Making Contact

Microsoft Enters the Contact Center Solutions Market With New Tie-Up with Aspect

2008-03-27T16:11:38-05:00

I know I’m late to the party on this but the recent news about Microsoft’s strategic partnership with Aspect Software to bring unified communications to the contact center is definitely one of the most significant business deals in the contact center space for 2008. You might say this deal represents Microsoft’s grand entry into the contact center space – or at least a very large step in that direction -- however, I wouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many of the other major contact center software makers have already rolled out UC offerings -- and have had customers using them for months.

As per the five year strategic alliance, the financial terms of which have not been disclosed, Aspect will design its Aspect Unified IP contact center solution to interoperate with Microsoft’s OCS platform for software-powered voice and unified communications, and will offer it as the leading option to new and existing customers (of course, existing customers can easily upgrade to the UC system). In addition, Microsoft is making an equity investment in Aspect to "accelerate the development and adoption of the new solutions and services."

Aspect is one of the largest and best-known providers of contact center solutions for the enterprise: Its solutions are deployed in call and contact centers all around the world. This deal is huge because it gives Microsoft a very large footprint in the contact center space almost instantly. Not to mention the opportunity to significantly accelerate adoption of OCS 2007, which, as you probably already know, can be used to roll out UC across the entire enterprise, and is fully interoperable with most other MS products, making it a very attractive value prop. (Consider this: 174 of the Fortune 500 companies have already licensed OCS)

Microsoft claims strong adoption of OCS 2007, coupled with the new tie-up with Aspect, puts the company on track to be “the top three enterprise voice provider in a few short years."

I think bringing Unified Communications to the contact center makes perfect sense, as it facilitates the next stage in the evolution of the “informal contact center,” where the barriers that separate the center from the rest of the organization are removed, and other knowledge workers within the organization can become “pseudo-customer-service reps,“ thus improving the customer experience. It is next step (a new layer) in the “virtualization” of the contact center -- afforded through the power of IP. I see Unified Communications as the next stage in delivering fully flexible communications – choose your mode of contact: IM, voice, email, video – from whatever device you want: desk phone, smart phone, laptop, home phone – use features like presence to determine availability – ad hoc conferencing and click-to-call. This new, robust (love that word), full-featured communication technology is ideally suited to the contact center: Now, customers, agents, managers, supervisors and other knowledge workers across the organizations can “connect with a click” and get the information they need -- thus achieving the much-coveted First Call (Contact) Resolution.

For more information and analysis about this big news I highly recommend you check out the following links:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/call-center/microsofts-call-center-push.html
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/unified-communications/microsoft-aspect-software-partner-on-unified-communications.asp
http://www.tmcnet.com/unified-communications/articles/23167-microsoft-aspect-announce-strategic-alliance.htm
http://hdvoice.tmcnet.com/topics/unified-communications/articles/23445-microsoft-aspect-partner-uc-contact-center-solutions.htm
http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/Analysis/articles/23669-microsoft-pushes-into-call-center-market-with-aspect.htm]]> TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us | Making Contact Home | Permalink: Microsoft Enters the Contact Center Solutions Market With New Tie-Up with Aspect

Aspect Rolls Out UC Strategy

2008-03-11T11:06:09-05:00

Aspect Software yesterday announced its new strategy to bring unified communications capabilities to its contact center solutions. Specifically, the company announced that it will soon be introducing enhanced versions of Aspect Unified IP and PerformanceEdge which are fully interoperable with existing unified communications solutions.

This, of course, could have been expected – I mean, after all Aspect is one of the largest providers of contact center solutions, and the adoption of unified communications is starting to pick up steam. Considering that so many enterprises already use their contact center telephony systems for communications across most, if not all of the organization (linking together different divisions, departments, remote offices, etc., that are geographically dispersed), it makes perfect sense for contact center platform makers such as Aspect to endow their products with UC capabilities (and many have already done so – for example, TouchStar just recently introduced its new “Unify” product, a browser-based product that facilitates true seamless UC across the enterprise). With these advanced, all-IP solutions and their amazing call routing capabilities, an enterprise can make its contact center system the “communications center” for the entire organization.

The advantage of bringing UC to the contact center is that it ushers in the next iteration of the “informal contact center,” where the walls, or barriers if you will, that separate the contact center from the rest of the organization are dissolved, and other “knowledge workers” within the organization can be used as resources for handling customer complaints and a wide range of other issues. To deliver superior customer service, agents need the ability to quickly and effortlessly “escalate” calls and put the customer in contact with someone else in the organization who has the exact skills or expertise to help that customer quickly. With UC in the contact center, agents have multiple means for reaching out to these knowledge workers – via IM, via email, via Web chat -- even video chat. Furthermore, with UC in the contact center, managers, supervisors and executives have the ability to reach personnel in the center (and view their “presence”) and get the information they need – quickly, effortlessly, and in the mode they prefer. With UC, not only can processes be seamlessly extended beyond the traditional boundaries of the contact center, with the ability to reach knowledge workers or “subject matter experts” in the organization, all collaboration across the organization is streamlined and enhanced.

