Shaking the status quo

Voice in the contact centre is being challenged by innovative new media communications; and foreign competitors are contesting the BPO space.

VOICE is still the main communication medium in contact centres, according to Dave Paulding, regional sales director for UK, Middle East and Africa at Interactive Intelligence. While many younger consumers are tech-savvy and social media literate, a social media channel is not always necessary for a successful contact centre.

Paulding says 85% of licences Interactive Intelligence deals with are multimedia enabled, but voice is still the dominant channel. "People always make a fuss about multimedia, but actually, when it comes down to it, they need voice." That said, other forms of communication are gaining ground in contact centres.

Paulding explains that one of the reasons social media and multimedia are becoming more popular among contact centre providers is that the cost of handling an e-mail or Web chat is lower than a phone call.

The most readily available channel after voice is e-mail, says Paulding. However, with voice calls, there is usually quicker feedback, whether the call gets through to an operator or whether you're being told that all operators are busy. With e-mail, one never knows what has happened to the query. Paulding says it would be a good idea to implement immediate automated e-mail response to queries.

In SA, the use of SMS is also relevant for contact centres, and in Africa, it is the prevalent means of communication, Paulding says.

Although a contact centre may not have all the multimedia channels, it's still important to maintain an online presence, says Paulding. "Smarter companies monitor their Web sites. It would be strange to imagine a company without a Web site or e-mail address."

GETTING SOCIAL

"[Social media] is becoming an important interaction channel," says Yaron Assabi, CEO of Digital Solutions Group. It says a lot about a brand, and could also be damaging if not monitored. "We can't ignore social media as a channel."

Andre Deetlefs, senior solutions architect for call centres at Avaya South Africa, says: "Social media just becomes another channel... It just becomes another form of communication that needs to be integrated into the whole." He says users should be able to communicate with a company via Facebook or Twitter, because the new generation of customers are comfortable with that.

"I think we're starting to see [social media] emerging now. Not in a big way; most companies are still trialling the technology and the percentage of interactions that go through those channels is still quite small. But as people become more comfortable using those technologies, I think it will expand," says Deetlefs.

Michael Renzon, MD of Intelleca, says social media is "where it's at".

"From a contact centre perspective, you can link any of the key sites, Facebook, Twitter, etc, and you can use them as interaction points for your contact centre. You can take it in the same way you take e-mail." He says this is more popular in the American and European market, and hasn't reached SA yet.

"Social media is probably as state of the art as it's going to get right now," says Renzon.

HELP YOURSELF

Paulding believes South Africans are also sometimes reluctant to implement integrated voice response because customers want to speak to a real person.

However, Renzon believes self-service is here to stay. "Tools like self-service aren't going to go away, especially in this recessionary environment... If anything, self-service will go up."

IP telephony is changing contact centres, says Renzon. With everything on one network, it's possible to create a virtual contact centre environment. "The organisation becomes a virtual organisation through the correct use of IP telephony, and it's very much the way the world is moving."

With better bandwidth coming to SA, Deetlefs says home agents could become more popular. Home agents, as the name suggests, have calls routed to their home phones and deal with queries from there. All that's needed is a PC and an ADSL line. But it might take a while for the home agent concept to take off in SA, he concludes.

CONTACT CENTRES are stressful environments to work in, and traditionally have a high staff turnover, which costs companies money. Keeping contact centre agents comfortable in the workplace goes a long way to improving their work satisfaction and lowering their stress and discomfort levels.

Scott Gilbert, business unit manager for Jabra headsets at Kathea, notes the quality of contact centre headsets is crucial for both the comfort of the call centre agent and the quality of the interaction between caller and agent.

Modern headsets are hands-free and/or wireless, incorporate external noise cancellation features and come in a range of styles to suit the needs of various agents. It is annoying and stressful, for both an agent and a caller, to keep asking each other to repeat what they have said because of poor quality of noise cancellation in headsets, Gilbert says. Efficient external noise cancellation is a must. Physical comfort is important too. Headsets should be light and not heat up excessively. They should be available in different styles too, for example, headsets that can be worn over the ear with an ear-hook, ones worn over the head or with headband going over the back of the agent's neck, he notes.

Jabra reports that long-term call centre work can cause hearing impairment, general fatigue and neck and back strain. Hearing problems can develop as a result of sustained high noise levels and sudden "sound spikes" due to phone malfunctions or very irate customers. By reducing external noise, agents are able to turn down the volume on their headsets and hold their conversations at a reasonable volume. Advanced headsets also eliminate sudden sound spikes. Neck and back pain can result from cradling a phone in the neck, so switching to a hands-free headset can reduce strain caused from holding the receiver in this position.

Gilbert says there are four main factors to consider when choosing headsets for contact centre agents: length of the warranty, comfort, weight and quality.

"TRYING TO RETAIN customers is nothing new. But for contact centres, the main focus should still be on helping retain customers for paying clients," says Ian Gordon-Cumming, head of M-IT call centre services.

