Many contact centers treat all customers equally, whether they’re brand new customers who’ve just spent their first $5 with the company, or die-hard, loyal fans who’ve spent thousands with them over the years.

While everyone who calls in to your contact center certainly deserves the same level of customer service in terms of the polite, respectful handling of their call, it just makes good business sense to give special benefits and perks to the customers who make up the lifeblood of your company.

There are several ways this can be accomplished, but one of the easiest - and most appreciated by high-spending customers - is simply to move them to the front of the line when they call in.  Contact centers have different options for implementing this change, but each has its pros and cons.

1. Provide a VIP phone number. Rather than requiring your high-value customers to call the same number as everyone else when they need assistance, give them their own special hotline, staffed by members of your contact center workforce who are trained to handle their calls as swiftly as possible, while at the same time deepening the relationship with each customer. Even if they never need to call in, simply knowing that help is only seconds away is a significant perk for many.

The benefits of establishing a VIP phone line include its ease of installation, the fact that only a few of your agents will be needed to staff it, thus keeping any disruption of regular contact center activities to a minimum, and the fact that it is an effective way to provide superior customer service to your best customers.

There are some drawbacks, however, as well. You’ll need to be very clear as to which customers will have access to the new number, establishing strict limits for its use, or it will soon be just as busy as your normal number. It is also vital to consider carefully how you’ll give out this special number – posting it on your website, for example, is an open invitation to anyone to call. And finally, if someone posts the number online or shares it with their friends and family, your contact center workforce will once again have no way of differentiating between the actual high-value customers and everyone else.

2. Route customer calls via IVR. By adding an extra option to your IVR system, callers will identify themselves as high-value before they ever reach your contact center workforce. You could, for example, ask them to press 1 if they are new customers, and 2 if they are repeat customers.

While there is still a margin for error here, since a customer could push the wrong number, there is no danger of a special hotline number becoming public. But one drawback is the fact that there’s no way of knowing whether a repeat customer who spends $1000 a week with you is waiting behind one who only spends $100 a week at your establishment. Tweaking the message to determine the best way to divide customers will take some time and effort, but rewarding customer loyalty by giving them faster service is an effective tool in retaining your best customers.