| Research |
28.01.2008
The UK Contact Centre Operational Review (2007) - Headsets
By Steve Morrell.
There are various factors to consider when deciding which headset to purchase
for your contact centre workforce. If you have many hundreds or even thousands
of agents, headset purchase can be a large ongoing capital expenditure that is
important to get right. There are many things to consider:
-Compliance with health and safety legislation
-Total cost of ownership
-Durability
-Performance
-Comfort
-Contact centre telephony infrastructure
-Sound quality
Contact centre agents wear headsets for hours on end every day, and the cost of replacing or repairing headsets should be considered in the total cost of ownership, requiring good levels of after-sales support and guarantees. Around 27% of respondents’ headsets are replaced in a given year, meaning that the average headset will have a useful life of just under 4 years.
Only 4% of headsets in all contact centres were stated to be wireless, with most of these headsets belonging to supervisors who are more likely to have to be mobile to help agents in their team. Respondents expect that within 2 years, 17% of headsets in their contact centre will be wireless.
Currently, some 19% of respondents’ headsets are able to cope in an IP environment, with respondents expecting this figure to be closer to 49% in 2 years’ time, with 40% of respondents expecting all headsets within their own contact centre to be IP-capable.
Only 40% of respondents’ contact centres have a definite, written policy on acoustic shock and avoidance thereof, a clear area for improvement. There is a slight difference when looking at contact centre size bands, with 34% of small contact centres and 44% of large operations having written acoustic shock policies.
‘Acoustic shock’ is a phrase coined to describe a sudden, unexpected noise, often delivered at a very intense frequency. It may be caused by feedback from telephone equipment, faulty telephone lines, non-compliant switchboards and headsets. The CMA (www.ccma.org.uk) claims that “tens of millions of pounds” have been spent in the UK alone on settlements related to acoustic shock.
The author is a Softigator member. You can contact him directly to ask questions or to comment on this article. Click on "search" in the member area and contact the author. You are also invited to comment on this article at service@softigator.net.
The UK Contact Centre Operational Review (5th edition – 2007) can be downloaded at www.contactbabel-downloads.com. info@contactbabel.com.
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25.01.2008
The UK Contact Centre Operational Review (2007) - Contact Centre Performance
By Steve Morrell.
The success or otherwise of contact centres has traditionally been measured by
observation of key metrics, usually related to cost and efficiency – average call
length, average speed to answer, % of calls answered within a certain time, etc.
While these figures are a useful and still widely-acknowledged and understood
benchmark, times are changing, albeit slowly. Many contact centres now try to
measure the effectiveness of their operation by tracking metrics such as first-time
call resolution and customer satisfaction levels, although there are no standard
measures or agreements on what constitutes a satisfied customer or fully resolved
call.
More in the member area at
http://www.softigator.com/callcenterbusinessnetworking/start.html. Registration as a Softigator member is free and only takes 1 minute. Go to the registration button on the top and verify the link we send you after you have registered.
The author is a Softigator member. You can contact him directly to ask questions or provide comments on this article. Click on "search" in the member area and contact the author.
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24.01.2008
The UK Contact Centre Operational Review (5th edition – 2007) - CRM
By Steve Morrell
At a claimed penetration rate of 61%, CRM seems to be a very popular solution in
the contact centre, seemingly being present in almost as many operations as IVR.
However, this may be a matter of definition. 72% of respondents bought their CRM system from a third-party, compared to 28% who developed it in-house. The expense of in-house development can be seen somewhat by looking at the 80% of respondents in small contact centres which bought their CRM solution from a third-party. These solutions will, in the main, be very different in functionality and capability from the 63% of third-party systems present in large contact centres.
More in the member area at
http://www.softigator.com/callcenterbusinessnetworking/start.html. Registration as a Softigator member is free and only takes 1 minute. Go to the registration button on the top and verify the link we send you after you have registered.
The author is a Softigator member. You can contact him directly to ask questions or provide comments on this article. Click on "search" in the member area and contact the author.
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23.01.2008
The UK Contact Centre Operational Review (5th edition – 2007) - Outsourcing
By Steve Morrell.
