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22.02.2010
CallCenterWorld© 2010 closes on a high and reveals multichannel affinity
Once again, the international contact centre exhibition and conference saw record numbers of visitors through its doors. 7,500 visitors and 242 exhibitors (2009: 250) from 13 countries attended the three day event in Berlin, making it the largest industry event in Europe.
"I would like to thank all our exhibitors, conference participants and trade show visitors for supporting CallCenterWorld“, said Sigrid Bauschert, chair person of organiser Management Circle AG. "Set against the current economic climate, the response from the industry to participate in such impressive numbers resulted in another great success for our exhibition and conference.”
Interactivity, multichannel communications, knowledge exchange and networking at various day and evening events were again key features of CallCenterWorld 2010.
For the first time ever, CallCenterWorld utilised an electronic voting system to allow interactivity with the conference participants on selected key topics with interesting results.
Around 80 percent of the conference delegates agreed with the assumption that additional legal constraints will limit telephone sales opportunities in the business-to-consumer sector.
The delegates were not so certain whether, in future, the telephone as a communication tool will lose favour against other channels such as email, chat and SMS. 52 percent through this would be the case, whereas 42 percent disagreed and some abstained.
Corporate blogs were also discussed and 66 percent revealed that they currently had no blog in use. 24 percent stated they were already actively using a blog, 8 percent are currently planning to introduce one whereas 2 percent had no plans at all to incorporate this medium in their communications mix.
It became apparent during the social media panel that using this communication method is not yet common practice in organisations: 30 percent have not been affected by customer communication 2.0 in their daily work, and only 3 percent stated that they have already embraced interactive customer communication.
One of the highlights of CallCenterWorld is the annual presentation of the CAt-Award, the highest accolade of call centre management in German speaking countries.
This year, for the first time, the awards in categories Gold, Silver and Bronze were not country specific.
Claudia Derkum, head of operations of SNT Deutschland AG received the Gold CAt-Award for the expansion of an inbound call centre into a successful sales channel. Rüdiger Ratte, manager of ADT Service-Center GmbH was awarded the Silver CAt-Award for the set up of professional call centre structures as part of a reorganisation.
The Bronze CAt-Award went to Lars Sandte, head of telesales/marketing of Camfil KG. The judges recognised the successful establishment of an independent telesales department to service SME customers.
Next year CallCenterWorld will again take place in the Estrel Convention Center in Berlin from 21 to 24 February 2010.
Further details about the 2010 conference and exhibition are available at http://www.callcenterworld.de/en
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17.02.2010
Noble Systems Releases Noble TouchStar 6.0
New version enhances core applications, improves agent-supervisor interaction
Atlanta, GA – February 16, 2010: Noble Systems Corporation, a global leader in innovative contact center technology solutions, today announced the release of Noble TouchStar 6.0, a comprehensive upgrade for the product’s core architecture and feature set.
“Noble TouchStar 6.0 offers substantial improvements by adding flexibility and enhancing data management and reporting functions,” says James K. Noble, President and CEO of Noble Systems. “The upgrade also demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the Noble TouchStar platform and the businesses that rely on it. We look forward to continuing innovation and support for the Noble TouchStar community.”
Noble TouchStar 6.0 includes new load-balancing multi-threaded software architecture and leverages Dialogic’s NMS carrier class hardware while remaining backwards compatible for customers who do not support it. In addition to these enhancements, Noble TouchStar 6.0 provides advanced automation of daily reporting, system activity logging and data management in a centralized user interface.
Noble Systems acquired TouchStar’s assets and intellectual property in 2009 to improve Noble’s small and medium business offerings, complement its large enterprise offer and provide TouchStar users a way forward with the resources of an experienced contact center technology partner. With the transaction, Noble Systems introduced hundreds of TouchStar customers to the Noble Solution suite featuring workforce management, desktop unification and unified contact technology along with dedicated services and support.
About Noble Systems®
Noble Systems Corporation (NSC) is a global provider of contact center technology solutions, delivering systems since 1989. Every day, millions of contacts are made by agents at 4,000+ installations worldwide using the Noble® platforms for inbound/outbound/blended communications. The scalable, integrated Noble Solution includes ACD and predictive dialing; unified contact processing for voice, email, and web; and integrated IVR, digital recording, messaging, quality control/monitoring systems, scripting, and real-time reporting and management tools. Noble Systems (Atlanta, GA) pioneered an open, scalable, fully-distributed platform. For more information on this item or the company, contact Lee Allum at 1.888.866.2538 x538 or visit www.noblesys.com.
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17.02.2010
Noble Systems Releases Noble TouchStar 6.0
New version enhances core applications, improves agent-supervisor interaction
Atlanta, GA: Noble Systems Corporation, a global leader in innovative contact center technology solutions, today announced the release of Noble TouchStar 6.0, a comprehensive upgrade for the product’s core architecture and feature set.
“Noble TouchStar 6.0 offers substantial improvements by adding flexibility and enhancing data management and reporting functions,” says James K. Noble, President and CEO of Noble Systems. “The upgrade also demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the Noble TouchStar platform and the businesses that rely on it. We look forward to continuing innovation and support for the Noble TouchStar community.”
Noble TouchStar 6.0 includes new load-balancing multi-threaded software architecture and leverages Dialogic’s NMS carrier class hardware while remaining backwards compatible for customers who do not support it. In addition to these enhancements, Noble TouchStar 6.0 provides advanced automation of daily reporting, system activity logging and data management in a centralized user interface.
Noble Systems acquired TouchStar’s assets and intellectual property in 2009 to improve Noble’s small and medium business offerings, complement its large enterprise offer and provide TouchStar users a way forward with the resources of an experienced contact center technology partner. With the transaction, Noble Systems introduced hundreds of TouchStar customers to the Noble Solution suite featuring workforce management, desktop unification and unified contact technology along with dedicated services and support.
About Noble Systems®
Noble Systems Corporation (NSC) is a global provider of contact center technology solutions, delivering systems since 1989. Every day, millions of contacts are made by agents at 4,000+ installations worldwide using the Noble® platforms for inbound/outbound/blended communications. The scalable, integrated Noble Solution includes ACD and predictive dialing; unified contact processing for voice, email, and web; and integrated IVR, digital recording, messaging, quality control/monitoring systems, scripting, and real-time reporting and management tools. Noble Systems (Atlanta, GA) pioneered an open, scalable, fully-distributed platform. For more information on this item or the company, contact Lee Allum at 1.888.866.2538 x538 or visit www.noblesys.com.
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13.02.2010
The potential for customers to 'go nuclear' has raised the stakes for Customer
Last week people attended Genesys Experience Summit to gather more insight from our partner on the latest thinking around Customer Experience. Some of the market research they presented just confirms what we all instinctively know: people in the UK have less and less tolerance of sloppy customer service and are increasingly prepared to move to a competitor in search of a better experience; or worse, spread the word about that negative experience more widely than businesses thought possible just a couple of years ago.