“It is important for organizations to include the contact center as part of their broader unified communications strategy because customers can be a key beneficiary of the value that unified communications brings,” explained Bern Elliot, research vice president at Gartner, in yesterday’s news release from Aspect. “To succeed, enterprises should leverage contact center technology broadly into their enterprise, and similarly contact centers should understand how to leverage enterprise UC technology into their operations.”

For now Aspect is basing its unified communications for the contact center strategy on its current versions of Aspect Unified IP, a comprehensive session initiation protocol (SIP)-based VoIP unified contact center solution, and PerformanceEdge, its workforce optimization suite. The company reportedly plans to release new versions of these products which will be interoperable with other unified communications software.

The company claims that future releases of Aspect Unified IP “will enable organizations to route interactions to enterprise experts based on presence and willingness, generate enterprise-level reports of these interactions, and utilize workforce management to forecast expert demand.”

For more information about Aspect’s new UC strategy, check out Tracey Schelmetic’s article and Rich Tehrani’s blog entry from yesterday.

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Canada Officials Will Need to Plan Carefully to Weather the Coming Storm

2008-03-04T11:43:39-05:00

Government officials in the various provinces of Canada which are highly reliant on the call center industry to keep the economy afloat are no doubt scrambling to try to come up with additional incentives and new strategies to keep U.S. companies from pulling their centers out.

A recent report from Datamonitor shows that many U.S. firms are now starting to pack up and relocate their Canada-based call center operations due to the increasing value of the U.S. dollar and the increasingly unfavorable exchange rate. Even call center outsourcing behemoth Convergys recently announced that it will be closing some of its facilities in Canada in the coming months. This is bad news for New Brunswick, which relies heavily on the call center industry for jobs and economic growth and is in the process of trying to become independent.

In an article written today by TMCnet’s Susan Campbell, independent economic consultant David Campbell “argues that the area should put more emphasis on attracting financial services and hedge fund centers, which tend to pay higher salaries.” So one approach the this problem will be to continue to emphasize the fact that New Brunswick offers a well educated and highly skilled workforce and therefore is better suited to providing high value, high touch call center services. As Susan explains, “New Brunswick has a goal of becoming self-sufficient by 2026. Campbell warns that this goal will never be realized if the region continues to offer incentives to call centers that pay employees no more than $10 to $12 per hour.”

“Those jobs filled a need, but now that we have low unemployment, we need to look for jobs that will contribute taxes that will pay for government services,” Campbell said in a statement. “Essentially, we were attracting jobs that did not generate enough taxes to pay for the government services covering the worker.”

“Much like other locations, New Brunswick has found that more sophisticated contact centers tend to remain, especially those in IT and financial services. Call centers that live from contract to contract and whose basic operations include calling out to sell everything from phone services to car insurance, have proven to be transient.”

My take? Canada is going to be greatly challenged to keep its call center industry from shrinking unless it starts offering additional economic incentives to U.S. companies. Some regions are going to have a hard time attracting new center based on their “highly skilled workforce” alone, especially considering that workers with good IT skills are now finding opportunities in other industries outside of the call center realm all across Canada. It could be that as some U.S. firms begin to pull their operations out, the percentage of workers with good IT and customer service skills will begin to increase, thus creating new opportunities for Canada to attract new, “premium” centers which handle more complex, higher value transactions.

Now is the time for Canada officials to start planning carefully -- not panic, but calmly plan. With the right mix of economic incentives and skilled workers, it just could end up attracting the kind of centers it needs to make it through the rough times ahead ….

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Skills Shortage in the U.S. Keeps Widening

2008-02-24T12:53:13-05:00

I’m hearing, with increasing frequency, that there is a serious “skills shortage” in the U.S. labor pool -- especially when it comes to people who possess good IT skills combined with other skill sets.

Depending on what sources you refer to, one gets the idea that company IT departments in the U.S. are too slimmed down -- and furthermore that there’s not enough “real talent” to go around.

Thus companies are increasingly turning to managed services (including software solutions delivered via the Software-as-a-Service model) and support automation systems to handle some (or most) of their IT needs. In other words, they’re farming out more of their IT needs to third parties for lack of being able to find, attract and retain decent in-house talent.

This “skills shortage” is also why recruiting has become so tough in the call center industry: You need people who not only possess good interaction skills, or “people skills,” but who are also relatively tech savvy. Further call center managers have to hope they can find these “multi-skilled” people in the lower strata of the salary scale.

The really interesting thing here, though, is how the definition of what we consider to be “qualified people” has changed. Today, people not only need to possess traditional skills (in the case of call center, basic customer service skills), they also need decent IT skills in order to be viable in today’s labor pool.

