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Building a successful call centre

Customer service is often seen as a necessary cost, rather than an opportunity to build and retain a loyal customer base.
By Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion
Johannesburg, 11 May 2004

As elsewhere in the ICT industry, in call centres the overall goal is to achieve better results without disproportionate expenditure. Although the drive is to offer improved quality of service - and innovative new services - there is an equal emphasis on consolidation and optimisation of new and existing systems to make this possible without enormous expense.

In fact, motivating ICT investments to the average board of directors has become a challenge in itself, as many companies are still conservative in attitude regarding costs. There is also the perception that previous investments during the boom period may have failed to deliver all the anticipated benefits.

Hosted application models

One strategy that is gaining support is that of hosted application models, which enables a `pay as you go` approach to new technology investments. Typically, such expenses are reflected on a company`s income statement, rather than its balance sheet. This fundamentally changes the relationship between the solutions providers and their customers. Technology can be viewed as an ongoing operating expense, rather than a once-off capital expenditure.

A related downside to this viewpoint is that customer service is often seen as a necessary cost, rather than an opportunity to build and retain a loyal customer base. This view is driven by the pressure on management to contain or reduce costs. It ignores the other aspects of the value proposition and fails to recognise the ongoing benefits that the right technology can deliver in terms of customer satisfaction.

However, assuming that the right technology decisions are made, the latest solutions can answer the key business needs of effective, efficient sales and service delivery.

Integrated channels

One of the ways this is being made possible is with a growing emphasis on the integration of multiple channels of communication. This ensures a better and more consistent customer experience with the added advantage of more cost-effective management of the various channels which are in use.

This sort of multimedia contact between a company and its customers includes telephony, faxes, e-mails and instant messaging. The right contact centre solution integrates and automates information from all these channels so that agents have a real-time, literally 360-degree view of the customer and their transactions.

Importance of analytics

Assuming that the right technology decisions are made, the latest solutions can answer the key business needs of effective, efficient sales and service delivery.

Paul Fick, MD, Spescom DataFusion

Immediately, this leads on to the growing importance of analytics. All the information gathered and processed by a contact centre is an invaluable resource for business intelligence. Better business decisions are based on the insights into customer needs and the identification of trends which a complete customer management solution offers - and the contact centre is the essential front-end of the overall system.

Another trend which supports an optimistic view of the future potential in this market is the ongoing drive to attract and retain international business, as local companies are increasingly involved in globalisation. Not the least aspect of this is the trend to establish local contact centres that support offshore-based multinationals.

Such outsourcing means that local operations need to be on a par with the best technology available in developed markets in the US or EU. Equally important, the quality of operational management needs to be of the highest level.

Consequently, there is more demand for management information systems (MIS) that monitor and assess the performance of contact centres and the agents in terms of realistic metrics, using a balanced scorecard approach.

Whatever contact centre solution is implemented, its value in delivering better results for the company and better service for the customers is only fully realised if the technology and solution design provides MIS. In the end, that is the cornerstone on which a successful contact centre is based.

* Paul Fick is MD of Spescom DataFusion, the Spescom division that specialises in contact centre technology and solutions.

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