This got me thinking: 'Is Customer Service becoming the Achilles heel of British business as consumers become more active and less tolerant of poor service?' A Datamonitor report on the subject found that 75% of UK consumers have ended relationships with suppliers because of poor experience in dealing with a supplier. We are clearly not the stoical, uncomplaining types we once were.
The availability of more choice through much greater competition and the stimulation of interaction through the arrival of an array of new communication methods to our desktops and smart phones - email, text, web chat, YouTube videos, blogs, and social media sites like FaceBook and Bebo - have given us many more tools to get our message across.
For many, the complaining that used to be done about poor service behind closed doors, has a potential to proliferate worldwide in days. You only need to look at the impact of the 'United breaks Guitars' video posted on YouTube by one disgruntled passenger to realise the true dangers of not being more Customer Experience orientated - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
The potential financial and reputational damage of poor customer service must finally be alerting board directors of most firms to the importance of being better engaged with customers. And in the public sector, it is also becoming much more visible to us as taxpayers. The National Audit Office's government departmental reports such as the recently released 'HMRC: Handling Telephone Enquiries' reveals the impact of its contact centre deficiencies all too clearly. This report revealed that HMRC simply failed to answer about 44 million phone calls last year - that's 43% of all calls made to HMRC that were not answered.
So if there is nowhere to hide for poor deliverers of customer service how can customer service directors make sure customers are having positive experiences when they make contact with their companies. Clearly having enough staff in the contact centre, trained to the right level, supported by the right technology and motivated to deliver a resolution for the customer are all important considerations. It is also important to measure contact centre agents not on how many calls they complete (i.e. via Average Handling Time figures), but on what they achieve for both the company (e.g. in terms of additional sales) and for the customer herself (e.g. was a customer request actioned or satisfactory response given?). Customer services directors should now be demanding access to this management information which it is now possible to get in near real-time.
It is also important to realise that customers, particularly 'Generation Y' under 25-year olds, are just as likely to communicate with you by email or text. If they have a complaint, they might share it with their army of friends via FaceBook.
So customer service is increasingly about gaining rapid visibility on all the communication channels through which your customers are trying to reach you or send you a message. The technology is already out there to trap this information. These new channels can also be used judiciously for outbound communication to keep customers informed of new offers and new developments in the company.
There is no doubt that the world of customer service is changing fast and as the call centre evolves into the multi-channel contact centre over the next few years, it has a real opportunity to be at the leading edge of this change.
About Writer: Faraz Khan is managing director of leading contact centre consultancy and systems integrator ProtoCall One specialising in multi-channel communications, workforce optimisation and decision management solutions.
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13.02.2010
New decade new contact centre
New decade new contact centre - read the article on the death of voice in the contact centre by Faraz Khan, Managing Director, Protocall One.
A survey of contact centre operations directors that we ran late last year came up with the interesting finding that 82% of them thought that voice would cease to be the dominant communications channel in their contact centres within the next three years. So that is four out of every five people in charge of running what used to be called call centres, think voice calls will represent a minority channel by 2014.
So are we talking about the imminent death of voice in contact centres? It is certainly becoming clear that contact centres are seeing the potential of multi-channel communications - SMS, Web Chat, email and other non-voice modes of communication. Non-voice also takes in the increasing trend for callers to interact with Intelligent Voice Response (IVR) systems, often supported by speech recognition technology, which now handles many of the more routine caller requests - if you request a bank balance or to give an electricity meter reading.
The challenge and opportunities implied by this impending change cannot be underestimated. Not least of these is the need for up skilling of agents so they can handle multiple contact channels: our survey found that 75% of ops directors were struggling to find agents capable of writing clear and well constructed emails as they gear up to respond to the growing volume of customer emails.
But perhaps more interestingly, where multi-channel comms has been deployed, according to Contact Babel, contact centres have found it much easier to retain staff. 'Agent attrition', as it is called, fell by over half from 27% to 13% where moves have been made into multi-channel comms. So there is a distinct correlation between the skills required for the job in the contact centre and retention of staff and it is not simply because they are paying more for more skilled individuals. The same Contact Babel 2009 study shows average agent annual salaries increasing by just £800 last year.
So what is going on here? Could it be that contact centres are becoming more interesting places to work and that multi-channel communications combined with more 'self-service' deployments (for handling the more routine call queries) are the key elements in making this happen? We think so.
Investment in multi-channel certainly must be attracting 'Generation Y' into more agent jobs. After all this generation is much more attuned to interacting via text, email, social media and even in virtual world sites like Second Life rather than racking up their parents' phone bills. It is clear that contact centre heads are gradually recognising that many customers prefer to pick up the phone only if they are really stuck and cannot resolve their query via the web.
So what is the future of voice in contact centres in the new decade? We think it will not only become a minority channel but it will have to change quite radically. It will become, as it is already for many, the channel of last resort for more complex queries or complaints which require long explanation either by the customer or agent or both. Agents will need to be real specialists in particular offerings. They may also need more power to make decisions to improve the customers' situation - acting as advisers as much as resolution providers. Call success will need to be evaluated based on whether the caller got the information and was able to resolve an issue during that call. More granularity will be needed around call resolution reporting. Average call handling times and other, so called, 'efficiency' measures will cease to be as relevant as contact centres focus on delivering great customer service to protect and stimulate brand loyalty much more powerfully than they are able to do today. The twin revolutions of multi-channel and self-service together offer a bright future for contact centres in the UK and beyond.
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13.02.2010
ontact centre industry returning to invest in technology
ProtoCall One survey shows contact centre industry returning to invest in technology to improve customer service
67% of contact centres say that improving customer service is their main criteria to invest in new technology
Contact centres are beginning to emerge from the economic downturn and are starting to invest in new technology, according to new research from leading contact centre integrator ProtoCall One. The survey shows budgets allocated for IT investment in contact centres have remained intact, and customer service excellence continues to be the key focus of contact centre operational strategy.
Any IT investment for contact centres is currently focused on "sweating" the technology already in place, with 64% of those surveyed looking at investing to enhance their existing systems to improve customer acquisition and retention. Over two thirds of those surveyed said that their main criteria for investing in new technology was to support the customer experience.
The downturn also affected contact centre IT support, with a quarter of those surveyed reporting that their contact centre had recently lost IT support staff, and 21% said IT support had been outsourced.
Faraz Khan, Managing Director, ProtoCall One, commented:
"The survey results paint an interesting picture of the current state of the contact centre industry as the market moves out of the downturn. Contact centres are looking to invest in new technology and IT budgets are available, but any investment needs to marry with existing legacy technology in order to support and improve the customer experience, With many contact centres losing or outsourcing IT support, it's getting harder for contact centre managers to be able to implement IT projects that are not supporting 'business as usual' activities."
ProtoCall One surveyed members of its Genesys Workforce Management (GWFM) user group on 1st July 2009. The user group consists of senior contact centre operations managers and directors from leading global businesses based in the UK. This group represents a quarter of all GWFM users operating in the UK.
