At a contact center conference last fall, the most packed breakout session was titled: How to Turn Your Contact Center into a Revenue Center. You might as well call it: How to Eat Ice Cream Without the Calories. Contact center leaders have been chasing this dream since the George W. Bush administration. Everyone who runs a contact center is in love with this idea.
The presentation was compelling — slides galore, but the thesis was simple: contact centers can sell. Whether it’s taking reservations or handling inbound sales, contact centers bring in revenue. Q.E.D. The crowd ate it up. I joined in, giving a standing ovation . The argument is seductive. After all, some of the earliest call centers in the ’70s were catalog sales hubs. Even today, when revenue from call centers might land on a different P&L sheet, the idea that sales-focused centers are revenue centers holds up. Objectively.
But then the pep rally ended, and the reality check hit:
Why are most contact centers still cost centers?
The hard truth is this: sales-focused contact centers are a minority. The vast majority are service centers, focused on support with the occasional upsell or cross-sell. Their primary purpose isn’t revenue generation. It’s service. Any revenue they bring in is tangential, not foundational.
What About All the Data?
My cohost and friend Bob loves to point out that contact centers are gold mines of data. They hold insights into brand perception and, more importantly, predictive data — things like a customer’s likelihood to churn or buy. These insights could, theoretically, drive wallet share and retention. This argument says the data makes the contact center a revenue center.
And this argument is not wrong on principle.
The problem is, few contact center leaders know how to turn those insights into measurable dollars. Fewer still can convince their organizations to credit them for the revenue or cost savings their data generates.
The CFO Decides
Here’s the deal: contact centers are not revenue centers. Don’t shoot the messenger. I don’t make the rules; the CFO does. And most CFOs don’t see your contact center as a revenue center.
Why? Because revenue is something you want to grow. Sure, you want to manage costs, but growth is the goal. If your contact center were truly a revenue center, you wouldn’t face the annual mandate to cut costs or stay flat.
Every single day, senior leaders come to me with one request: shrink their contact center. Automate it. Use AI to reduce costs. The entire enterprise pitch for service AI boils down to this: it will save you money in the contact center.
Take Marc Benioff, for example. He’s hiring 2,000 people to sell Agentforce. On the sales side, they’re doubling down on humans. But the landing page? It’s a calculator showing how Agentforce will reduce costs — especially in contact centers. Whatever revenue the contact center generates clearly pales in comparison to its costs.
The Hill You Don’t Want to Die On
I get it. The contact center is undervalued. It’s underappreciated. But if you want to make the case that your contact center is a value center — or even a revenue center — the burden of proof is on you.
Don’t die on the “revenue center” hill. Value is what you’re really after.
Make your case. Be straightforward. Be convincing. But until then, you run a cost center. And that’s okay. I don’t make the rules — your CFO does.
I’m rooting for you.
(Oh, and buy my book. It’s been featured on NPR, NBC News, and other publications. Follow me Amas Tenumah for more irreverent truths about customer service and other musings.)
