From Cost Center to Revenue-Driver: Rethinking the Call Center Paradigm
Call center interactions offer a rich source of insight for customer needs and future intent. By automating rote, manual tasks and training agents around active listening strategies and upselling/cross-selling motions, brands can transform the perception of call centers as cost centers by demonstrating ROI and driving revenue.In a world where value is defined relative to the bottom line, it’s easy for call centers to come under scrutiny when it comes time for budget allocation. Part of that is just the nature of the business, with primary use cases revolving around KPIs weighed down by negative connotations—metrics like problem resolution rates, customer effort scores, and churn.
In that light, goal-setting often becomes an exercise in mitigation: reducing call volumes, minimizing customer effort, and curbing churn. At times, even the insights that surfaced from customer-agent interactions can feel burdensome—an endless inbox of problems to solve. The downstream effects of this mindset can be quite limiting to the potential functions an effective call center should serve in your broader organizational strategy.
The truth is, customers calling your call center don’t just have an issue they want you to resolve—they have a relationship with your brand that matters enough to them to raise that issue. When you listen to those concerns—truly listen—you won’t just salvage the relationship; you’ll discover opportunities to grow it in ways that directly impact the bottom line. That’s when those budget discussions become less about managing costs and more about tracking investments.
Shifting the Cost Center Mindset
To understand the perception of call centers as cost centers, let’s start with the cold, hard math: a typical inbound customer service call costs an average of $2 per interaction. Multiply that across thousands or millions of calls a year, and it’s easy to see why companies want to save money.
But here’s the problem: when you’re laser-focused on cutting costs, it’s easy to miss out on revenue growth opportunities.
Imagine a scenario in which a customer calls complaining about the size of a shirt purchased online because she is dissatisfied with the fit. The agent understands the issue and resolves it by offering an exchange for a different size. Still, in discussing the logistics of the exchange, a nugget of information emerges amid the customer’s relief at having the issue resolved promptly—a comment about wanting to look professional for an upcoming work event.
Instead of closing the conversation, the agent seizes the moment by offering a complementary product, a free styling session, to create a set of work outfits incorporating the shirt. The customer, already engaged and receptive, books the session, which results in them purchasing additional products. Now, that inbound call that would have cost you $2 has just become the foundation for an expanded relationship. For that customer, your brand isn’t just another apparel warehouse—you’re their fashion consultant, style authority, and default choice for wardrobe-building.
For most companies, this scenario remains unrealized potential. Call centers focus on handling issues as quickly as possible, often at the expense of the bigger picture. But what if a contact center could become a powerful sales engine, transforming routine support calls into avenues for growth?
The Current State of Customer Calls: Costs and Missed Opportunities
When each call has an associated cost, it’s easy to land on North Star metrics like call volume and average handle time. And to be clear, managing those variables is mission-critical for achieving, calculating, and proving ROI. After all, an effective call center plays a pivotal role in identifying root causes to eliminate recurring issues, finding ways to redirect calls to more cost-effective channels when possible, and ultimately working to help create a customer experience that doesn’t result in a call center interaction at all.
What’s often missed, though, is that contact centers aren’t just problem hubs—they’re a rich source of customer insights that should radiate out into other parts of the business, especially when working within a fully integrated CX approach. Combining mountains of contact center interactions with feedback from other channels like surveys, chat, email, and social media gives you a fuller understanding of customer needs, behaviors, and preferences. This omnichannel approach provides a more complete VoC picture, helping you iron out the wrinkles in your customer journey to create seamless experiences across your brand.
Now, imagine your agents, equipped with this comprehensive data, are trained not only to resolve issues but also to identify key moments when customers express interest or hint at future needs. Your call center managers will be notified when these opportunities are missed so they can identify coachable moments and refine strategies.
With real-time access to this data, marketing and operations teams can act immediately—sending targeted offers, automating follow-up emails, or launching personalized ads based on these insights. Every conversation becomes a strategic touchpoint, driving additional sales while delivering personalized experiences that meet customers’ needs at precisely the right time.
Turning Customer Calls into Sales Opportunities: The Power of Active Listening and Suggestion
The key to transforming a contact center from a cost center to a profit center lies in how you train and empower your agents with the right tools and active listening strategies to help them see every customer interaction as a potential opportunity.
An important note: it’s not about pushing products but understanding the customer’s needs and intentions. The agent can recommend an upgrade when a customer mentions that they’re looking for more storage space. When they express frustration with a service limitation, the agent can offer a premium tier. These are the moments where customer experience and sales intersect, and where the call center can start delivering serious returns on investment.