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13.02.2010
Will the recession help to keep a lid on excessive staff turnover in contact cen
Will the recession help to keep a lid on excessive staff turnover in contact centres?
Andy Turner, Head of Workforce Optimisation at ProtoCall One
Agents working in contact centres are feeling the cold winds of the recession as much as any other group of employees across the UK. It has reached the point where, unless directly involved, most people know someone who has been made redundant recently or whose job is currently under threat. The total number of job vacancies has also shrunk. The Office for National Statistics figures published for the last quarter of 2008 shows vacancies at the lowest level for seven years.
How will this current climate affect staff turnover? Typical annual staff turnover rate in contact centres is around 15-20%. In my experience at ProtoCall One, where we work with many contact centres to tackle staff turnover issues, the most problematic contact centres have turnover rates at 30% while the best have turnover rates on par or better than the rest of the working population at around 6%.
Agents staying put
A common view held by contact centre managers is as the economic climate worsens staff are more likely to stay in jobs even if they are not happy there - especially if a family member has lost a job, they fear of redundancy and see evidence of more applicants and chasing fewer jobs. No matter how intolerable the working environment, the agents will just grin and bear it. So agents are sitting tight which will keep the turnover figure down, and on the recruitment side there is a growing pool of applicants who will be queuing up to take any vacancies.
Your contact centre may be experiencing this situation as we speak, with agents holding on to their jobs also accompanied by a wave of potential applicants. It must be understood that this current situation is not a cure for staff turnover and it could well be simply storing up trouble for the future.
Address the causes of high staff turnover
If your contact centre suffers from high staff turnover, you need to ask the simple question - why? High staff turnover pushes up recruitment costs and increases training demands. It also erodes customer experience and effectiveness as inexperienced agents that a higher proportion of calls.
Your search for the reasons for high staff turnover in your contact centre needs to be far reaching. Creating a pleasurable work environment and providing services to employees that help to assist with the pressure of the daily routine has been core to many very successful contact centres. The shining example is First Direct, which famously has an on-site crèche and a concierge service to assist agents with their day-to-day tasks, such as going to the Post Office - all this plus management who truly believe in empowering their agents delivers a staff turnover rate of 6%.
As First Direct shows, providing a modern, attractive working environment is definitely one way of tackling staff turnover. But the reasons list is a long one and includes poor management, stress, failing IT systems, inadequate processes and unrealistic targets. All these are examples of triggers for contact centre agents to finally decide they are leaving and the vast majority of agents leave the contact centre sector entirely - only 13% of people who work in contact centres will go to another contact centre when they change jobs.
Be receptive
Contact centre managers have the biggest role to play when it comes to reducing staff turnover. Any good manager should be aware of the problems on the 'shop floor', keeping an ear to the ground and tackling the causes of staff turnover day to day. Be supportive, listen to the comments from agents - ask them how the business can help employees during the downturn - perhaps agents are looking for shift changes or overtime to increase income.
Your agents need to feel involved in your business. Use customer experience as a focus for improvement, challenge old processes and accepted norms, by involving agents, allowing input and demonstrating flexibility, agents will want to get more involved in fixing what is currently wrong. Always carry out an exit interview for leaving employees, who should give you a full and frank list of reasons for moving on.
Next steps
With many contact centres going through hard times there is a lot of fear for the future, so contact centre managers need to communicate the current state of the business, its prospects going forward and involve agents in turnaround projects. Regular, honest communication from senior management is really valued as it clears up uncertainty and makes all employees feel that they are a part of the solution.
Although the number of recruits chasing each of your contact centre vacancies will increase during these recessionary times, it does not mean that candidate quality will improve. In fact the volume of applicants could make it harder to select good prospective agents. People who have never considered contact centre work before may now be applying for positions as they feel it is a job that anyone can secure quickly. Contact centres are looking for a blend of skills - customer handling, ability to use IT systems, flexibility, commercial awareness, team work. Not everyone will fit the criteria, especially if they have been employed in very different sectors previously. It will pay to stick to your recruitment guidelines, employ based on aptitude and the person's 'fit' with your organisation.
In summary, the core message is to avoid being complacent about staff turnover. Although your agents may be sitting tight at the moment while the job market is volatile, it does not mean they will not leave as soon as the recessionary storm subsides. With a 'back to basics' approach - listen to agents and tackle the causes of staff turnover seriously you can ensure your organisation continues to retain and attract quality agents now and in the future.
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13.02.2010
Improving the effectiveness of the contact centre
Making better informed decisions to improve the effectiveness of the contact centre
By Jason Sparks, Commercial Director, ProtoCall One
Since the dawn of the call centre in 1956 in the US, they have been playing a larger part in our lives and have become gradually and inextricably linked to the success of many businesses. By 1972, 40 per cent of UK households had a phone and this doubled to 80 per cent by 1984. By this date virtually all businesses had a telephone and call volumes rose rapidly. Many of these call centres, initially inside insurance and banking businesses, needed to direct calls effectively around their organisations to ensure that customers were answered promptly by someone with the right level of skills and knowledge to help.
The Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) was born. Over time, ACDs were overlaid with skills-based routing solutions and evolved into the sophisticated switches which they are today, providing masses of data about agent activity such as how many calls each agent has handled per hour, 'average handling times' and percentages of 'abandoned' outbound calls. These productivity measures can be viewed in real-time or reviewed over a period of time by call centre operations teams to spot trends which might help them organise their agents better.
This switch data is often overlaid with Workforce Management (WFM) systems which provide a suite of tools for manager, supervisor and agent-level shift scheduling and workload forecasting as well as self-service tools to help agents manage their own shift and holiday requirements. WFM systems understandably provide lots of data for analysis by operations teams.
But what are call centres for but to help improve the service that customers are getting with a view to them buying more from them and staying loyal? To this end, call centres were enthusiastic early adopters of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. CRM systems brought together customer data which was largely held in separate divisional database 'silos' by product line purchased (e.g. in the case of a general insurer - pet insurance, household, motor, travel etc). Suddenly with CRM systems it became possible to gather a 'single view' of the customer based on all the history that a customer had with that company. Managers could see which customers were most valuable and should be offered special treatment and which were ripe for cross or up selling.
CRM systems today help deliver the single 'unified desktop' view of the customer to agents so they can act on this information. But CRM systems also generate masses of data which can be used to plan, implement and evaluate marketing campaigns, prioritise sales leads and manage customer contacts better, if this data can be unlocked and presented in the right way to the right managers .
Call centres have, in the last 10 years, also been evolving into multi-channel contact centres. Although we are still in the early adoption stage of multi-channel communications it is clear that contact centre agents must re-organise themselves to respond efficiently to customers, regardless of whether they choose to reach them by text, email, letter, phone or engage in a web chat for a more technical enquiry. That unified desktop just got a whole lot more complicated!
Then there are the proliferation of departments within an organisation that are taking a keener interest in what goes on inside the contact centre as they seek to monitor and deliver their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to keep driving the business forward. Some of the more obvious ones are marketing and sales management. But what about insurance claims departments or, in the case of regulated industries such as financial services, compliance departments? Increasingly industry regulation demands call recording solutions. As greater scrutiny and efficiency is demanded of businesses more and more systems are being put in to provide that scrutiny and monitor productivity. New systems mean new data feeds to cross tabulate and analyse.