This fascinating topic is explored in detail in a recent report from Gartner. To learn more about the report, check out Susan Campbell’s article on TMCnet.]]> TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us | Making Contact Home | Permalink: Skills Shortage in the U.S. Keeps Widening

Does God Need a Performance Management Solution Too?

2008-02-20T15:30:27-05:00

I was at the Call Center Demo show down in Miami this past week – you know, the call center trade show brought to you by the people who no longer have a print publication focused on the call center industry (heh, heh)?

Anyway, during the show I noticed that a majority of the exhibitors were focused on the workforce optimization space – which by definition includes workforce management, performance management, call recording, quality monitoring. e-learning and analytics. Apparently Tracey Schelmetic, editor of Customer Interaction Solutions, TMC’s illustrious print publication focused on the call center industry, got it right when she dubbed 2008 “The Year of Workforce Optimization” on the front cover of this month’s issue. From the look of this past week’s Call Center Demo show, I’d say she hit the nail on the head.

Breaking down the exhibitor list, there were nine companies offering workforce management; ten companies offering performance management; ten companies offering call recording; nine companies offering QM or “quality assurance;” and 11 companies offering analytics (Web and Speech). Of course, there is duplication in each category, as many of these companies offer a suite of products for addressing some or all of the technology “disciplines” that make up the WFO realm. But bear in mind that there was only a little more than 50 exhibitors!

The thing I see, though, is that the WFO space is becoming so competitive that many of these companies are having a hard time differentiating their products -- as became evident when I asked each of them what made their solutions unique in the marketplace. Beyond the fact the solutions are geared for certain sized markets (SMB or enterprise), and are sometimes tailored for specific industries, many of the vendors (save for a few) were unable to tell me which feature sets or capabilities really distinguished their products from their competitors. A couple of them actually seemed bored from having to explain the capabilities of their solutions over and over (trust me, I understand). Sometimes the emphasis was more on who they interoperate with, the level of scalbility provided, or how their pricing is structured (if offering hosted) than it was about the specific features or capabilities. But to me it seems like it should be the other way around. I know there are major differences between some of the products I saw -- that there key differences between the features and capabilities they provide -- so I'm wondering why that wasn't better conveyed.

One thing that makes me chuckle is how performance management solutions are “working their way up the food chain,” if you will, and how there are now PM solutions geared for trainers, coaches, managers/supervisors -- even company execs. Yes, indeed, it seems like everyone or anyone in an organization can benefit form a little performance management from time to time. I’m wondering if one day soon we’ll see performance management solutions geared for high level executives like COOs ands CFOs. Heck why not performance management for your company president or CEO? Of course, your CEO’s performance would have to be continuously monitored, in real time, by an independent third party (hand picked by the board, of course). And as long we’re going to do that, why not improve accountability among all of our government officials – including our President – and have them operate within the rigors of a standardized performance management solution as well?

And, as long as we’re at it, how about some performance management for the “Big Guy” upstairs too? You know, the ancient one, with the flowing white beard, up in the heavens? Shouldn’t there be a performance management solution designed for Him as well? Afterall, gotta make sure He's holding up His end of the bargain ...

(OK, so I’ve officially lost it …)

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Datamonitor: Convergys the First, But Unlikely the Last, to Pull its Call Centers Out of Canada

2008-02-19T15:00:27-05:00

A new report from market research firm Datamonitor shows what many of us already know: Companies are starting to pack up and relocate their Canada-based call center operations due to the increasing value of the U.S. dollar and the increasingly unfavorable exchange rate. Even call center outsourcing behemoth Convergys has announced that it will be closing some of its facilities in Canada in the coming months – this news coming directly from the mouth of Convergys CEO David Dougherty.

“Convergys’ announcement of a scale-back on Canadian operations could be the first of many by outsourcers,” warned Peter Ryan, head of contact center outsourcing analysis at Datamonitor, in a press release. He said the decline of the U.S. dollar “has badly eroded the profitability of U.S. outsourcers based in Canada,” and that “Canadian contact center labor is becoming difficult to recruit and retain, further adding to outsourcers’ costs.” In addition there is not enough supply of Spanish-speaking contact center labor in Canada to meet U.S. demand, Ryan said.

If things don’t change soon -- and right now there’s no reason to expect that they will --Datamonitor predicts that companies will be pulling their call centers out of Canada in droves, crippling what has become one of the country’s largest and most profitable industries. They will go out and find new regions for setting up their call centers -- in India, in the Philippines, and in Latin America -- Datamonitor suggests, and some will no doubt want to bring their centers back home to the U.S. too.

Datamonitor says the increasingly unfavorable exchange in Canada “has been a nightmare for American contact center investors.”