After all, the same math that multiplies per-call costs at scale can be applied to the calls that surface opportunities. Take, for example, a large athletic retailer that implemented InMoment’s Conversational Intelligence solution to analyze 4.4 million voice transcripts, 574,000 web chat transcripts, and 100,000 survey responses.
Previously focused on cost reduction, their contact center strategy shifted after empowering agents with real-time customer data. Agents began listening for customer cues and started upselling, cross-selling, and suggesting relevant products, driving greater value. Even if just 2% of interactions reveal an opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell, that’s more than 100,000 opportunities to grow those customer relationships.
And it doesn’t stop there. AI-Driven Text Analytics and Conversational Analytics offer businesses a way to surface deeper insights from customer interactions. These tools unlock unstructured data, detecting feedback themes and anomalies.
Companies can then analyze threaded conversations between agents and customers to uncover patterns that reveal unmet needs, potential sales, or growth opportunities. With these insights, agents can proactively offer solutions or products that align with the customer’s unspoken desires, turning every call into a chance to build revenue.
Implementing a Customer-Centric Approach: Empowering Agents and Leveraging Technology
The foundation of transforming your call center lies in a customer-centric approach that puts the customer’s needs and desires at the heart of every interaction. But to make this vision a reality, you must arm your agents with the right tools and training.
One of the main reasons call center agents struggle with active listening and suggestive selling is that they’re simply too busy doing other things—categorizing calls, searching knowledge bases, and following scripts. With the right tools, those sorts of rote manual tasks can be automated, enabling agents to focus on truly listening to customers and uncovering their needs.
InMoment’s Conversational Intelligence solution features automated categorization, allowing agents to stay focused on listening to the customer.
Imagine a company that has implemented this approach. Instead of treating each call as transactional, their agents are trained to listen for opportunities. Empowered agents offer real solutions that align with the customer’s needs, leading to higher satisfaction rates and increased sales.
Measuring Success: Metrics that Matter
Once you’ve implemented the right technologies and strategies, how can you tell if it’s working? It’s not enough to simply count the number of calls resolved—success needs to be measured by the impact of those interactions. Metrics like conversion rates, revenue per call, and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) provide a holistic view of how well your contact center solution performs as both a support function and a revenue driver.
Consider the case of a global retail giant that recently implemented Conversational Intelligence to enhance customer interactions. By integrating post-call and post-visit survey data with sentiment analysis and real-time reporting, they can now track the revenue impact of each customer touchpoint. The solution ingests approximately 300,000 calls annually and utilizes AI-driven conversational summaries to provide timely insights into customer needs and preferences. This approach has allowed the company to break down internal data silos, analyze trends across all channels, and deliver a more seamless, frictionless customer experience.
The takeaway is clear: the success of your contact center is measured by more than how quickly agents can resolve issues. Instead, it’s about effectively identifying opportunities to create value during customer interactions. The right metrics allow you to continually refine your approach, ensuring long-term success.
In addition to traditional performance measures, Agent and Coach Scorecards help identify individual strengths and areas for improvement. With in-platform Quality Assurance features, businesses can pinpoint knowledge gaps and implement targeted training to ensure consistent performance. These scorecards, combined with Impact Prediction capabilities, allow contact centers to explore critical factors influencing their metrics. Understanding these drivers provides a roadmap to continuous improvement, whether it’s agent behavior, product knowledge, or customer sentiment.
Unlock the Untapped Potential of Your Contact Center
In an era where brands must differentiate on experiences to remain competitive, viewing your contact center as a cost center can lead to a massive insight blindspot. With the right tools and mindset, you can enhance every interaction and unlock the revenue potential of every customer call. By equipping your agents with the ability to actively listen and suggest relevant solutions, you can turn each interaction into a growth opportunity, driving customer loyalty and boosting your bottom line.
With omnichannel data, advanced AI, and deep analytics, InMoment’s Conversational Intelligence solution offers a full view of every customer interaction—across voice, chat, email, social media, and other feedback signals. This comprehensive view allows businesses to understand customer needs from every angle, empowering agents to deliver personalized solutions that drive both satisfaction and sales.
If you’re ready to shift your organization’s cost-centered mindset and start viewing customer interactions as opportunities to drive revenue, check out InMoment’s recent webinar co-hosted with CXPA—or schedule your demo today.