As more is demanded of the contact centre by more managers across the business, Management Information (MI) departments have sprung up to find and present all this data that these managers need. MI analysts today are often supported by complex Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which help extract relevant data from multiple databases and present it in spreadsheets. But the Extract, Transfer and Load (ETL) processes that traditional BI systems carry out provide one time, static, snapshot views and can take weeks to produce. Requests to delve deeper or feed in another set of figures often mean that the analyst must manually rewrite a report or construct a new BI query.
Are you struggling to get to the data that they need to understand how your contact centre is really performing? Are you tired of having to work with expensive MI consultants (or in-house teams making large, per query, inter-departmental charges) to define new parameters of analysis in order to get a different view into the contact centre's performance?
Managers increasingly are looking for much more dynamic, real-time views into the contact centre and they want to monitor agents' progress against their specific KPIs and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on an ongoing basis. To this end a new breed of Decision Management solutions are now emerging, led by ProtoCall One's 'OneView'. This offers all managers across the business the ability to gain access to multiple data feeds quickly and present these in personalised, dashboard-style views on their desktops.
So if the finance director wants to look at the gross profit margin per agent for that day, week, month or year this becomes possible within minutes rather than days. If the motor insurance product line manager wants to check the value of motor insurance sales generated by the contact centre this month, this can be delivered in minutes once the data feeds are in place. If the marketing manager wants to check whether the latest campaign has led to an uptick of inbound sales enquiries or an increase in cross selling conversions to sale, then this too is possible.
ProtoCall One is already working with several large enterprises to help them organise their databases in a way in which it is possible to deliver this OneView power to multiple department heads. Part of our engagement is to help firms tease out what they are trying to achieve from getting a better grip on their data. Different departments want different things but there are also core requirements like improving the customer experience, increasing sales, reducing customer churn and creating brand loyalty, that tend to be common to many parts of the business from the CEO downwards.
The benefit of delivering this level of transparency across the business is that the value which contact centre agents are delivering to meet specific and collective goals is clearer to all. It can also provide more reliable and timely intelligence which ensures that operational changes being made by contact centre operations teams are good ones which genuinely improve agent effectiveness and take the business forward at the same time.
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13.02.2010
survey shows contact centres face skills issues as channel mix changes
survey shows contact centres face skills issues as channel mix changes
82% agree voice will cease to be the dominant communications channel in UK contact centres within 3 years
Contact centres are rapidly moving towards a multi-channel future according to new research from leading contact centre integrator, ProtoCall One. Call levels are set to decline as 82% of those surveyed stated that voice will cease to be the dominant communications channel in UK contact centres within the next three years. Over a third of respondents (36%) had detected a change in their in-bound communications mix over the last year. All respondents reported that email, SMS/Text and web chat had increased within the last 12 months, while fax and letter volumes declined.
As the channel mix changes and other channels such as email and web chat take a bigger slice of the mix, 45% of survey respondents were finding it hard to recruit individuals who can operate across a range of channels: 43% struggled with finding candidates with appropriate IT and technical skills.
Email is causing particular issues:
* 75% of respondents had difficulties in finding people who have the skills to write clear and well constructed emails
* 63% had imposed agreed response time standards for responding to customer emails, but 50% struggled to meet their own standards
* 48% were using pre-set templates to respond to emails.
Agents are increasingly becoming specialists as they are required to build on their technical or product knowledge, or specialise in taking calls which require high levels of involvement and engagement as callers demand greater levels of expertise from agents. Rather than handling all incoming calls, 72% of respondents stated their agents were become more specialised in the calls they handled.
Customer handling skills are also high on the training agenda, as all respondents surveyed stated that they train their agents to ensure they understand and demonstrate the key elements of delivering a positive customer experience - answering calls quickly, being warm, friendly and engaging, and striving for first call problem resolution.
Faraz Khan, managing director, ProtoCall One, commented:
"The results of this survey show that contact centres are fast forwarding into a multi-channel future. The vast majority are now convinced that voice is set to lose its dominance. The next few years will see huge change for contact centres as new channels such as email and web chat take hold. Contact centre managers have the challenge of ensuring their systems can adapt, while also nurturing and recruiting the right skills to take advantage of the multi-channel future."
ProtoCall One surveyed members of its Genesys Workforce Management (GWFM) user group on 18th November 2009. The user group consists of senior contact centre operations managers and directors from leading global businesses based in the UK. This group represents a quarter of all GWFM users operating in the UK.
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13.02.2010
7 steps to becoming an employer of choice
Being an employer of choice is about attracting the right people, effectively inducting them into both the technical and cultural aspects of the business, and – once trained – continually engaging with and developing those individuals throughout their employee lifecycle. In this article, we reveal how to do just that.
Research conducted by the Professional Planning Forum in March shows that – thanks to the recession and the fact that fewer people want to risk leaving stable employment – call centre attrition is now running at just 23%.
For less conscientious planners, this news could be the perfect excuse to sit back and let attrition take care of itself. Managers, too, might become complacent rather than constantly honing their training, development and cultural strategies in order to attract and retain the right employees.
But savvier call centres understand that taking their eye off the ball in this way could have serious repercussions. They know that if good agents end up leaving rather than those who should have been managed out, it will be harder for the business to maintain a competitive advantage once the upturn comes.
“Training, development, cultural policies and performance management shouldn’t be toned down just because we’re in a recession,” warns Steve Woosey, Membership Director at the Planning Forum. “If you stop focusing on these things now, you risk becoming the kind of employer that people won’t want to work for in the future.”
So what can organisations do to become an employer of choice – both during the economic crisis and beyond? Here, we outline a seven-step approach that draws on practical experience from some of the country’s best call centres to ensure your organisation remains at the top of its game.
1) Refine the recruitment processes
According to Paul Milloy, Head of Contact Centres at British Gas Services, the key is to take an integrated approach. “In 2008, our planning department used historical data to predict staffing requirements for the whole year before it even began,” he says. “We engaged with our recruitment and training teams well in advance, telling them how many people we’d need on what shift patterns. We then fine-tuned this data on a regular basis to account for any changes we encountered at each site as the year went on.”
Milloy says that British Gas – which won a Planning Forum Innovation Award in 2008 for its resourcing strategy – predominantly uses online recruitment advertising as it feels this will reach a wider audience. It also uses an online testing application that focuses on individuals’ personality and values more than their basic skills.
The Planning Forum’s Steve Woosey agrees that this approach is critical to recruitment success. “Just make sure you’ve already identified what ‘good’ looks like,” he advises. “Use behavioural software to uncover the attitude and values of your best performers, and produce from that a template to recruit similar people.”
In addition to this, be honest. “Be clear about what you’re offering and what the job will be like,” says Woosey. “During the recruitment process, bring other agents in to give a ‘real-life’ opinion of the job and environment. People will more likely stick with an organisation if it’s been fairly represented.”
