great experience. She expressed that she didn't like that I use the term contact center to describe us, because she associates it with more high volume call centers where the quality is low, and that they are more than just that. I totally agree with her that they do so much more than just answer the phone. But I had a moment of like 'is contact center a dirty word?' or is it just this somewhat cultural impact where people associate cx work as being low skilled? How do others feel about this?

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73 comments

Ashley
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i couldn’t say it’s a dirty word, but i do have a very specific idea of what it is and isn’t.
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Ashley
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it does feel particularly impersonal
Ashley
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it’s more of a thing, than a team
Will Taylor
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What a great topic! And love that you called them a team member Ashley Parada. How do you refer to their role as well? Boldr's a BPO and we call everyone a team member, because we've found "agent" has the same dirty associations that are tied to a BPO. And I think we're pretty different to a typical outsourcing company. For me, contact center is alright and still different to call center (which I imagine your team member really doesn't liek!) -> and if a potential client asks me to build a call center I probably know they're not a fit for us.
Jenny Chudy
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I think, fairly or not, it does carry negative connotations. I've been running a "contact center" for the last year and one of the biggest hurdles I had was getting the organization to not look at it as something other than just the lowest of the low (worse than any support department I've ever run).
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Jenny Chudy
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When I try to point out anything that I'd like to improve to the higher ups on ANYTHING, I would constantly get "well that's just how contact centers run" to which I kept saying, "no, that's how shitty contact centers run" but I've been largely screaming into the void. I've very recently (happily) just left that place but if I could have, I absolutely would have changed the name of the department (among many other things).
Jenny Chudy
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agent" has the same dirty associations
all the yes
Will Taylor
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Jenny Chudy shout it louder! How do you feel about names like Customer Happiness / Delight team etc. ?
Will Taylor
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some people love, others hate it
Jenny Chudy
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So, I might be jaded but I absolutely hate the term "Customer Delight" with a burning passion. lol I find it to be a buzz word that loses it's meaning, similar to "Customer Obsessed"
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Will Taylor
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hehe yep names like these can divide a room!
Jenny Chudy
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I do like Customer Experience because it doesn't have an immediate positive or negative association - it's up to the team/org to deliver on what kind of experience it is so it feels more honest to me.
Toni Keller
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I used Customer Experience, it also translated to other departments
Will Taylor
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CX - I never thought about it that way. it is a literal way to express how your customers feel. Interesting
Jenny Chudy
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I obviously feel it should be positive and that those responsible should attempt to make it as positive as possible, but I find being transparent and honest sets you up for the team to feel it's best and if you aren't truly a customer delight center, that the entire organization believes is at the heart of it's ethos, you're setting yourself up to have to defend it to your team and customers constantly.
Jenny Chudy
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also (wow, run on sentence. my apologies lol)
Will Taylor
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hahahaha. Being in customer delight could invite some really sarcastic comments especially if they hit social media and review sites
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Miles Goldstein
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Names I hate:
Call Center
Contact Center
Help Desk
Customer Happiness (or Delight etc.)
Names I like:
Technical Support
Product Support
Client Support
Customer Experience
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Ashley Parada
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This thread is Will Taylor We're a client support team made up of Care Coordinators (and a TL + Manager).
Ashley Parada
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I ended up leaving the convo telling her that maybe our team is due for a meeting centered on identity. I just joined them in December, and want to get us to a place of designing our team's "brand voice" with clients, so it feels like a good add on to that type of discussion.
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Will Taylor
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amazing! It will be cool to get a temperature check from your entire team and learn how they all think and talk about themselves
Toni Keller
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I always focused on human-centered design
Toni Keller
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https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2023/02/27/cx-and-the-value-of-human-centered-design/
Will Taylor
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The same for customers, but not sure how to ask that question
Erica
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I would be careful about the direct association between CX and CS when thinking about titling CS departments. CS is a part of customer experience, but it's not the only thing that makes up CX. CX is what your customers say about your brand behind your back. It's bigger than one department 😉
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Jenny Chudy
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Erica could you expand on that? I'm always interested in how different orgs define things differently
Erica
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Sure! Think about the phrasing "Customer Experience." Your experience as a customer is not just your interaction with the support team. It's the effort spent on a website or in a store trying to find what you need. It's frictionless payment and purchase. It's marketing that's targeted, personal, and makes sense to the recipient. It's ALSO customer support, and customer support can (and should) work alongside product/tech/marketing to keep their eye on the prize (amazing, easy CX). But it's not only customer support.
Erica
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as a CX leader I collaborate and drive conversations and roadmaps primarily outside of the CS group itself, while managing still the CS ops. It's just one part of my universe in CX.
Jenny Chudy
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Gotcha! I also think that CX is way more than support, but it feels like the different pieces either solely live within CS and don't get enough resources or are divided among other departments and have varying degrees of influence/onus
Erica
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that's the thing, CX isn't a department it's a concept
Erica
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every department is responsible for customer experience
Erica
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if you put that on the CS team by title, will product or tech see themselves of CX purveyors? They should, but they may not.
Jenny Chudy
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I've found we've struggled at each of my orgs to adequately define and divvy this up and I'm not sure I've been anywhere that has gotten this quite right.
