Johannesburg, 25 Mar 2002
Customer contact centres, often still referred to as call centres, have evolved over many years from being cumbersome, labour-intensive operations once regarded by top management as "necessary evils". Today, customer-facing departments can be efficient and smoothly integrated into the other systems of a business.
Paul Fick, customer contact solutions manager at Spescom, provides a perspective on the planning and technology that make this possible.
"A primary need for any business, especially enterprise-level organisations, is to communicate effectively with its customers," he says. "Obviously, to achieve this requires a combination of best products and integration skills. However, even the best systems can only be effectively applied after a proper analysis of the needs and business processes of the individual client.
"The advantages of running the best technology in the customer-facing areas of a business are easily demonstrated: increased productivity, a competitive-edge, empowerment of employees and - most of all - improved customer service.
"Using the latest technology to provide predictive dialling, interactive voice response (IVR) and intelligent voice recording greatly increases the amount of transactions that can be handled as well as the quality of service provided to the customer. On a larger scale, full integration of this front-office function with existing back-office systems can be achieved with business and information management solutions that offer real value to the company in improved business intelligence."
With the telecommunications sector in a state of flux as a new regulatory environment is anticipated, the reality is that new technology and multimedia services are replacing outdated systems relying on manual data capture.
"Something any business must consider is whether its contact centre solution is future-proof," says Fick. "It should have the flexibility to handle SMS and e-mail communication as well as providing for voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) which can be used efficiently in corporate networks.
"While all these technologies enhance efficiency and improve the customer experience in dealing with a business, a whole new level of value is added by using the information captured for decision support.
"Proper integration of the contact centre enables a meaningful customer relations management (CRM) potential that empowers employees to make the right decisions and provide the correct information to customers. From an internal management viewpoint, call management and human resources management systems allow efficient control of the call centre environment."
Given the rapid expansion of the customer contact sector over the last few years, it has become ever more essential to deploy the right solution.
"With a complete understanding of the needs and processes of the client, it is possible to design a cost-effective customer contact centre using the latest technology. However, a certain depth of experience in multi-service communications is essential to ensure that this paradigm can be flexible enough to be adapted to rapidly changing communications channels.
"The final challenge is to design and deploy such solutions rapidly, while still making sure that they are seamlessly integrated with existing database and other back-office systems.
"The benefits for the enterprise include both tangible aspects such as cost saving as well as equally important soft advantages such as improved customer satisfaction. Given the fierce competition among major corporates to achieve market-leading service levels, a world-class contact centre solution has now become an essential investment."
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