2) Introduce lifestyle planning
If you adapt your operational model to incorporate flexible working patterns, you’re more likely to retain staff in the long-term because you’ll be offering them work that actually suits their lifestyles.
“We did this in 2007,” says Scott Craggs, Resource Planner at Orange UK, which was presented a lifestyle planning award by the Planning Forum in April last year. “At the time, we were predominantly a full-time employer offering flat eight-hour shifts. The problem was that people would be recruited to work on less popular shift patterns and then immediately ask to change. This meant we were in a constant cycle of recruiting and having inexperienced people working the less popular shifts.”
By exchanging the old shift patterns with a suite of new ones that appealed to different lifestyles, Orange not only ensured it had sufficient coverage for its peak hours, but was also able to attract groups such as mothers with young children who might not previously have thought about call centre work.
The result? “We managed to cut by half the number of people leaving within two years,” says Craggs. “Staff satisfaction rose as well, because people were working hours that suited them.”
3) Hone your induction strategy
New recruits need to be inducted not only in technical skills but also into the culture of an organisation, says British Gas’ Paul Malloy.
“On the skills side, there’s nothing more daunting than learning everything in a classroom and then being pushed onto the floor to take your first live call. The key is to expose people to call handling early on – for example, by listening in on an experienced agent.
“On the cultural side, it’s about giving people an idea of what life will be like working in that business,” he adds. “When we revamped our induction process, we started asking recruits to come in for an evening ahead of their training so they could meet their manager, learn a bit about life at British Gas and see a video that showed an agent talking about her job.”
Beyond this, the business also introduced a process whereby team managers were regularly brought in to chat with new recruits during the induction phase.
“Using this approach, we lost far fewer people before and during the induction process,” says Milloy.
4) Keep people motivated by providing the right environment
Offering a range of flexible benefits can really enhance the long-term appeal of a call centre. “Kwik Fit Insurance is a good example of this,” argues the Planning Forum’s Steve Woosey. “Employees there accrue points depending on how long they’ve been with the company, which they can then redeem against benefits such as private medical insurance.”
Other ways of keeping staff enthused about their workplace is to offer facilities they won’t necessarily find elsewhere.
“If a call centre provides an on-site restaurant or offers subsidised access to a gym or local child-care service, it can make all the difference,” says Woosey.
5) Ensure people feel involved and listened to
Some call centre managers might feel that canvassing agents for opinions on both the business and the customer service it provides might open up floodgates that can never again be closed. But according to Les Blacker, Head of High Value Customer Services at Vodafone’s Warrington call centre, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
“By getting people to reflect on what stops them being engaged or supporting customers effectively, you can actually discover a whole range of issues you might never know about otherwise,” he says. “Moreover, if you involve agents in coming up with solutions, you might come across fixes that you wouldn’t have considered.”
To ensure this happens at Vodafone Warrington, Blacker runs a project called ‘All About You’ which gives a small team of agents the freedom to talk to their peers about their problems before cataloguing them in a database that is continually monitored by senior staff. Together, agents and managers then work to find solutions to the biggest pain points.
“By doing this, we’ve created a continuous improvement cycle,” says Blacker. “One where people are encouraged to think about how problems can be fixed rather than getting angry or upset that they aren’t being listened to.”
6) Offer progression throughout the employee lifecycle
Call centres are inherently flat structures and typically offer limited opportunities for people to progress into senior management roles. This doesn’t mean these businesses should dismiss personal development out of hand, however.
“At Vodafone, people embark on an NVQ call centre qualification as part of their probation and are given the opportunity to do further professional studies afterwards,” says Blacker. “However, we understand that not everyone will want to continue down this route, so we also support people to take work or lifestyle-related Learn Direct courses which could be anything from a course that improves presentation skills to a foreign language class.
“Essentially, we want to support people to grow themselves as individuals both inside and outside of work,” he continues. “That way, they’ll continue to feel developed throughout their time with us rather than becoming demotivated after the first six months.”
The Planning Forum’s Steve Woosey agrees.
“Remember that development comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s not just about progressing up through the ranks,” he states. “Multi-skilling agents over a period of time can be a good way of developing them, as can offering the opportunity to try other roles within the business – for example, work in the HR or planning departments.”
7) Make sure the right people leave and the right people stay
Call centres, like any other business, lose less people through attrition during a recession. However, few can afford to carry poor performers. “Performance management shouldn’t be curtailed just because it’s tough times, economically,” explains Woosey. “If you have poor performers, they should be managed out and you need to analyse why they weren’t successful. That data then needs to be fed back into the business to refine processes like recruitment and training.”
The same goes for good performers, according to Orange UK’s Scott Craggs.
“We have a much more robust exit interview in place nowadays, which allows us to understand why both good and bad workers are leaving,” he says. “For the exceptional performers, we even offer something called a ‘return ticket’, whereby they can come back to us anything up to six months after having left. If they do come back, they receive part of the bounty that existing staff would get for recommending new recruits. This provides an extra incentive in case the grass hasn’t been greener with their new employer.”
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13.02.2010
Engaging the Customer- why Net Promoter Scoring* is a better KPI
Engaging the Customer- why Net Promoter Scoring* is a better KPI by Niels Kjellerup editor of the Call Centre Managers Forum
Slowly but surely customer service centres are making the transition from Call-producing sweatshops to Value Adding partners by contributing to the business model.
Recently I was introduces to iiNet, an Australian internet service & telecom provider. In surveys amongst telecoms and ISPs iiNET rates a clear number one in customer satisfaction.
iiNet has 4 service centres in order to provide 24/7 service. From Auckland in NZ via Sydney and Perth in Australia to Cape Town in South Africa the centres are all in house and allows for the best utilisation of staff resources while ensuring 24 hours service.
I asked Neil Harrison the Customer Service Management how he encouraged staff engagement with the customers? The simple answer was: “Every service rep and manager is primarily measured on their Net Promotor Score. This ensures that the importance of each and every customer contact is made operational and given the importance it deserves”. The challenge according to NH is, that call centre managers and team leaders are so conditions to be measured on calls, call length and wait times, that Neill continually has to explain and clarify to his call centre managers that workforce management & service levels are his responsibility and their responsibility is 1) The outcome of calls and 2) The customer experience as measured by The Net Promoter Score.
This little case-story contains several significant points:
1. Call Centre managers are responsible for the Customer Experience.
2. Customer experienced is measured in real-time by applying Net Promoter Scoring.
3. Workforce management and other operational measures are NOT key performance indicators.
4. To sustainably become number one in customer satisfaction in your industry you need the management-focus to be on the Customer, the call outcome and the customer experience.
5. An entire generation of call centre managers have been indoctrinated to believe that operational call statistics are the key indicators of service delivery success.
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13.02.2010
Call Centre Basics.
By Niels Kjellerup Editor of “The Call Center Managers Forum”;
Over time to obfuscate the lack of real results in a customer service centre we tend to overcomplicate what it takes to manage a successful call centre. This is my list of the 5 key ingredients to success in delivering meaningful customer service.
