There is an old saying that if you want to know what is truly going on with your brand and products, you should spend a day with a customer service agent.

“We know that massive amounts of knowledge go in and out of contact centers every day,” said Holger Reisinger, Jabra Vice President of Marketing, Products and Alliances. ”If we are smart in capturing these customer insights, this will position contact center managers as key players in companies’ strategic planning.”

According to both Laura Bassett, Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at Avaya, a global leader in business communications, and Sarah Stealey Reed, Content Director at International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), the contact center will become much more like a knowledge center in the future.

The contact center is where your company has the direct contact with your customers and can collect important knowledge about the way your products are being used.

From the customer interaction, you can:

• Learn if customers are using your products as they were intended
• Be inspired to do new products and designs
• Learn if your manuals and guides are user-friendly
• Build thought-leadership marketing campaigns on real market insights

Can help drive revenue and product development

When seeing a call center more as a knowledge center “your contact center can drive revenue and increase shareholder value by being an important tool when it comes to product development, creating the best possible customer experience and implementing the strategic objectives of your company,” said Laura Bassett from Avaya.

According to Sarah Stealey Reed from ICMI, the contact center will gain tremendously from being used more as a knowledge center than just as a mere customer service function: “There is no doubt that it raises the profile of the contact center, if that is where we are getting the important information and having the great discussions as to how we can develop our products and services even more,” she said and continued: “Furthermore, it will give the contact center managers better access to resources and an important seat at the corporate table if the management sees them in that light. To put it frankly, The CEO and CIO cannot afford to ignore contact centers anymore!”