A judicious use of outsourcing can assist a contact centre with its operational and
strategic goals:
- hitting performance targets (through helping with call spikes)
- providing a better customer service (through offering an out-of-hours service)
- quickly ramping up to assist with outbound sales campaigns
- measuring customer satisfaction with regular outbound surveys.
More in the member area at
http://www.softigator.com/callcenterbusinessnetworking/start.html. Registration as a Softigator member is free and only takes 1 minute. Go to the registration button on the top and verify the link we send you after you have registered.
The author is a Softigator member. You can contact him directly to ask questions or provide comments on this article. Click on "search" in the member area and contact the author.
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23.01.2008
Special Offer for Softigator members - Call Center World Russia & CIS
For the seventh consecutive year Exposystems (part of Expomedia Group plc) has a pleasure to invite you to take part in what has become the major, most important and biggest event for contact centre professionals in the region. In 2007 over 1200 attendees visited the conference and exhibition to listen to case studies delivered by experienced call centre managers, to find out about the latest trends in improving customer experience and to get a hands-on experience on new technology solutions for call centres. Login to the member area to learn more details on how to qualify for the discount.
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21.01.2008
UK Contact Centre Operational Review (5th edition – 2007) - Call Centre Training
This is an extract of the UK Contact Centre Operational Review (5th edition – 2007) by ContactBabel. Today, we focus on the summary of new trends in the UK call centre training arena. By Steve Morrell.
The typical contact centre induction course lasts for around 3-4 weeks on
average, with large contact centres tending to have slightly longer induction
courses. There is a large difference shown across vertical markets, based on the
type of work that the agents are expected to do. The retail & distribution and
transport & travel sectors seem to be focused upon getting agents onto the phone
as quickly as possible.
While this is understandable in a sales-driven environment, the fact that only 28% of the former’s respondents’ new agents had worked in a contact centre before (the average is 44%) was somewhat worrying.
More in the member area at
http://www.softigator.com/callcenterbusinessnetworking/start.html. Registration as a Softigator member is free and only takes 1 minute. Go to the registration button on the top and verify the link we send you after you have registered.
The author is a Softigator member. You can contact him directly to ask questions or provide comments on this article. Click on "search" in the member area and contact the author.
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17.01.2008
Common Interaction Channel Management Drives Uptake in North America
- Common Interaction Channel Management Drives Uptake in the North American Customer Service and Support Applications Market -
Palo Alto, Calif. –The North American customer service and support (CSS) applications market continued its steady growth, spurred on by the growing notion among companies that the customer experience needs to be better managed for long-term market success. Despite saturation in the large enterprise market, the wide-open small-enterprise market, as well as the opportunity to provide a unified platform for managing all interactions channels, will spark the growth of CSS application in the coming years.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.contactcenters.frost.com), North American Customer Service and Support Applications Market, finds that this market earned revenues of $673.6 million in 2006 and estimates this to reach $955.9 million in 2013.
“Creating a common platform for tracking and managing all customer interactions, across all interaction channels, will be a key driver for growth of the North American customer service and support applications market,” notes Frost & Sullivan Senior Analyst Ian Jacobs. “In an increasingly competitive marketplace, customers should not hear that the contact center agent they are talking to today knows nothing about the e-mail they sent yesterday.”
Consumers, particularly the younger generations, are using e-mail, chat, SMS and the telephone with equal facility. They now want their interactions with companies to use all of the same channels that they use in their personal lives. Customer service and support application vendors, therefore, must create a common platform for interactions that eradicates any interaction channel silos.
However, the market for customer service and support applications has become cluttered, with players from the worlds of customer relationship management (CRM), knowledge management, e-service and contact routing all joining the fray. To compound matters, consolidation across these various previously distinct markets has made enterprise purchasing decision much more difficult.
“Enterprises of all sizes are hearing extremely mixed messages about customer service and support applications,” explains Jacobs. “On one hand, they are hearing about very strategic visions of communication-enabling all business processes; on the other, they are hearing tactical messages about improving first call resolution rates in their contact centers in six months.”
