The amount of intelligence gathered through customer service is significant, in any industry. There’s far more value to handling customer contacts than improving the satisfaction and loyalty of customers, as vitally important as that is.

So, how do you build the potential of customer interactions to deliver value?

Assemble a small cross-functional team to explore how well your organization uses insight from customer interactions. Discuss where and how information should be captured, how it can be mined for relevant insight, and how to strengthen cross-functional communication. Have the team prepare recommendations on how to further leverage these opportunities.

You will also need to build a team that is focused on capturing, analyzing, sharing and using value-added information across the organization. Ensure the information is useful and usable, based on an ongoing commitment to understand business requirements. And an important enabler is to make sure that quality at the point of customer contact is given the broadest possible definition — e.g., that coaching, monitoring and objectives at the agent level support strategic opportunities.

For further reading on this topic, you might enjoy The Edge of Service® Newsletter: How Customer Service Drives Innovation.