“Indeed, since 2004, the CDN has appreciated over 30 percent, which has effectively eroded profit margins and operating cost savings that many U.S. outsourcers had come to rely upon from their Canadian operations,” a press release touting the new Datamonitor report states. “This had been a major selling point for luring American investment north of the border.”

According to the report, a diminished pool of qualified applicants for contact center jobs – which now demand both good technical and interaction skills – is also hurting the contact center industry in Canada. Recruiting good agents has become a serious challenge, particularly when considering recent trends such as the migration of prospective agents from across the country to the burgeoning Alberta oil sands, where firms are paying higher salaries – salaries which contact center industry in Canada simply cannot match. This in turn has led to an increase in overall wages and benefits paid to existing agents in order to keep attrition low – however, outsourcing firms are going to have difficulty bearing these higher wages over the long term and for that reason many of them will begin to pull out.

Another factor resulting in diminished interest in Canada as a location for contact centers is the fact that the country offers so few Spanish-speaking agents. With roughly one third of all U.S. consumers now Spanish-speaking, it is little wonder that so many organizations see multilingual capabilities, in particular English-Spanish, as being critical to their future success. As such, many of the U.S. organizations pulling out of Canada will likely be looking at other “near-shore” options, such as those offered in the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA).

Datamonitor is a leading provider of online data, analytic and forecasting platforms for key vertical sectors. For more information, visit www.datamonitor.com.

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Maximizer Rounds Out Maximizer CRM 10 Suite with New Entrepreneur Edition

2008-02-19T09:06:39-05:00

Maximizer Software Inc. has released the Entrepreneur Edition of Maximizer CRM 10 – thus rounding out its CRM software suite with a new edition targeted at the small business.

Maximizer CRM 10 already included covered the SMB market well with its Group, Professional and Enterprise Editions. Now, with the introduction of the Entrepreneur Edition, the suite has an edition for every size business (including departments within a larger organization), from small to medium to large to enterprise. In fact, Maximizer claims it is now “the only vendor that offers a complete family of CRM products for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that enables a smooth migration from contact management through to full-featured CRM.” Its CRM software suite is now flexible and scalable enough that it can help a business of one grow to become a business of “500 or beyond.”

Introduced this past November, Maximizer CRM 10 represents a departure from Maximizer’s previous CRM product line, in that it has eliminated the former stand-alone Enterprise edition found in version 9 and combined it into a more full-spectrum version with different editions to suit the needs of different-sized companies.

The new Entrepreneur Edition covers the “small” end of the spectrum, but as company officials point out, this easy-to-use, turn-key CRM solution offers advanced functionality found on more expensive systems – including, perhaps best of all, CRM for BlackBerry smartphones.

Even a small business can benefit from a mobile CRM solution. With mobile CRM, your workers can have access to the critical business information they need via their BlackBerry devices, and the ability to manipulate it in near real time.

Maximizer claims that one big advantage of its software suite is that it lets companies transition to mobile CRM at their own pace (or as the business grows), from basic mobile messaging to full-fledged mobile CRM (with full access to real data, and the ability manipulate it in real time, as well as the ability to conduct transactions remotely).

With Maximizer’s MaxMobile client for BlackBerry working in concert with the mobile version of its platform, mobile workers can have access to their customers, leads, schedules, sales deals and forecasts, and service cases directly on their handsets, through wired or wireless synchronization. As such, changes and updates made in the field can take effect in real time (or near real time) on a server at the central office. Plus, with Maximizer 10, managers can get centralized, Web-based “dashboard” views of business activity and do real time analysis of the data which is coming from every end point, including the mobile devices.

“For budding small businesses, choosing a key technology solution is a critical investment, as both money and resource allocation can make or break the business,” said William Anderson, executive vice president, Maximizer Software, in a press release. “With the release of Entrepreneur Edition, small business owners gain an extremely comprehensive contact management solution that enables them to incorporate best practices in customer care and time management right from the start.”

Another key differentiator for Maximizer CRM 10 is its integration with CanDoGo.com’s on-demand sales and professional coaching solution. Thanks to Maximizer’s partnership with CanDoGo.com, your workers can have anytime access to high quality coaching and training content and other basic business advice from leading experts through their CRM apps. Topics covered range from sales negotiation, to proposals, to leadership and motivation. Users can leverage advice and coaching from more than 150 authors, speakers and professional trainers including Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins and Tony Parinello, in text, audio and video formats.

Maximizer CRM 10 Entrepreneur Edition also offers easier communication and time management with improved Microsoft Outlook integration; improved administration and security to manage small groups; and overall productivity enhancements in on-the-fly reporting, and task management.

For more information, visit www.maximizer.com.

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Improving Agent Performance Takes a Holistic Approach

2008-02-19T08:40:21-05:00

Improving agent performance in the call center requires a holistic approach – not only do you have to a thorough job of assessing agent skills during the recruiting/hiring process, you also have to train your agents to become customer care experts and then continuously improve their skills through ongoing coaching.

