How to build a contact center budget that delivers

Securing the resources you need is key to unlocking your contact center's potential. This starts with a well-planned budget and a solid grasp of the outcomes you’re aiming to achieve.

Here are a few essential practices I’ve seen in customer contact centers that reliably secure the budgets they need:

View the budget as more than a document

If “budget” brings to mind endless rows and columns, you might be missing the bigger picture. Budgeting is really a communication process — a chance to learn more about the business and make a case that benefits everyone involved: employees, customers, and the organization. I’ve seen managers painstakingly craft detailed plans, only to watch their priorities get sidelined in a quick conversation with the CFO. But I’ve also seen productive budget agreements happen in casual settings, sometimes even sketched out on a napkin over coffee. It’s not the amount of detail in your analysis that counts; it’s how effectively you present your case.

When you view the budget as a conversation instead of a static document, you can focus more on building relationships, educating decision-makers, and spotlighting key priorities. In other words, you’re setting the stage to achieve the outcomes that truly matter.

Answer the big questions

Prepare for the big questions. Why are we spending this money? What’s the purpose of the contact center? Why is this year’s budget higher (or lower) than last year’s? These questions are fundamental to the budgeting process. While they’re often addressed through conversations and may be summarized in budget documents, what really matters is alignment. Everyone involved in preparing and approving the budget needs a clear, shared understanding of the value the contact center brings to the organization.

Keep the focus on results

Taking 1.7 million calls, reaching 90% first-call resolution, or meeting service level targets aren’t the results decision-makers are after — they’re just a means to an end. As your contact center evolves from simply managing transactions to delivering exceptional customer experiences, your impact on key business outcomes grows. This includes driving revenue, improving profitability, boosting market share, and enhancing word of mouth. Drawing this connection sharpens budget discussions around what truly matters.

Base the budget on a clear strategy

The first step in a successful budgeting process is aligning on the contact center’s direction and priorities. Your customer access strategy serves as the framework for how customers will engage with your organization. This strategy acts as the blueprint for the budget, clarifying who your customers are, when and how they want to reach you, how contacts will be identified, routed, managed, and tracked, and how you’ll use the insights these interactions provide. Without this foundation, budget decisions can easily veer off-course, potentially conflicting with broader organizational goals.

Ensure that budgeting is an extension of resource planning

In well-run contact centers, forecasting, staffing, scheduling, and cost analysis are continuous, integrated responsibilities. These processes should simplify budgeting since the budget should naturally flow from established forecasting and planning steps.

This highlights an essential principle: objectives should drive the budget — not the other way around. If your budget is based solely on last year’s figures, arbitrary targets, or anything other than the goals outlined in your customer access strategy and workload forecasts, you’re working at a disadvantage. This is a prime opportunity to challenge and reshape those assumptions.

Identify key tradeoffs

What if the forecast is high? Low? What if you deliver better service levels? Or worse? What are the cost implications if…? Once you’ve set the budget for the expected workload and recommended resources, it’s straightforward to rerun scenarios with different workload assumptions or alternative service levels. Running these scenarios helps inform smarter budgeting decisions and gives others a clearer understanding of contact center dynamics.

Look for opportunities to maximize cross-functional resources

Sometimes, the best way to boost an organization’s results is by investing more in a specific area. Instead of viewing expenditures in isolation, an effective budget strategy leverages cross-functional resources.

For instance, marketing might contribute to the contact center’s budget to help capture and analyze consumer trends. Legal teams increasingly support investments in tools that improve tracking and consistency in customer interactions. Product development could allocate budget to the contact center to enhance analysis of customer feedback. These opportunities emerge when strong relationships and collaboration exist across functions.

Highlight investment opportunities

Like most teams, contact centers are constantly looking for ways to do more with less. But there’s also a case for making high-impact investments in strategic areas, such as:

• Planning and process improvements
• Selective technology upgrades
• Management-level training
• Cross-sell and upsell programs
• Targeted coaching for agents and supervisors
• Research and development

The key is to be selective — prioritizing the areas most likely to deliver a strong return on investment.

Present the budget formally

At first, this might seem to contradict the emphasis on collaboration and open communication, but a formal presentation can be a valuable part of the process. For one, it serves as a catalyst to bring all decision-makers together at once. (How many times did you answer the same questions for different people last year?) With everyone in the room, they can hear each other’s questions and insights, which saves time and raises the overall level of understanding quickly.

Keep the presentation short and uncluttered

Use visuals like graphs and illustrations wherever possible, and include supporting materials, such as system reports, as needed (but keep them out of the main presentation). Real examples can make your message resonate — for instance, “Evan Gerard, a business owner in Nashville and a new customer, was one of the 1.6 million people we assisted last year. He reached out because he was concerned about…” These stories make the numbers real. And when loyalty and positive word-of-mouth of Evan and 1,599,999 other customers are on the line, service tradeoffs become much more tangible.

Anticipate and prepare for the “usual questions”

These questions have come up before, and they’ll come up again:

• What did we spend on the center last year?
• Did we achieve our goals?
• What was our ROI?
• What’s the contact-per-customer ratio? Sales per customer?
• Is growth in certain channels (e.g., chat, social media, self-service) impacting agent workload? (Reducing? Increasing? Shifting?)
• What’s our cost per contact? Is it trending up or down?
• How are we reducing unnecessary contacts?
• Can our current resources handle the projected workload?

There will be others specific to your team. Be prepared. These questions are your chance to shine. Some will be more relevant than others, but having a firm grasp on the facts builds credibility and confidence throughout the process.

Ensure the budgeting process is honest and responsible

Be realistic and transparent about the recent past and whether the contact center has met its goals. The budget should contextualize this in terms of customer satisfaction, agent performance, and the proposed objectives and funding. It needs to align with the organization’s mission and integrate seamlessly with the roles and goals of other departments. Plus, it should openly address both opportunities and challenges.

Yes, effective budgeting involves plenty of number-crunching. But, more importantly, it requires clear direction, open communication, and a deep understanding of the contact center’s needs and strategic impact. This process is a chance to showcase your leadership, communication skills, cultural awareness, and professional expertise. Approach it as a meaningful opportunity.

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Brad Cleveland is known globally as one of today’s foremost experts in customer strategy and management. He is author of "Contact Center Management on Fast Forward" (4th ed 2019) and "Leading the Customer Experience" (1st ed 2021), along with other books and hundreds of articles. He has worked across 45 states and 60 countries for clients as diverse as American Express, Apple, USAA, the University of California, and the federal governments of Australia, Canada, and the U.S. His books, articles, and LinkedIn Learning courses have been translated into a dozen languages. Brad was a founding partner and former CEO of the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) and is today a sought-after speaker and consultant.