Realising the true power of information

It would seem a good time to invest in a call centre for your business - whether locally or internationally. With governments around the world touting the value their country can add through competitive labour rates, ideal time zones and language capabilities, business has responded; outsourcing predominantly their sales and support functions.

And, while one could argue that they have thus succeeded in their primary objective of lowering their costs, perhaps one should rather be asking exactly what quantifiable value has outsourcing these added to their business? In my personal belief, it is very little, because we have yet to leverage the valuable information these call centres collect each and every day.

In order for me to convince you of this, I need to start at the beginning - the motivation for outsourcing your call centre. The local and international trend towards this is being driven by centralisation of services. Different businesses are thus finding outsourced call centres an attractive means of providing "non-core" services that their customers demand. Support functions are a perfect example of this, as are sales. Traditional "headaches" for companies where these are not focus areas; what could be better than to pay someone else - who's arguably an expert in the field - to deal with these services on your behalf at a cheaper rate?

Outsourced call centres thus promise to not only reduce costs, and improve service to your customers, but add a measure of accountability. Driven by service level agreements, your outsourcer is obliged to provide minimum levels of service and delivery that your own staff wouldn't necessarily be able to guarantee. This makes them the logical choice in most instances.

For one to appreciate the value a call centre could potentially add to your business, however, I need to draw your attention beyond the "lower cost" aspect on which we as businessmen usually tend to fixate, and ask you what value you believe this outsourced call centre will add to your business? Beyond "getting disgruntled customers out of your hair", how do you believe it is adding value to your brand, product and/or the service your company provides? Alarmingly, many of us believe that by merely helping one of our customers to install a printer cartridge correctly, or getting them interested in life insurance, we've added value. I disagree. All you've succeeded in doing is installing a print cartridge correctly over the phone and forced someone to consider the fragility of their own existence which, in my mind, equate to wasted opportunities.

I use my own personal "customer" experience of call centres to substantiate this. The first thing I take as a given when I phone any call centre - from my bank to an airline - is that I'm going to have to wait for a long time before someone answers my call. I might even become so frustrated that I eventually hang up and try again later when I know I'll have at least 20 minutes to dedicate purely to changing my overdraft limit or booking a flight to Cape Town.

The next thing I assume is that the person on the other side of the phone will ask me for exactly the same details I provided them with the last time I phoned. And the time before that. And the time before that. And that there's a very good chance that details I have corrected on numerous occasions will still be incorrect on the system. I can also rest assured that details I have insisted they note in previous phone calls - things like one of my children having a fish allergy - will not show up on the system, meaning that she will be given a fish option meal on our flight for the umpteenth time, despite the call centre consultant's assurances to the contrary. While I'd like to believe that my poor call centre experiences are the exception to the norm, this, unfortunately, does not seem to be the case.

Imagine then, how much information I'd probably be willing to impart to a call centre consultant who answered the phone: "How are you, Mr Khumalo?" and who asked: "Will your daughter be accompanying you on your trip? Because I see she's not allowed to eat fish and I would like to bring this to the flight crew's attention." This consultant would arguably be able to find out when they should next call me regarding my next business trip. They would additionally probably end the call knowing that my family usually goes away at Christmas - and that they should call me then with promotions too. This is one of the ways a call centre should be adding value to your business. It should be extending its consultants' standard dialogue beyond the script on their screens and taking full advantage of the fact that they have a "captive" caller on the phone and an invaluable opportunity to get as much information out of them as possible.

Far more important than extending the role of the consultant, however, is moving the information they gather about customers beyond the sales or support "silos" of the call centre. By utilising information recorded during the course of the telephone call, call centres and their clients would be able to start using it to add tangible value. By adding tangible value, I mean individualised value - something we're seeing Discovery Health starting to experiment with. Its medical aid services data is being used to effectively market other services very proactively and on an individual basis. A mother who had a baby three months previously, for example, will now be contacted regarding opening a Vitality gym contract to get back in shape. This is an excellent example of the type of invaluable cross-marketing opportunity usually wasted by a call centre.

Before we even discuss centralising customer data used by both the client and the call centre, let's consider how sales and support could work interchangeably in terms of adding value. A customer who was sold a printer 10 days ago, for example, could be given a courtesy call by someone in support to find out if they've managed to set it up properly and install their cartridges. A business customer who phoned support a month ago about a problem installing cartridges could be phoned by a sales consultant to check about their cartridge supply - and offer to deliver. The examples of cross-marketing and support opportunities whereby you not only sell products, but change the customer's experience and perception of call centres and make them a customer for life, are innumerable.

The irony of the current call centre situation is that this information is at both the sales and support departments' fingertips - just next door in the other department's database, which they do not have access to. Not only does each department waste time and resources collecting it over and over again because of these information silos they have in place (while concurrently infuriating the customer), they are missing an additional opportunity to use data already in the system to identify trends, and alert their clients who can then act accordingly. Tracking trends is critical for any business to act competitively.

Imagine then if you knew the demographics of potential "problem" customers before you launched the product. This is something data from your support centre could very well tell you. A historical analysis of people who have responded very poorly to a certain range of your printers for instance, could alert you to the fact that a specifically targeted marketing campaign in their instance could be extremely prudent. Support data collected concurrently to the new marketing campaign and launch of the printers, can establish the success of the campaign, or give the client new insights into its target market.

If this is the type of trend a simple analysis of data currently on hand at a client's call centre could identify, imagine the wealth of opportunities a centralised database - between the client and the call centre - could uncover. Not only would it ensure that the consultants answering the calls had access to the actual information they needed (ie, the ability to answer the phone with: "Hello, Mr Khumalo"), but it would guarantee that the client itself was working off the latest real-time customer data. This enables that much more effective, targeted marketing. This enables strategic planning going forward - no matter your business. Above all, it enables you as the client to get far more value from your call centre, and additionally enable your call centre to differentiate the service it provides to your customers by treating them as the individuals they are. With very few companies doing this at the moment, this would give yours a very tangible edge.

While the call centre industry has evolved in leaps and bounds into providing the arguably competent service it does today, what remains disappointing is that my view on how to tap into a call centre's true value is neither revolutionary nor impossible. We have the systems and applications available to make this a reality. More importantly, we have the systems and applications available to make this a local reality - and convincingly differentiate the South African call centre experience from that of the majority of the rest of the world.

To make this a reality, we need it to be driven from the top: for the CEOs of a company looking to outsource demanding this type of return in their service level agreement - and not just as a "nice to have" either. Better still, we need companies hosting call centres to make this a standard part of their service offering, and to invest in the systems and resources needed to enable this service. Until we use information to drive our businesses, no matter what they may be, we will continue to misunderstand and, in essence, "miss" our customers with the targeted marketing we invest so heavily in.

My message to management throughout the country is to look at what is driving your business, and then compare it to what should be. Look at all the research you're paying for, and then ask if someone you're paying in a call centre somewhere isn't doing exactly the same research on your behalf. Above all, invest as much as you are in protecting your data, in using your data. Because, until we start using our data as the incredible commodity it is, we stand to remain fixated on reducing costs as opposed to adding value.