1. The Commercial Purpose.
A service center needs to have a well defined and documented ‘commercial purpose’, a reason to exist. It provides the guidance for the centres management to know what is expected and how well the center is doing. It also provides the key reason why the organisations senior management is willing to allocate funds and resources to the customer service center.
An example of a commercial purpose could be: “Happy Customers who buy more, more often”.
2. Key Value Indicators.
A call center needs KPI’s which measure the activities in the centre and provide the indicators of how well or badly the centre is doing. What you measure is what you get and when your KPI’s are not focussed on measuring value created for the organisation the centre will deteriorate into become a Galley Slave Center producing ‘completed calls’ and other products defined by vendor metrics of little or no value the rest of the organisation. The call center has become a ‘call factory’.
Key Value Indicators are KPI’s but measure creation of the values seen by senior management to be part of the business model.
Example of KVI’s: 1. Customer Net Promoter Score, 2. First Call Resolution & 3. Speedy answer of customer calls, i.e. percentage of calls answered in 20 seconds.
3. Customer engagement.
The service activity should be concentrated on improving the ‘customer experience’, because that is what determines how the customers feel about the organisation. Getting service reps to engage with the customer is only achieved when the center management engages with its service staff. Forget training service staff unless you first train the managers to understand their role as coaches and leaders who continually reinforce the importance of producing better customer experiences. Only management focus on call outcome and the customer experience will ensure a culture which encourages the service reps to do the same.
4. Motivation.
Motivation of service staff hinges on allowing them to produce great outcomes for the customer and gaining recognition. The conflict between wrong KPI’s and encouraging customer engagement is what causes demotivation of service staff. To better understand the basics of motivation read Prof. Hertzberg’s article “One more time, how do you motivate your employees” (here).
5. Improving existing processes.
The backup processes to improve service delivery often lags way behind the rest of the organisation. Analog processes are slow and the continual work to digitise such processes and removing unnecessary time-consuming decision points is crucial to the customer experience.
These 5 points are your basics to improve your call center, to reduce staff turnover and customer churn. It’s NOT technology based and you don’t need large investments. What is needed a good portion of common sense and willingness to change. Good luck.
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13.02.2010
British Airways – Customer Service at its worst.
By Editor Niels Kjellerup Ashgrove .
Background : This is a case-study of my personal experiences with British Airways. It might be dismissed as ‘anecdotal’, but the consistent bad service delivered by BA’s different Call Centres over a period of 12 months can’t be a coincident and should lead to a major restructure on a senior management level. As a resident of Australia my travels to Europe often necessitate linking up with BA and passing via Heathrow Airport. I most often fly business class, which presumably makes me a ‘valued’ customer. This case is a good example, of how Customer Service Call Centre gets disconnected from the Sales Process & Business Model of the mother company, and deteriorates into a pure cost centre, loosing sight of its purpose & role in Value Creation..
The sequence of events :
November 2000 - Passing through Heathrow on my way to Copenhagen my luggage didn’t make it to the connecting flight and was delivered 6 hours later at my address. My suitcase was damaged. 3 weeks later, it’s a Saturday, when I return to Heathrow I go BA Customer Service Desk and explain about my damaged suitcase. First its refused, as the complaint must be made within 24 hours, but as my circumstances are understood I’m given a badly Xeroxed paper slip with a phone-number to call on Monday. I call and am put on hold for 54 minutes. The girl is great and tells me how a recent restructure has reduced the number of reps in this complaint section, which makes it impossible to keep up with call volume. Needless to say we resolve the problem and after buying a new suitcase and spending 70 minutes waiting getting my refund, I assumed the matter was resolved.
June 2001 – Same story, but this time my Golf-club protection bag arrives torn to shreds at my hotel in Copenhagen. No worries I know the procedure. Wait time for complaint line only 46 minutes.
Oh, I forget. While in Copenhagen I need to change my departure date to London. I ring BA on its business class priority line in Copenhagen. 38 minutes wait. Then a lovely Swedish accent answers my prayers, naturally I ask how this could be? 6 months earlier BA Nordic management decided to close down the Danish and Norwegian Call Centres and set up a virtual call centre for the Nordic area in Vaermland ,Sweden – ‘ and since then we have not been able to cope with call volume!’ ( for those interested in geography this is like relocating to Sioux Falls South Dakota US or Lancaster UK).
In London I get my new, very solid golf-club protection bag – normal refund time 65 minutes. But when I check in for my flight to Johannesburg South Africa I’m asked to pay overweight, as my new bag is 2 kg’s over the limit ( clever way to raise a little extra revenue from a J-class passenger, needless to say this claim was dropped after I raised my voice).
October/November 2001 - I’m on my way back to Europe. This time I fly South African & Qantas. My luggage arrived with me at my hotel in Bruxelles. Only two encounters with BA. I had to fly BA Copenhagen – London, and as my new Qantas Club Card was delayed I was naturally refused entry to the BA lounge in Copenhagen (can’t used an outdated membership card and no way of checking on the system). My last experience with BA came on a December morning (1/12), I have to get to Amsterdam that Saturday morning . I call the BA priority line and am kept waiting for 38 minutes, while being bombarded with messages to hang up and use the Internet. Another bizarre message “ The reason you’re experience this delay, is because we’re currently training our staff to improve customer service delivery?”. I hang up, call KLM, get answered in less than 10 seconds and buy my return ticket there.
Final comment : Any company, no matter its great past, will be judged by its customers on the experience it delivers. Current BA CEO Rod Eddington had a reputation for an uncompromising customer service focus when he was CEO of Ansett and Cathay Pacific. Maybe its time he removed some senior managers in British Airways Customer Service Delivery Department? Maybe he doesn’t know how badly managed the area really is? When the Customers Walk Out it will be too late.
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13.02.2010
First Call Resolution – introduction to Quality Management
By Editor & Publisher Niels Kjellerup Ashgrove rev.
Summary –First Call Resolution has been found to be the single most important key challenge to improving Customer Satisfaction. The absence of First Call Resolution has been found to account for a minimum of 30% of a call centres operational cost. So by focusing on this issue you will get the best of both worlds – improved productivity and improve customer satisfaction.
Background:
During the past 9 months research conducted into 4 large Call Centres has led me to believe that focus on Quality Issues is not only Nice, but Needed, if the Call Centre Industry is to move beyond the vicious circle of cost cutting & decreasing Customer Satisfaction. The Idiotic Vendor Metrics (IVM) inevitably resulted in high staff turnover & Customer dissatisfaction. Instead of providing senior management with measurements which captured the Value Created, all they got were reports on call volume, call length, call abandon rate, wrap-up time & a service level, which at best proved the centre was understaffed. No wonder senior management has a hard time understanding, how the Call Centres add value to the business model. MEA CULPA (we’re the guilty party for blindly adopting the IVMs, which were all the vendors could provide). A whole cult of benchmarking developed to prove to management that we’re weren’t any worse than the average of the Call Centre Industry. Forget World Class & Best of Class – these meaningless comparisons will just further alienate you from your senior management.. It doesn’t make business sense.