Perhaps more importantly, you also need to do a careful job of recruiting and training your call center managers. The manager’s role is becoming increasingly critical today, as so many organizations are now near-shoring or off-shoring their centers and spreading their centers across the globe. In some of these off-shore locations, managers find themselves in a 1:6 manager-to-agent ratio -- and facing major cultural and language barriers. Needless to say there can be some serious challenges for these managers as they try to adapt to their new environments.

But regardless of these challenges, there is a systematic and proven method for organizations to improve operations at their off-shore call centers and boost customer satisfaction. And here we’re talking about a lot more than basic training in customer interaction skills and “accent neutralization.” To learn more, check out this white paper from Ulysses Learning.

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Cisco Issues Security Alerts for its Unified Communications Products

2008-02-15T17:45:19-05:00

Cisco has issued two security alerts relating to flaws in its unified communications products which could enable hackers to launch denial of service attacks or hack into company telephony systems and retrieve sensitive information, among other annoyances.

According to published reports, one of the alerts concerns a flaw in certain Cisco Unified IP Phone models running its Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP) and/or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The other alert relates to a vulnerability which might enable a hacker to launch an SQL Injection attack affecting Cisco's Unified Communications Manager software.

Numerous models of Cisco’s SCCP- and SIP-based phones contain a buffer overflow vulnerability in the handling of DNS responses. The company said a hacker launching a specially-crafted DNS response might be able to trigger a buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable phone. The company has already patched the vulnerability in SCCP firmware version 8.0(8) and SIP firmware version 8.8(0), but certain other versions are still vulnerable.

As per a report appearing Wednesday on Network World, there are, in fact, “three vulnerablities that affect certain SCCP devices: a large Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Request DOS, which can cause a vulnerable device to reboot by sending a large ICMP echo request packet; an HTTP Server DOS problem that could cause certain phones to reboot by sending a specially crafted HTTP request to TCP port 80; and a Secure Shell (SSH) flaw in other Cisco phones that could cause the phones to reboot if an unauthenticated attacker sent a specially crafted packet to port 22.” The company is reportedly working to fix all vulnerabilities. Cisco has also reportedly identified three vulnerabilities affecting its SIP devices, including a SIP Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) boundary overflow, a Telnet Server overflow, and a SIP Proxy Response overflow.”

This makes three UC-related alerts that Cisco has had to make so far this year. In January the company sent out an alert warning that its Unified Communications Manager contains a “heap overflow” vulnerability in the Certificate Trust List that could allow a hacker to cause a denial-of-service attack or execute arbitrary code.

Cisco has reportedly released free software updates to address the aforementioned vulnerability in Unified Communications Manager, which could open it up to an SQL injection attack in the parameter key of the admin and user interface pages. Such an attack could give a hacker access to usernames and password hashes that are stored in the database.]]> TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us | Making Contact Home | Permalink: Cisco Issues Security Alerts for its Unified Communications Products

RIM Reports BlackBerry Email Outage

2008-02-11T16:52:19-05:00

Research In Motion is reporting that there is a "critical severity outage" of E-mail service on BlackBerry smartphones across North America, however, the cause of the outage, or how widespread it is, has not yet been reported.

According to a Reuters Canada report, BlackBerry users today received an emergency notification email “regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage.” An AP report says the outage occurred sometime shortly after 3:30 p.m..

The e-mail notification said the outage has affected enterprise clients and "users of the Americas network." Neither the Reuters Canada report or the AP report says how many users in the U.S. and Canada are affected.

TMCnet has been searching the Web for more news on what caused the outage and how long it will take to repair. We’ll let you know as soon as we know …

Geez, first it was the undersea cables and now BlackBerry email service. Wonder how many conspiracy theories are forming around this one ...

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EFM/Survey Space is Starting to Heat Up

2008-02-08T17:50:48-05:00

I just now completed a brief, over-the-phone survey with my bank, one of the biggest in the U.S., following a routine balance inquiry. They’re trying to determine my satisfaction with their speech-enabled self-serve banking service. My bank has been “tweaking” this service (which, by the way, is actually “either/or” -- i.e., touchtone or speech activated) for about a year now – and it works pretty darn well, if you ask me. I think about 18 months ago it was touchtone only, but now it gives me the choice “enter or say.” Usually, I take the touchtone option, but the speech-enabled system works really well, and when I’ve used it, it has never misinterpreted what I said or asked me to repeat (should I say thank you to Nuance?).

Anyway, I’m finding that more and more organizations are asking me for my opinion of their services, following an interaction … and I’m finding, almost to my own surprise, that I’m amenable to giving it to them. The survey I just took was only three questions and it took a total of about 60 seconds to complete. I was happy to rate their over-the-phone self-service a “10” across the board because I really do feel it works very well.

