Whether you’re considering implementing your first contact center or want to streamline workforce management at an existing one, there are things to be aware of. The modern world has changed, and options are more plentiful than ever. 

Everyone has heard of traditional contact centers, but GigCX is a term that you may not have encountered before now. However, it’s a word you’ll want to be familiar with to keep your contact center agile to meet customer needs.

When it comes down to it, excellent customer experience is essential for any business, large or small. The right setup helps strengthen customer engagement, optimize customer support, and provide quick solutions to potential and current customers.

This blog will delve into the main ways that GigCX is better than a traditional contact center. We’ll also share the differences between the two so you can make an educated decision about what is ideal for your company.

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What Is the Difference Between a GigCX Ops Model and a Traditional Contact Center Ops Model?

Traditional contact centers are complex and highly dependent on many different departments to operate and communicate flawlessly. Most traditional contact centers don’t provide the flexibility or work environment to attract top talent that can work autonomously. This is where GigCX excels. 

With GigCX, call centers can: 

• Create flexible schedules that attract a top-talent workforce. 
• Perfectly staff their contact center all the time.
• Only pay for productive hours.
• Increase customer support quality (thanks to experienced agents).
• Better their customer experience (having agents available when customers need it).

For those new to GigCX, a GigCX solution has all the benefits of a business process outsourcer (BPO). However, where a GigCX model differs from a BPO is in its ability to staff agents on demand. This is challenging for most BPOs and traditional contact centers to do in a short period of time, if at all.

Most contact centers rely on their workforce management functions, the heart of contact center operations, to staff contact centers perfectly. This puts a lot of pressure on workforce management teams to maintain operations that are hard to scale and maintain. This in turn creates less-than-ideal schedules for in-house agents, leading to unhappy agents who provide not-so-great service (you see how this can easily become a domino effect for contact centers). 

Now imagine this scenario with GigCX. Contact centers that leverage GigCX provide their workforce management team with more tools and resources to staff contact centers perfectly. Thinking back to the analogy of the workforce management team serving as the heart of a contact center, GigCX is the solution to help your contact center's heart operate sustainably and more efficiently.

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Why Should Contact Centers Adopt a GigCX Ops Model?

We’ve created a list of the four most pressing reasons that contact centers should consider gig customer support. You might find that the benefits are far above what you expected when opening this article.

Reason #1: Improved Customer Service

The number one reason to switch to GigCX is that it will improve the experience of your customers. When you use a gig customer service model, you don’t want to worry about bringing on employees who become burnt out or start to become frustrated with their positions. How your agents feel and operate directly affects how they treat your customers.

One of the things that GigCX companies offer is a variety of domain experts who want to be doing the work for you. These people are passionate and excited about creating the best customer experience, which you can benefit from moving forward. There’s no need to stress about the hiring process when someone else can handle it.

Reason #2: Reduce Costs Without Sacrificing Quality, Customer Experience, or Impacting Agents

Everyone running a business wants to cut costs. After all, the less you spend, the more you make. In many cases, contact center employees are paid 40 hours a week, even if some of those hours contain no work at all. In most cases, if traditional contact centers want to cut costs they typically go about it in three ways. One, they deflect contacts through frustrating automation. Two, they understaff their operations which leads to longer hold times for customers. Or three, they hire offshore/nearshore agents which oftentimes creates communication challenges for their customers.

That isn’t the case for the GigCX model.

With a GigCX partner like ShyftOff, you can lower 35% of your costs. Why? 

GigCX offers the following benefits: 

• The model is quick to implement - no need to wait for years to see tech and automation promises play out.
• Staff perfectly at every hour of the day to get massive productivity savings.
• Staff only US-based agents. This is very unique to ShyftOff as we’ve defined an innovative approach to operations that make us significantly more efficient, allowing companies to keep work in the US for a cost that's comparable to nearshore and offshore talent.

Many factors go into how much you spend but switching to GigCX customer service can help. You only pay for the time when an agent is actively providing service for your company. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Reason #3: Never Pay for Attrition Costs (like you would with a BPO or in-house)

Another reason to consider GigCX for your contact center is based on employee attrition. The reality is that it costs much more to train a new employee than to pay one that has been with the business for several months or years.

In a traditional contact center, you’re going to have some amount of employee turnover. If you’re leveraging the support of a BPO, it’s pretty standard that they bill you for the cost of attrition.

From our experience, contact centers pay an average of $7k-$10k to replace an agent. These costs could include fees to post the new position, leveraging recruiter talent, time spent in interviews, and resources spent on trainers.

This is where ShyftOff’s GigCX model shines. The workforce has changed dramatically in response to COVID-19. People want flexible work and traditional contact centers struggle to offer flexibility. ShyftOff’s GigCX model offers a solution to this by providing agents flexibility while providing contact centers the coverage they need when they need it. ShyftOff also has very low attrition, because agents want to do the work, and guarantees to replace agents at no cost to their customers. 

Reason #4: Easier to Scale Contact Centers

The final reason to choose GigCX services is that it’s far easier to scale. You can have tons of agents available in seasons when you’re busy and far fewer when things slow down a bit. 

GigCX can also help you get ahead of the planned and unplanned needs of customers (i.e. call volume). This applies to natural seasonality in your business - Tax Season, Summer Travel, Storms, Holiday Retail, Open Enrollment, Etc. 

Contact centers can adapt to everyday variations in volume. For example, Mondays tend to be busier than Fridays. GigCX partners like ShyftOff can match the numbers of agents to daily changes in demand.

Where GigCX magic really comes into play is the ability for contact centers to adapt hour-by-hour. Let’s say that 10 am is busier than 11 am for your contact center... no problem. ShyftOff can shape the number of agents you need down to every half hour! This is something no BPO or traditional call center can do today.

Are you interested in adopting a GigCX ops model? ShyftOff can help. Reach out today, and let’s chat.

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