The 90-90 Benchmarks
Twelve months ago, I defined two benchmarks for the Call Centre, which in my experience could give us a handle on reality and which reflected really successful Call Centres –
1) 90% of all calls answered by a person in 20 seconds &
2) 90% of all calls handled to satisfactory completion (to the customer) at entry point, also called First Call Resolution.
A couple of months later a third benchmark came along – Staff turnover <5% p.a.
The more we worked with these benchmarks, the more they grew on us. Suddenly the importance of process integration became clear. The importance of integrating the Call Centre with Sales, Marketing and other departments , such as risk assessment, claims evaluation became clear. It became crystal clear that benchmark 1 was a function of benchmark 2, i.e. we couldn’t get the staff numbers to man for the high call volume periods, because we couldn’t document the value we created.
The First Call Resolution Model.
This is what the customer want – no wait and somebody with the authority to handle matters for me quickly and personally.
What does the service rep need to perform it ?
1) Information systems which allow a single view of the Customer
2) Education in the companies culture, procedures, rules and products & services
3) Training in how to engage the customer, establish communication, build a relationship, identify the real need and fulfill this need.
4) Authority to go with the responsibility of dealing with the customers. That means a full understanding of the organisation and how cutting across functional areas influences these issues. The authority to cut red tape, i.e. set aside rules because they in this specific case are junior to service policy. This is the hard part – Rules are created because someone ‘knows best’ what is in the organisations interest. Most of middle management functions are created around managing the rules.
5) Team leaders and supervisor, who are constantly in touch with the rep and encourages call resolution.
6) Quality Call Evaluation scoring each rep with a scoring system set up to encourage First Call Resolution.
7) An awards program which encourages First Call Resolution behaviour and attitude for the rep.
What are the gains for the Call Centre ?
This are the preliminary results from the Case study of 4 large (+200 seats) Call Centres –
1) Dramatic fall in Call Volume – a minimum of 20% of all calls are repeat calls from customers needing an answer or help, they didn’t get..
2) The cost of a complaint call not handled at point of entry escalates by 500% when referred.
3) The cost of a claim call which is deferred to a senior manager cost 650% more than if handled by the rep.
4) An un-handled query cost 350% compared to First Call Resolution.
5) A simple identification problem, where the customer needs to fax documentation cost 280% compared with an over the phone procedure.
These are all minimum escalation costs. My estimate from the case study is that 25- 30% of a Call Centres operating cost is spent on dissatisfying the customer, i.e. no First Call Resolution and then rectifying it.
As an added bonus Customer Satisfaction improves immediately resulting in actual Value Created for the business Model.
Moving towards First Call Resolution.
Some people will tell you, it’s easier to pull a tooth on a Rhino, than getting First Call Resolution authority to the customer service rep. Not true, in one recent case, we ran a campaign encouraging Call Centre staff to identify rules which got in the way of First Call Resolution. 16 such major stumbling blocks were identified and within 2 months 15 of these rules had been documented, queried and resolved.
The key starting point for success is a detailed of map of ALL processes and a single view of the customer CRM system.
Further you will need a Quality Management system in place. This is an extension of existing Quality Monitoring & Call Evaluation. Without such a system you will find it very hard to provide senior management with the documentation of 1) The existing situation as regards First Call Resolution and 2) Actual Value Created for the business.
What is Quality Management? (Value Creation in Call Centres, as I prefer to call it)
According to Datamonitor report 02/02 (ref bftc0678) ” Investing in quality management will help to turn call centers from a cost to a profit center”. Datamonitor outlines 3 trends for the future of interest to Call Centre Managers
1. Quality management in call centers will be analytics driven;
2. Quality management in the call center will not be limited to the agents’
performance;
3. There will be a shift from point solutions to upgradeable packages in the
quality management area;
What this means to you, is that Call Recording & analytical software to analyse the outcome of calls is already available and allows you to monitor not only the individual rep, but get an overview documentation of what Values are being created by the Call Centre for the enterprise.
Using Quality Management tools allowed me to identify First Call Resolution as the single most important area for improvement in any service call centre. The idea that we can learn from what the customers tell us about ourselves is not new, but rarely practiced.
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13.02.2010
Call Center Productivity .. a sustainable solution.
The Galley Slave Syndrome :
The constant pressure to answer more calls with less people has given us the Age of the 'battery call center'. Vendors will promise desperate Call Center Managers that by implementing this IVR system or that CTI software call-lengths can be reduced by 2 seconds on average which adds up to a productivity gain of 15% yearly, based on brain dead projections of current call figures.
The number one prize for brain dead application of this principle goes to Pacific Bell which under much fanfare in 1995 declared that by forbidding the directory inquiry reps to say 'good morning' & 'good bye' and instead using 'hi' & 'bye' productivity gains would amount to $ 22 million a year. Only a bookkeeper with little common sense and NO call center experience could believe such projections and the fact that senior management bought into the idea simply underlines how far removed the Call Center is from the mainstream business. Next step is to outsource.
Currently the worst Galley Slave Call Centers are : Airline reservations, Credit Card Customer Service & Telco's. Mind you, all aren't that bad, but most are driven by call traffic numbers & not call outcomes.
What is wrong :
The call center has gone off purpose or more likely never worked it out. Remember you're there to give the customer access to the organisation. A good call handling results in more business or reduced cost. So what are you doing measuring the results of the call center in quantitative terms rather than in OUTCOMES ? Unless you're measuring what you're doing in terms of results, that is quality of communication, then why are you doing it at all? Sure you need some traffic measures to facilitate staffing & rostering. But that doesn't make these operational figures the product of the call center, unless you're a call producing factory, in which case the best way to handle the productivity issue is to instruct the reps to hang up on any call duration over 45 seconds. Or maybe even better, have the ACD do it automatically. Oh, you think it will upset the customers and only be a temporary solution?
The Solution .. 'The Coaching Culture Call Center':
The real potential for productivity gains lies with your people, the reps that actually talk to the customers. Its called motivation. Give people a reason to do better, to bring more of their intellectual powers to work. If instead of bringing 20% of themselves they decide the job is fun, interesting and fulfilling and bring 40% of their potential. That's a 100% productivity increase and cost nothing in terms of monetary investment. It does cost a lot in terms of management time and effort creating a coaching culture call center. But at least the call center will have a future.
What is a Coaching Culture Call Center :
It is a call center where everybody from the manager to newest representative is actively working to improve communication, relationship & sales skills to achieve better call outcomes.
Coaching means "to help achieve" or "to help improve towards a known goal". The key word here is HELP. In a coaching culture it becomes natural to help others, rather than demonstrate own superiority. Everybody must learn to become a coach and must learn how to coach and what to coach.