The rising preponderance of these post-interaction surveys just proves that the Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) space is starting to really heat up – and I think it will soon be commonplace for most organizations to ask you to take a brief survey after you complete an interaction (at least occasionally, or after so many transactions). I’ve heard that some organizations are even offering incentives such as discounts and freebies if you take brief survey.

Of course, the data gathered from these post-interaction surveys is only meaningful depending on what is done with it – and by that I mean how much of it you collect, how you combine it with other customer “meta-data,” and whether you integrate it into your CRM. Some solutions let you readily combine the data with the other data you gather through your speech analytics, for example, to get an amazingly accurate picture of your customer satisfaction and customer loyalty levels.

One of the leaders in this new EFM space is Allegiance – and I’ve written about them a few times in this blog. I think they have a hot product and we’ll be hearing more about them in the future. One of the great things about EFM companies like Allegiance is their willingness to uncover industry trends through their own surveys – and by that I mean Allegiance does its own surveys and releases the data through its Pulse of America offering. Of course, Allegiance even gives its own customers the chance to express their opinions about the company right on its own website – obviously it would seem hypocritical if they didn’t use their own product to gather opinions from their customers!

While Allegiance might be viewed as a “pioneer” in the EFM space and a pure-play provider of EFM solutions, I’m seeing survey solutions for both speech and Web popping up everywhere across all facets the call center software space. For example, call recording/quality monitoring/analytics solutions provider CallCopy – which just recently launched its new Survey Channel on TMCnet – offers a really cool survey app offering some advanced functionality that I haven’t seen in other survey products. Of course, I need to drive home the point here that there is a huge distinction to be made between harvesting opinions and what you do with the data afterward. But CallCopy is definitely an innovative company and after doing an interview with them this past week (article in the works) I must say I’m impressed with their offerings.

Keep an eye on this EFM/survey space – and make sure you check out CallCopy’s new Survey Channel on TMCnet.]]> TrackBack (0) | Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us | Making Contact Home | Permalink: EFM/Survey Space is Starting to Heat Up

Thinking about Putting Your Business in the Hands of Total Strangers?

2008-02-07T08:50:50-05:00

In an article posted yesterday on Marketing Pilgrim, Greg Howlett has some great practical advice for smaller sized companies thinking about outsourcing their calls to a call center.

He makes the point that companies need to do a thorough job of assessing a call center outsourcing firm’s operations – and in particular the skill level of its agents – before making a decision, and that furthermore, once the decision is made, you have to continuously monitor the call center’s performance in order to ensure that service quality isn’t slipping.

“The key is simply this–you cannot hire one and forget about them,” he wrote. “You have to remember that those people whom you have little control over have the ability to make or break your business. That is scary thought.”

He suggests that companies place a lot of “test orders” with the BPO firms they’re considering contracting – and also that they have a sharp eye for the details in the contract itself, in order to protect themselves. He also suggests that companies reps actually visit the call enters they’re doing business with, and meet some of the agents to get a first hand perspective of their skill level and the quality of their work.

As he so aptly points out, when you go to contract with one of these overseas firms, you are basically placing the success of your business into the hands of total strangers. But don’t let them be strangers – go meet with them, assess their skills (and general level of intelligence) – and take a look at the facility.

Good, sound advice.

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Contactual: High Class without the High Cost

2008-02-04T14:47:48-05:00

Hosted contact center solutions company Contactual recently released a case study explaining how temporary staffing company Labor Ready realized significant efficiencies and cost savings since it started using Contactual’s Web-based apps. The case study was covered today by TMC freelancer Anuradha Shukla and is posted on Contactual’s new Virtual Call Center channel on TMCnet.

Contactual’s high scalability, reliability and ease of deployment, as well as its “virtualization” capabilities, have brought huge advantages to this busy staffing agency. I think this case study is a great testimonial speaking to the many advantages afforded through today’s hosted contact center offerings.

I met with Contactual CEO Mansour Salame and other members of the Contactual team a couple of times this past summer and I am impressed with the company and its offerings, which are accurately described as “affordable yet very full featured.” I think it is a high class operation.

You might remember that Contactual landed a sweet deal with VoIP solutions provider 8x8 this past July. 8x8, provider of the popular Packet8 VoIP service (which also comes in a business edition), announced that it was launching a new, fully integrated hosted call center solution designed specifically for small to medium sized businesses with call center operations consisting of less than 100 seats. This offering is based on Contactual’s hosted contact center platform. To me, that speaks volumes about the reliability and scalability of this platform.

There are quite a few software providers out there who are now offering hosted contact center offerings, but a key difference (beyond the software’s capabilities and the various pricing schemes) is the level of support – and quality of support – you get with the service. I won’t name any names, but from what I understand this is one of the things that separate Contactual from the rest of the pack.

Keep your eye on Contactual … and make sure you check out the company’s new channel on TMCnet!