Erica
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nobody does it right, that's the problem
Erica
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Most companies want CX to = CS
colinflanigan
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I'll double down on Miles Goldstein’s take (which I 100% agree with) and say that the reason why agree so strongly is that "Call Center/Contact Center/Help Desk" are all names for locations, not disciplines or teams, "Customer Happiness/Delight" is too feelings-based and undermines the serious problem-solving work that often gets done on these teams, and the alternatives are all names of actual teams with "object + discipline" statements easily derived from their names. Who will help me with the technical problem with my software? A member of the Technical Support Team. Who will help me enhance my experience of my product? A member of the Product Support Team. We have diminishing returns in these labels because they're required to be short and reasonably recognizable and "industry standard language" has us all racing to the bottom to find the lowest-common denominator of basic language, but I think they all work well without sacrificing or undermining either the humanity or the efforts of the teams they represent.
Erica
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YEP ^
Erica
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I was about to say something very similar but you got it.
Jenny Chudy
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nicely put colinflanigan
Erica
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I don't see any problem with customer support, technical support, product support, etc. That nomenclature is clear and simple
colinflanigan
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AND I'll double-down on Erica's take and add that while CS (or CX or whatever you're calling it) should OWN the conversation about CX at an organization and influence the work of other departments when it comes to how, when, and why they contribute to the Customer Experience.
Erica
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Yee haw we should do a presentation on this together
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colinflanigan
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finger guns pew pew pew
Ashley Parada
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I love the turn this took
colinflanigan
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You mean Erica and I absolutely yelling in this side chat?
Erica
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sometimes I worry that we yell too much Colin
colinflanigan
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NEVER
Erica
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but then Ashley comes along and validates us like this
Ashley Parada
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if it's not all caps, it's not yelling to me
Erica
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Ashley for mayor!~
Jenny Chudy
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I actually struggled the other day to figure out how to define "what a Senior Leader" or "Middle Management" means the other day because honestly it can vary SO much from one org to the next. Then on top of it, we all get these goofy names in our titles that none of us actually use in LinkedIn becuase no one will know what that means! 🤪
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Erica
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omg yes!!!
colinflanigan
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As the Managing Director of Client Management and Onboarding Operations at Sharkify I honestly don't know what you're talking about
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Jenny Chudy
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Senior Customer Engagement Lead is a title I once had. What does that even mean????
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Jenny Chudy
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You'd probably not guess what my actual role was either
Jenny Chudy
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I was a Technical Writer. And I had no team. I was the team
Jenny Chudy
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So what was I leading?
colinflanigan
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Ghost writers (ha)
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Jenny Chudy
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In all seriousness, I have been fascinated by something one of my former colleagues did. She set herself up as the Head of Impact and essentially she was completely devoted to finding out how our customers saw us and our product. Support, Product, Marketing, Client Success, all had a seat at the table on the Impact Advisory Board. She did a lot of really great work. My beef with it was that it seemed 100% geared towards winning over new clients to show how fantastic we were. Which I'm not completely against, but I don't think the work was about truly unearthing what our different customers were experiencing and how we could improve upon it in the varying demographics. I'd love to figure out a way for Support to drive that more as a "true" CX endeavor.
colinflanigan
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I haven't always been able to stick that landing everywhere I've worked, but whenever I try I always start by offering small glimpses into the absolute powerhouse of data that CX has to help inform other departments (usually starting with Product and Engineering but also sometimes Marketing/Sales if they're struggling to make sales that stick).
Jenny Chudy
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I've been successful with this for Marketing and Sales but often less so for Product, specifically influencing the Product Roadmap meaningfully. I've had small wins but almost always it's the "low hanging fruit. And I get it. They have to answer to completely different goals, just, every now and then, I'm tired of that f*&king fruit! Give me a steak!
Manuel
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anyone ever experimented with “Customer Concierge / Technical Concierge”?
Jenny Chudy
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I'll be honest, I'm not a fan, but tell me the thought process behind it and maybe I'll come around?
Manuel
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It’s a more neutral term that few if any people have negative associations with… another one would be Customer Consultant, but Consultant has some baggage depending on who you ask
Manuel
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I haven’t seen Customer Concierge used much, but I wonder if it could be a better way to describe the work
Erica
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My doctor has a customer concierge service where I have a phone number I can text anytime and get help with a myriad of things related to my healthcare... I would expect someone with "concierge" in their title to be giving super duper personal high touch support
Erica
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seems kind of old fashioned but also could be good for high touch or high value brands (think: designer bags)
colinflanigan
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^ I'd only use it in an "Enterprise" or high-touch situation or you risk giving the wrong idea
Manuel
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got it, yeah, I guess I should have said that from the start, I’ve only ever worked at “enterprise” B2B companies, and have a bad habit of presuming everyone just knows that context
Manuel
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I can see why Concierge wouldn’t make sense for more transactional or B2C kinds of companies
Erica
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Ashley Parada this has been a really fun conversation! So glad you brought it to us 🫡 ❤️
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Paul Tucker
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Late to the greatness that is this thread, but just wanted to affirm... The greatness. 🫶
Jenny Chudy
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This was a really fun one