Nuance Business Consulting Services

It's a question we're starting to hear more and more these days -- "How can I justify a consulting engagement in these tough economic times.  Isn't it considered a luxury?"  While it is a very valid question, the truth is that consulting engagements often prove even more valuable during tough economic times.

When you think about it from a business point of view, companies are being challenged to run more streamlined and more efficiently.  Companies typically implement "belt tightening" programs that impact several critical areas.  But we find that oftentimes the companies themselves don't understand how to get to that point.  They obviously know their business very well, but they don't fully understand the contact center and how that ties into the overall business objectives.

Of course, the first instinct of a lot of organizations is that they don't want to spend "extra" money right now on something like consulting because it appears to be a "luxury."  But engaging knowledgeable consultants can prove to be an investment in your company's future growth and your ability to run more efficiently and drive better customer service.  In the end, you end up improving customer loyalty and retaining the customers you already have.  And in today's economy you need to preserve your customer base or risk losing them to your competitors. 

So if you're asking yourself "How can my organization justify a consulting engagement with you in 2009?,"  consider the following:

1. We can show you how to contain costs.  During these challenging times there's a push to handle more customer calls with fewer agents.  We can show you how to identity opportunities to save money and to really become a better, more efficiently run operation.  We have the expertise to quickly show you the best ways to accomplish additional caller self-servicing without losing customer loyalty (after all, at some point the economy will recover -- you don't want to be left with 30% fewer customers when things pick up again, do you?)
2. We can help you identify areas for growth and show you where your contact center can actually bring in revenue.  The flip side of showing you how to contain costs is that we can actually help you identify areas of growth that you might not necessarily be aware of or understand.  By implementing applications like proactive notifications or universal agent desktop solutions you can not only cut costs, but introduce a new revenue stream with cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. 
3. Our unmatched industry and cross-industry expertise.  Clients consistently make vertical industry knowledge a key determining factor when hiring consultants, which is indeed critical.  We can share what trends we're seeing in your specific industry, and show you exactly where you stack up against your peers.  Beyond that, we can show you what innovative technology solutions are being used outside of your industry and identify how they might be relevant to your contact center. 
4. We will show you in quantifiable terms the TCO and ROI for any technology or strategy we recommend.  This might be the most important point.  We approach each consulting engagement from a vendor- and technology-agnostic point of view, evaluating your unique business needs and helping you determine the optimal strategy for your organization.  We work with you to create an actionable road map for implemention that reduces costs; improves customer satisfaction and loyalty and drives revenue.  Then we'll clearly define exactly how much application improvements or new technologies will cost your organization and when you can expect to see a return on those investments. 
5. We have the human resource capital that you don't right now.  During this belt-tightening period, companies push management and operations teams to deliver more value with fewer resources; people end up doing additional jobs, and few have time to approach contact center expense reduction with as much bandwidth or skills as they'd like.  Here again, is where consultants can come in and with very little disruption to your business, they'll plot a course that will identify the problems and opportunities, estimate what the business benefits would be, and prioritize a set of activities that will accomplish your business goals with as many or as little external resources as you want. 

As always, we invite you to set up a complimentary one-on-one meeting with our consultants to answer any questions you may have and/or address your specific project needs.  Email us at consultingteam@nuance.com.