Customer Contact Centre (CCC): What is it and why is it an important department

What is the KCC

Our definition of customer contact centre

The customer contact centre (KCC) is the department within a company, organisation or institution responsible for the centralised handling of customer contacts. To do so, the KCC deploys KCC employees who are also called customer service employees or agents.

KCC, Customer contact centre, call centre, customer service or customer service?

There are many different names for the departments that centrally handle customer contacts. Actually, they pretty much all do the same thing. The different names do have different connotations. A call centre, for instance, has a somewhat negative connotation. It is often associated with telemarketing. The KCC (customer contact centre) is more often associated with official organisations such as municipalities, provinces, water boards and the like. This is probably because said traditionally do not have direct customers. Customer service for a municipality therefore sounds a bit strange. Citizen service, on the other hand, is often seen as the counter where people drop by the municipality. So that is why customer contact centre is often used for this. In fact, it is no different from a customer service or customer service department,

The challenges of the Customer Contact Centre

Like any business unit, the KCC has several challenges. A Customer Contact Centre's biggest challenge is planning and forecasting. The number of customers contacted cannot always be accurately predicted. Yet enough staff must be available to handle customer queries effectively, efficiently and professionally. In doing so, the CCC uses all kinds of different systems. This makes working in customer contact centres sometimes complex and challenging. A lot of people work in customer contact centres in the Netherlands.

Setting up your own call centre or KCC is often underestimated because people often reason from the organisation itself and look at the technology when setting up a call centre. The first question one should ask is why are we going to set up a call centre or KCC? And perhaps more importantly, what do our customers expect from us? Consider questions such as:

1. Through which channels do our customers like to reach us?
2. At what times do our customers like to reach us?
3. What questions do our customers want answered
4. Where do we get all the information from within the organisation and how do we ensure that it is accessible to employees
5. What do customers expect from customer contacts in terms of qualitative aspects?

Improve customer contact centre?

The customer contact centre in an environment where customer contacts need to be handled effectively, efficiently and professionally. It is therefore important to constantly improve the service and adapt it to the needs of those who contact the CCC. By analysing customer contacts, you can use process optimisation to continuously improve the service. The moment a customer contact centre works continuously on improvements, it has a positive effect on employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. All this while reducing costs! Sometimes it is useful to make use of external expertise.