Performance, culture and workforce optimisation are important areas to consider when it comes to contact centres that are able to help their clients retain customers, according to Gordon-Cumming.

"It is important that an industry has agreed standards, which all operators follow. Only then can contact centres determine who performs well and who doesn't," Gordon-Cumming says. "Also, an effective contact centre must provide solid reports."

INFORMATION SYSTEM

A good management information system is almost a requirement to ensure that reports are generated and services provided are in line with agreed industry standards, says Gordon-Cumming. "These tools will not only assist in providing the right level of customer service, but will also assist in better management of the business."

There are many "sausage machine training institutions" promising customised training to contact centre operators, says Gordon-Cumming. But, such institutions forsake specifics made for a successful contact centre agent. "Contact centres want agents who are capable of creating a bond with customers," he says. "That will create a lasting impression on callers."

COMPETENT AGENTS

Employing the right people and providing correct training and motivation can make a difference, says Gordon-Cumming. "It is like taking soft skills training one level further, and this is an area I believe deserves significant focus.

"Of course, contact centres have to make a profit; that is another element of a contact centre which cannot be ignored," he says. "It is here that workforce optimisation comes into play. Productivity and skills placement are vital in this aspect."

Contact centres must know how productive agents are and if they correctly match the skill to the task at hand. "By making sure you have the right person on the job, you are in a better position to be more productive, not to mention more profitable. Getting this wrong, however, will adversely affect customer retention, as employees will simply not do their best."

"While contact centre technology initiatives are perceived as important as other aspects of business, technology alone does not change business functionality. How this technology is applied, does," says Bradley Hemphill, MD of Electrical Engineering Solutions.

"Benchmarking technology in the contact centre is about understanding how to use technology to achieve business aims," says Hemphill. "Therefore, it is important to highlight business and customer key performance indicators to ensure the technology performs at its best." According to Hemphill, the IP network is core to the new architectures in contact centres. "The major reason for contact centres moving to IP is a flexible architecture and a technology cost drive."

Information and data management is becoming critical in contact centres, to help agents resolve calls first time around, he notes. For agents to achieve customer and business aims, they need support technology allowing them to access relevant information and functionally carry out the transaction. "Contact centres that understand how future technologies can help cut costs will witness real benefits for business and customers," Hemphill concludes.

SPACE, low labour costs and English language skills are some of the advantages in South Africa's favour in the BPO space, explains Ebrahim Dinat, sales and marketing director at Ocular Technologies. Coupled with the recession and the upcoming Fifa World Cup, there are many opportunities in the sector for SA.

"However, these advantages alone won't ensure success in a competitive environment, as good service delivery ultimately determines customer satisfaction," says Dinat.

"When interacting with a contact centre, customers expect to find an agent knowledgeable, friendly, proactive and effective in dealing with their requests. First-call resolution is critical because customers will share a good experience with an average of three friends, while it is a fact that if the interaction wasn't well solved, odds are they will tell 20 friends."

Martin Dove, global customer interactive solutions MD for Dimension Data, says there are two types of contact centres in SA. Some are mediocre, and usually serve domestic and monopoly organisations, but there are also world-class centres, servicing companies offshoring to SA. He says the world-class centres result in the sector growing. "That growth is, however, nowhere near the rate experienced six or seven years ago, but given the impact of the global financial crisis, that there is growth at all is commendable."

Andre Deetlefs, senior solutions architect for call centres at Avaya South Africa, says: "I think we've done very well. We have some world-class companies in the outsource space. And one or two new entrants into the market. I think we've got a quality product, certainly when competing against Asia and other outsourcing destinations. I think we'll continue to grow."

However, Michael Renzon, MD of Intelleca, says the South African contact centre market represents a missed opportunity. He says as yet, we're not a major outsourcing destination. Much of the planning happened out of sequence. "The incentives came late, the bandwidth came late." There were also problems with marketing and capacity. The process has been fragmented over a period of 15 years, he concludes.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE management is emerging as another way to ensure customer satisfaction in contact centre interactions.

Michael Renzon, MD of Intelleca, explains that customer experience management focuses more on the empathy side of relations between the client and the service provider, while customer relationship management simply focuses on the history of services.

"Companies promise customers products and services, so the delivery of those promises determines the customer's experience. There should be a dynamic customer engagement, which is much more focused on a channel engaging customers," says Renzon.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

Renzon says customer experience management goes far beyond a mere recording of transactions, to building relationships with customers. Customer experience management is the process of strategically managing a customer's entire experience with a product or a company, he notes. "A number of advanced tools, concepts, and technologies are now available and being put into practice to achieve dynamic customer engagement," Renzon says.

Those include the intelligent customer front door, which is the archival of client information; intelligent workload distribution, which is the process of allocating each task coming into the company to the right people within the company; and the use of voice over Internet Protocol.

However, for dynamic customer engagement to be successful, these advanced tools should be applied correctly.