Here are some (the list is long) of the skills most needed to be coached and trained :
1) How to control a conversation, so it doesn't drag on needlessly
2) How to identify the Needs of the caller
3) How to handle angry callers
4) How to project the intention 'to help' the caller
5) How to be honest with the caller
6) How to pay attention to every caller .. and not let your mind wander
7) How to be outcome focussed without being pushy or dominating
Training & coaching is very different from educating. Educating is telling or teaching the rep what to do... training is helping the rep to do it by overcoming own barriers to communicating and achieving call outcomes.
Motivating is NOT making others do what you want them to do, because you want it, but making them do what you want them to do, because they want it. Motivation is helping others find the starter button to their own generator, rather than continually needing to be hot-wired by your generator. ( In 1965 Professor Herzberg published " One more time, How to motivate your people " and it is still to this day the most reprinted article of the Havard Business Review).
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12.02.2010
2009 Worldwide Telemarketing Services Industry Report
The Telemarketing Services Industry report, published annually, contains timely and accurate industry statistics, forecasts and demographics. The report features 2009 current and 2010 forecast estimates on the size of the industry (sales, establishments, employment) for the 47 largest world countries, such as Japan, China, India, Russia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, UK, France, Germany, Italy and U.S.. The report also includes industry definition, 5-year historical trends on industry sales, establishments and employment and estimates on up to 10 sub-industries.
For more information please click on:
Research now
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08.02.2010
Noble Systems on Track to Double Revenue in Five-Year Span
Contact center solution provider’s growth driven by innovation, acquisitions
Atlanta, GA – Febraury 4, 2010: Noble Systems Corporation, a global leader in innovative contact center technology solutions, today announced a projected 2010 revenue total marking a 100 percent increase over 2006 levels. The landmark five-year period points to the company’s continued financial stability and expanding market position.
“Our success in recent years has paced the industry and positioned Noble as a true market leader,” says Chris Hodges, Senior Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Noble Systems. “Noble’s focus on customer-specific solutions has earned long-term relationships with SMB and enterprise customers. At the same time, our investment in technological innovation such as SIPhony, Noble’s newest generation SIP platform, has acted as a catalyst for growth.”
The announcement comes at a time when analysts and experts look to the contact center industry as a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy economic landscape. Analyst firm Frost & Sullivan says United States contact center revenue could exceed $29 billion by 2014 while the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts the customer service representative sector will account for the third-highest number of jobs in the country by 2018.
While the revenue statistic reflects Noble’s robust financial growth, the company has also recorded significant gains in market share through organic expansion and the recent acquisition of assets and intellectual property from former competitors Touchstar and TDI/Teledirect.
About Noble Systems®
Noble Systems Corporation (NSC) is a global provider of contact center technology solutions, delivering systems since 1989. Every day, millions of contacts are made by agents at 4,000+ installations worldwide using the Noble® platforms for inbound/outbound/blended communications. The scalable, integrated Noble Solution includes ACD and predictive dialing; unified contact processing for voice, email, and web; and integrated IVR, digital recording, messaging, quality control/monitoring systems, scripting, and real-time reporting and management tools. Noble Systems (Atlanta, GA) pioneered an open, scalable, fully-distributed platform. For more information on this item or the company, contact Lee Allum at 1.888.866.2538 x538 or visit www.noblesys.com.
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01.02.2010
CCA Launch Excellence Awards programme for 2010
Glasgow, 1st February 2010 - CCA, the leading authority on customer contact, today launched its Excellence Awards programme for 2010.
CCA Excellence Awards is the most respected and sought-after
programme, unique through its peer group judging process. The
judging panel includes professionals from all sectors and senior
executives with wide-ranging experience in customer contact.
All business sectors are faced with difficult times, from
emergency services who have dealt with the consequences of the
recent weather conditions, financial services dealing with the
turbulent economic climate, or utilities where customers are
looking for better deals or are worried about their fuel
consumption. What is clear to us all is that recognition of
individual and team efforts has never been more important.
CCA Chief Executive Anne Marie Forsyth said: "There is a growing
awareness of the critical role played by customer contact staff
in retaining customer loyalty and trust. The economic climate has
tested customer relationships as never before however we are
delighted that our industry is responding in innovative ways and
maintaining high standards of customer service. Central to the
awards programme is recognition of those individuals and
organisations aspiring to succeed as the upturn in the economy
materialises.
"We have introduced some new categories this year to reflect the
phenomenal pace of change in customer service, driven by new
technologies and successful partnerships. It is paramount to
recognise achievements and to showcase the fantastic examples of
innovation and best practice which are taking place."
The Excellence Awards will be presented on 16 November 2010 in
Glasgow at a distinguished gala dinner - one of the highlights of
CCA's Global Convention that will take place on 16 & 17 November
2010.
CCA Global Convention is the leading event for senior customer
contact executives. Delivering outstanding thought-leadership and
strategy for 15 years, the event is a 'must-attend' for those
professionals committed to continual improvement of their
customer service operation.
IMPORTANT MEMBER CONSULTATION
Each year the Convention programme is shaped around the topics
that matter most to members. A member consultation is currently
underway to decide what topics are of most interest to delegates.
To participate and put your opinion forward click here
[http://www.cca-global.com/index.php?option=com_bfsurvey_pro&view=bfsurveypro&catid=63&Itemid=236].
KEY DIARY DATES:
LAUNCH DATE: 01 February 2010
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 28 May 2010
SHORT-LIST ANNOUNCED: 28 June 2010
AWARDS CEREMONY & GALA DINNER: 16 November 2010
CCA GLOBAL CONVENTION: 16 & 17 November 2010
AWARD CATEGORIES:
ORGANISATION
Best Customer Experience: Centre of the Year
Contact Centres: Great Places to Work
Most Effective Training Programme
eCommerce Customer Service Award
Best Environmental Campaign
Action in the Community
TEAM CATEGORIES
Contact Centre Team of the Year: Business to Business
Contact Centre Team of the Year: Business to Consumer
Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year
Back Office Customer Service Team of the Year
Overall Team of the Year
AWARDS FOR INDIVIDUALS
Professional of the Year: Agent
Professional of the Year: Team Leader
Professional of the Year: Manager
Professional of the Year: Director
Young Customer Service Professional of the Year
Overall Professional of the Year
Lifetime Achievement Award
PARTNERSHIPS
Best Outsourcing Partnership
Best Technology Partnership
INNOVATION
Best Innovation with Customer Service Technology
Innovation in Customer-Led Efficiencies
NEW FOR 2010
Following on from the announcement of the shortlist at the end of
June, CCA will be announcing a series of Nomination Awards to
recognise members who have excelled in performance in the last
year.
CCA Global Standard©
CCA Standards Approval Board will nominate those organisations
that have shown outstanding excellence and performance,
highlighted in the independent assessment report following their
audit.
CCA Member Awards
Nominated by CCA Executive Team, these awards will be given to
those organisations and individuals who have gone 'above and
beyond' to support their peer group through knowledge exchange.
Time is precious for all of us, so it's important to reward those
individuals and companies who take time to share and support
fellow members.
For more details visit www.cca-global.com.
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