For customer service and support applications vendors, focusing on the broader enterprise value will help move them up the value chain and make them a more trusted partner. The sales cycles will get longer, but the value the customer derives from the deal will skyrocket.
North American Customer Service and Support Applications Market is part of the Contact Center Growth Partnership Service, which also includes research in the following markets: customer care outsourcing markets, inbound contact routing (ICR) markets, interactive voice response (IVR), outbound dialing markets and agent performance optimization markets. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.
If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview of the North American Customer Service and Support Applications Market, then send an e-mail to Mireya Castilla, Corporate Communications, at mireya.castilla@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, city, state, country and e-mail address. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by e-mail.
North American Customer Service and Support Applications Market
N262-76
Contact:
Mireya Castilla
Corporate Communications – North America
P: 210.247.3830
F: 210.348.1003
E: mireya.castilla@frost.com
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15.01.2008
Agent Performance Optimization Tools Find Higher Uptake
Palo Alto, Calif. – Agent performance optimization (APO) tools are evolving, thanks to technological developments such as analytics. Analytics converts unstructured customer interaction information into meaningful details of how customers and agents behave. The demand is high for enhanced interpretations of customer interactions, as businesses want more than just reports on customer behavior.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.frost.contactcenters.com), North American Agent Performance Optimization Market, finds that this market earned revenues of $604 million in 2006 and estimates this to reach $743 million in 2013.
“Customer satisfaction has become the focal point for businesses globally to stay ahead in the market,” explains Frost & Sullivan Senior Analyst Keith Dawson. “To be in sync with customer preference, organizations require tools such as APO that provide feedback on contact center agent performance and enable representatives to continually improve their interaction with customers.
The transition to Internet protocol (IP) has not only increased the uptake of APO tools but also spawned significant merger and acquisition (M&A) activity among APO vendors in the last two years.
One of the key reasons for the increase in M&A activity is that vendors can plug gaps in their suite offerings as a prelude to offering unified APO solutions to the market. Most vendors recognize the revenue potential of providing integrated tools that connect the contact center with the enterprise management.
This will allow the center to correlate the impact of training, recruitment, coaching, forecasting and scheduling into a big picture of agent performance. These holistic views are the ideal ways to refine agent hiring and training model and increase the tenure of the best agents.
However, consolidation drive is likely to throw up apprehensions regarding vendors’ capabilities to support varying product lines and integrate them quickly.
As the North American market matures and slows, purchasers of APO software are likely to be more selective about the features and technologies they adopt. Vendors focused on creating amalgamated suites of APO software have to be particularly attentive to the market’s concerns, making sure all the tools work effectively together.
As revenues are being increasingly culled from smaller centers, product suites should include a lot of features that overlap. Defining where one tool begins and another ends is already becoming a bit of a challenge.
As the market is entering a flux period, replacement opportunities due to the transition to IP call routing infrastructure are high. Many centers are looking at upgrading their APO systems as a “ride along” purchase. Simultaneously, they will be looking at packages that address specific business workflow needs such as training and evaluation systems.
“Vendors need to create targeted suites that are based on function, instead of focusing on legacy product lines,” cites Dawson. “They need to provide analytic tools to uncover the main issues of customer problems and find means of turning those problems into solutions that are coupled with meaningful metrics.”
APO system vendors that provide such functions and differentiate themselves from the rest will be the ones to capture market share.
North American Agent Performance Optimization Market is part of the Contact Centers Growth Partnership Service program, which also includes research in the following markets: customer care outsourcing markets, inbound contact routing (ICR) markets, outbound dialing markets, and agent performance optimization markets. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.
If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview of the North American Agent Performance Optimization Market, then send an e-mail to Mireya Castilla, Corporate Communications, at mireya.castilla@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, city, state, country and e-mail address. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by e-mail.