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Gov. Eliot Spitzer to Attend Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for New Sitel Contact Center in Western New York

2008-01-31T12:35:20-05:00

According to a report in the Elmira Star-Gazette, Gov. Eliot Spitzer was expected to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of Sitel Corp.’s new contact center in Erwin, N.Y. this morning.

The new 400 seat contact center -- which will be a real shot in the arm for Erwin and Elmira-area’s economy -- will be located in a 45,000-square-foot former Corning Inc. building at 103 Canada Road. According to the report, the state of New York is contributing $2.25 million to the project, including a $1.5 million grant from Empire State Development and $750,000 from the Governor's Office for Small Cities. Sitel will invest up to $4.6 million to renovate the former Corning Inc. facility.

Privately-held Sitel is a leading contact center outsourcing firm with more than 145 facilities in 30 countries employing 67,000 employees.

In other contact center opening news, Global Contact Services of North Carolina has announced that it will be opening a new call center in Pittsfield, Pa., creating at least 200 new jobs by early March. This will be GCS’s eleventh call center location. As per a report in the Bangor Daily News, “the move softens the loss of 145 local jobs announced Monday by San Antonio Shoe and six teaching positions that will be lost in June with the closure of St. Agnes Catholic School.”

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Dell to Cut Some Call Center Jobs in Ottawa

2008-01-31T09:21:48-05:00

Dell is reportedly making more staff cuts, this time at one of its Ottawa call centers. According to a report in London Free Press, dozens of employees at one of Dell’s call centers in Ottawa will be given pink slips sometime in the coming weeks. But the bigger blow is that Dell has decided to scrap its plans to add 1,200 seats to its call center operations in the province.

Dell representative Jess Blackburn told London Free Press that the cuts are “part of Dell's global review of its business operations and efforts to consolidate and reduce our costs of operations around the world."

For the past few years, Dell has opened one call center after another, the philosophy apparently being that opening more centers, rather than improving the quality of service, was the best strategy for boosting c-sat … but now it appears the tide has turned, and lately I’ve seen more announcements about Dell call center closings, rather than openings.

This particular report makes me wonder if the current unfavorable exchange rate on the U.S. dollar in Canada had something to do with Dell’s decision …

Not to go off on a tangent, but another thing I always wonder, when I read these reports, is whether self-service solutions and other channels for contact, such as email and Web, are gaining favor among consumers and are therefore starting to have an impact on staffing levels …

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Arvato Using Aspect Software's Uniphi Connect

2008-01-30T10:01:27-05:00

Arvato Services, a leading global third-party customer service outsourcing provider, is reportedly expanding its use of Aspect Software’s leading contact center solutions.

Specifically, Arvato is using Aspect’s Uniphi Connect with its existing Aspect CallCenter ACDs to create a “virtual” SIP-based VoIP contact center. With this new IP-based solution in place, Arvato will be able to improve agent performance and boost customer satisfaction. It also gains a solution which can scale more readily, and which offers greater flexibility to meet rapidly changing business needs.

Because Uniphi Connect is a hybrid solution, Arvato will be able to use it to support agents working in both TDM and IP environments. By coupling the solution with Aspect CallCenter ACD, Arvato will now have a virtual contact center solution, where all end points on the network are “equal.” Such systems are ideal for facilitating the remote agent model, or the informal contact center, where other knowledge workers within the organization can be used as “expert agents,” with all the same software and resources available on their desktops as agents in the main center. Calls and other contacts can be routed seamlessly to all end points using this system. In addition, the system can be administered via a single interface, from Arvato’s central office, which will be key since it will be deployed across different centers in different areas, including the company’s internal IT support desk staff, which is scattered across three offices in Antwerp, Abcoude and Venlo and connected by VoIP.

Because the system is VoIP-based, Arvato can now save big time on its communications costs, which in turn will keep the price per user low. It will also benefit from minimum time to execution (1 hour/25 seats) at minimal cost; increased flexibility to add or decrease agent seats on demand; the ability to leverage remote services (in-house and externally), providing enhanced overflow to external contact centers as needed; and disaster recovery options by using the contact center in Antwerp as a backup centre for Venlo, and vice-versa. Perhaps best of all the company didn’t have to make any investment in new hardware, as this is an all software solution.

“When the state lottery has its drawing, there is a sharp increase in customer contacts which means Arvato has to be prepared,” explained David West, Senior VP International Sales EMEA, Aspect Software.“With SIP-based VoIP and the virtual contact center capabilities that Aspect provides, Arvato is able to have the appropriate resources available to manage those contacts and maintain a consistent level of service.”

“Aspect CallCenter ACD is proven technology with extremely high reliability and virtually one hundred percent uptime,” added Leon van Adrichem, CTO at Arvato Services Benelux. “Additionally, Aspect is our supplier for other solutions, so this was a natural progression. Our investment remains protected and the implementation time was considerably shortened as Aspect already knows us. It has gone flawlessly.”

