What does a contact centre review cost, and what should it include?

Why do quotes vary so much?

Ask three consultants to review your contact centre and you may get three very different prices. That's usually because they're quoting for three different things.

Some quote for a short, focused review. Others quote for a long transformation program with workshops, frameworks and implementation support built in. Before comparing prices, make sure you're comparing the same scope.

What drives the cost of a review?

These are the factors that make the biggest difference:

• Scope. A review of the whole operation costs more than a review of one area, such as workforce planning or quality.
• Depth of analysis. Interviews and observation are quicker than detailed analysis of months of data.
• Number of sites, channels and teams. Each adds people to talk to and data to work through.
• Outsourcing. If an outsourcer runs part of the operation, their people, contracts and reports need reviewing too.
• The output you want. A discussion of findings is quicker to deliver than a detailed written report.

Time is the real driver underneath all of these. A review that takes weeks will generally cost more than one that takes days.

What does a CX Consult health check cost?

My call centre health checks start from $10,000 + GST, and most are completed in three to five days. Larger contact centres usually take a few more days, and the fixed quote reflects that.

Whatever the size, once I understand what you need, you get a fixed quote, so there are no hourly rates or surprises.

I keep it that way deliberately. In my experience, most organisations don't need a long review to find out what's holding their contact centre back. They need someone experienced to look quickly, independently and in the right places.

What should a review include?

Whoever you engage, a good contact centre review should look across the whole operation, not just the area the consultant knows best. It should measure you against recognised best practice, such as the global Contact Centre CX Standards, not just against how things have always been done in your contact centre.

It should also test whether the contact centre is linked to your organisation's strategy. Many contact centres run well day to day but aren't set up to deliver what the business actually needs.

At a minimum, I'd expect a review to cover:

1. Targets and KPIs, and whether they drive the right behaviour
2. Key processes, and the gaps and workarounds in them
3. Technology, and whether it helps or hinders agents
4. Reporting, and whether it leads to decisions
5. People capability, coaching and leadership
6. Customer experience, as customers actually see it
7. What the wider business needs from the contact centre
8. Efficiency, and where time and money are being lost

What should you walk away with?

A review is only worth what you can do with it. At the end, you should have:

• A clear, independent view of what's working and what isn't
• Your priorities, ranked by impact, with the reasons for each
• Quick wins you can act on straight away
• Evidence your executives can use to back decisions and business cases

You shouldn't need a 100-page report to get there. If the findings can't be explained clearly in a conversation, they probably won't get acted on.

What are the warning signs in a proposal?

Be cautious if a proposal includes any of these:

• Open-ended hourly rates with no cap or fixed price
• A link to a technology vendor, or a reviewer who earns commission on what they recommend
• Implementation bundled in before anyone knows what needs fixing
• A heavy focus on one discipline, which can skew the findings towards it
• No operational experience in the people doing the review

What questions should you ask before you sign?

1. How long will the review take, and is the price fixed?
2. Who will actually do the work?
3. How many years have they spent running contact centres, not just reviewing them?
4. Do they have any commercial relationship with vendors they might recommend?
5. What exactly will we receive at the end?

If you'd like to talk through what a review of your contact centre would involve, book a free 30-minute call. I'll tell you honestly whether a health check is the right fit.