North American Agent Performance Optimization Market
N192-76
Contact:
Mireya Castilla
Corporate Communications – North America
P: 210.247.3830
F: 210.348.1003
E: mireya.castilla@frost.com
W: www.frost.com
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11.01.2008
North American Contact Center Outsourcing Continues to Grow, Driven by Business
Palo Alto, Calif. –The North American contact center outsourcing market continues to see impressive growth. This is especially true given the strategic, financial and technological factors fuelling the thirst for outsourced contact center services. Organizations today are increasingly looking to focus on core competencies, while also striving to improve service quality by building brand equity and loyalty through exceptional customer interactions.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.contactcenters.frost.com), North American Contact Center Outsourcing Markets, finds that this market earned revenues of $20.7 billion in 2006 and estimates this to reach $27.5 billion in 2013.
“On the whole, outsourcing providers continue to prove their mettle by managing customer interactions at a lower cost with consistently better results than in-house contact centers,” notes Frost & Sullivan Strategic Analyst Michael DeSalles. “Work-at-home agent (WAHA) providers play an important role in engagements that span the full spectrum of industry verticals including financial services, retail, travel and hospitality.”
The current positive U.S. economic climate, coupled with greater acceptance of call center outsourcing across business verticals, will give rise to promising market growth in the future. Outsourcing firms must contain cost, improve agent efficiencies and deliver high quality interactions in order to remain competitive in this market. Outsourcing has been a way for companies to subcontract business functions that are outside of their core competency and can be done at a lower cost. This movement is fueled by industry participants’ ability to use a mix of on-shore, near-shore, and offshore facilities to provide continuous, round-the-clock coverage for their clients in every corner of the world.
However, the most evident challenge in call centers today is one of complexity. Frost & Sullivan believes that there are a myriad of factors that have contributed to this in blended inbound and outbound call centers. While increasingly diverse and complex products and services are now being offered, there is also sharp increase in consumer demand for speed and multi-channel media touches.
“In this highly competitive market, organizations are looking to drive process improvements by moving the needle on service quality to enhance brand equity,” says DeSalles. “Meeting end-user demand for quality and speed in a multi-channel environment is a challenge for even the most experienced outsourcers.”
The real market opportunity lies in gaining more wallet share from existing client engagements and from prospects that operate in-house contact centers. Providers looking to add new logos to their client list must address all aspects of risk mitigation in order to attract these potential customers. In some cases, it could mean an internal re-design of the sales and service delivery channel to align more closely with what the client’s objectives and goals. New clients are looking for industry-centric solutions from providers that have a history of measurable results.
If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides outsourcing providers and end-users with an overview of the North American Contact Center Outsourcing Markets, then please send an e-mail to Mireya Castilla, Corporate Communications, at mireya.castilla@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, city, state, country and e-mail address. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you electronically.
North American Outsourced Contact Center Services Market, part of the Contact Center Services Subscription, provides an overview of this subset of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. It includes a complete analysis of key market challenges, drivers, restraints and trends that are impacting market penetration as well as growth. In this research service, Frost & Sullivan's expert analysis thoroughly outlines market size, market share of major providers, and pricing strategies. Interviews are available to the press.
North American Contact Center Outsourcing Markets
N2A0-76
Contact:
Mireya Castilla
Corporate Communications – North America
P: 210.247.3830
F: 210.348.1003
E: mireya.castilla@frost.com
W: www.frost.com
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09.01.2008
New Service - Call Center Questions & Answers - Send your questions now!
From time to time, we all have burning questions on our minds - and often we just don't know who to ask. Also, we may not want to disclose our identity in the first place, because we don't want risk that the answering person will be chasing us for a project or a sales straight away. First, we need some time to think. Then we would like to get in touch.
Softigator will serve the answer straight to your desk, if you are a member – for free.
If you are not a member yet, just click on the REGISTER NOW button on the top of this page. Register there and verify the registration link you receive seconds after that. Then go to the Start page for details about how it works. The Start page is only for members, you can't see it as a non-member.
Call Centre Q&A is a safe and effective service. You can ask questions to the call center community worldwide without disclosing your identity or email address. If you want, only you can see the answer to your question - and nobody else. After you have received the answers, you can choose whether you want to get in touch (or not!) with the answering person(s). These may be Call Center In-house Leaders, Call Center Recruiters, Call Centre Consultants, System Integrators, Call Center Outsourcing Providers, Cal Center Researchers or Scientists.
This is a completely safe and anonymous way to get answers for your burning issues.
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