Mike Fairon, CTO for customer interactive solutions at Dimension Data, says the latest contact centre research suggests companies risk losing more customers due to cost-cutting.
He was commenting on the latest Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, which suggests that companies risk losing more customers as cost-cutting, rather than service delivery, continues to be the driving force in the sector.
According to Fairon, cost containment is driving 60% of business strategies at present, and because the focus is cost-driven, contact centres are struggling to move to the customer-centric approach.
"The report shows that even though the number of calls to contact centres is increasing, so are abandonment rates, which means the service is not improving and there is too much ringing time before calls are answered," he says.
"There is a misalignment between contact centres and the executives in many organisations, with a large difference between the information required by executives who make the big money decisions and the information measured by the centres."
He says this gap needs to be bridged so the true importance of contact centres can be understood at the executive level and can thus be fully integrated into the company`s business model.
Fairon also believes cost containment is having a negative effect on contact centre staff, as agent induction training is now, on average, 21 days, whereas in the past it was 36 days.
"These figures are alarming and are being driven by cost containment issues. Another problem is the reduction in the number of coaches to agents, which used to be in the region of 1/35 and is now closer to 1/46.
"This means the international benchmark for quality is not being met, leading to more call abandonment."
He says there are a number of positive trends identified in the report, with a slow but steady uptake of IP-enabled contact centres, although this is most likely because organisations are adopting a cautious approach to it, due to it not being a fully understood technology.
"Speech recognition technology is used by 6% of callers at present, but over the next year growth of some 180% is expected in this field," says Fairon.
"Organisations are realising the technology is now mature enough to use, therefore we expect to see plenty of adoption. We should begin to see it being used for transactions too, whereas at present it is mostly used for call processing and routing.
"If speech recognition technology is properly understood and implemented, it can help to both drive down costs and improve customer service, as it frees up agents for more complex transactions," he says.
Fairon also says workforce optimisation is something for companies to focus on, as it can - if used correctly - deliver a 30% to 40% improvement on operational expenditure, which is critical in an era where cost-cutting is so prevalent.
"Ultimately, businesses need to resolve the current misalignment between the contact centres and executive management and focus on new technologies, like speech recognition and IP, which will support revenue generation and cost containment.
"Organisations must be wary of how far they can take their cost containment drive before it impacts severely on customer service," says Fairon.
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