“This solution also helps Arvato offer our contact center capabilities as a hosted service, meaning third parties are able to offer their services by building upon our infrastructure,” he added. “This is an important step forward in our strategy to be an innovative market leader in the field of complex solutions in the services industry.”

For more information about Aspect Software, visit www.aspect.com.

For more information about Arvato Services, visit www.arvato.com.

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ISO: Interactive Intelligence is a Tight Ship

2008-01-30T09:26:41-05:00

Interactive Intelligence yesterday announced that it has been re-certified to ISO 9001:2000, marking its third consecutive year of compliance.

That means the company's management system is up to snuff, as per ISO standards, and that it is equipped to deliver the products and services it promises it can deliver, with the quality that customers should expect. The International Organization for Standardization is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Headquarted in Geneva, Switzerland, it promulgates world-wide industrial and commercial standards.

In order to gain ISO 9001:2000 certification an organization must consistently follow a set of procedures covering all key processes in the business, including monitoring processes to ensure they are effective; keeping adequate records; checking output for defects, with appropriate corrective action where necessary; conducting regular review of individual processes and the quality system itself; and facilitating continual improvement.

Interactive Intelligence underwent an audit at its headquarters in Indianapolis last month to ensure it was maintaining ISO standards for the development and distribution of its call/contact center and enterprise/SMB communications solutions.

"Being certified to ISO 9001:2000 gives further assurance to customers and partners that we are able to satisfy their most stringent quality, reliability, efficiency and cost-effectiveness requirements," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown in a press release. "Particularly for large enterprises, as well as those representing regulatory-driven industries, such as government, financial services and healthcare, our certification gives these customers added assurance that we can meet their highest standards."

Interactive Intelligence first achieved ISO 9001:2000 certification in December 2004.

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Call Center Workers in India: Fat, Unhealthy … and Causing a National Health ‘Crisis?’

2008-01-23T15:43:18-05:00

A recent report from the Associated Press underscores what many of us in the call center industry have known for years: The job just simply isn’t healthy.

Call center agents sit all day and barely move from their cubicles. And as many agents in India are coming to learn, that lack of activity can lead to a wide range of health problems, from obesity to heart disease to diabetes to sleep disorders. Not to mention depression and family discord (the latter probably stemming from the really strange hours most call center agents need to keep -- many of them have to work the “dead man’s shift”). After all, it’s tough working in a place where the air is stagnant, germs are abundant, and there’s little to no natural light (not to mention the generally lousy attitude and gloomy outlook on life that is so pervasive among call center workers).

The article makes it sound as though the call center industry in India, which employs literally millions of people, is causing a widespread health crisis that is spiraling out of control – a crisis which might actually end up ruining the industry in that country. According to the article, many agents are quitting after they discover that they are piling on the pounds and encountering a variety of health problems. But perhaps the bigger point is that the industry is causing a health care crisis which the state will ultimately end up having to pay for (as health care in India is government subsidized).

“Experts warn the brewing crisis could undermine the success of India's hugely profitable outsourcing industry that earns billions in dollars annually and has shaped much of the country's transformation into an emerging economic power,” the article states.

The one thing the article doesn’t point out, however, is that call center agents aren’t the only ones who are chained to their computers all day. There are all kinds of jobs out there that require you to sit at a desk and use a keyboard, mouse and phone all day long. And as businesses become more and more reliant on technology, there will only be more of these “sedentary” type jobs out there. As everyone well knows, it is a matter of balancing the lack of activity with exercise and healthy eating habits. Maybe that’s what the call center agents in India need to wake up and realize.

Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said this about the call center agents who are encountering these health problems:

"After working, they party for the rest of the time ... (They) have bad diet, excessive smoking and drinking," he said at a public meeting last month. "We don't want these young people to burn out."

So there you have it. Fix the problem yourself, stupid, and stop blaming your job.

When I worked as a call center agent doing outbound telemarketing and surveys, me and my co-workers used to always joke about the various ways we could keep ourselves healthy while at the same time doing our jobs. One idea I came up with was to have some sort of a treadmill or exercise bike at each work station that would enable the agent to dial and talk on the phone while getting some mild exercise. Of course, the treadmill or exercise bike would have to be pretty darn quiet, and you’d have to find a way to not make it sound like you’re out of breath when you’re handling an interaction. I also thought that maybe my employer should let every worker have 30 minutes of exercise, for every four hours of work. My manager said, “as long as you don’t mind getting paid for eight hours out of a 10-hour shift (lunch included, of course), by all means ….”

I think the call center workers in India are just now starting to encounter the general health problems caused by desk jobs that we’ve already been dealing with, and trying to prevent, here in the U.S. for the past 20 years – it’s just now catching up with them. I wonder how many call center workers in India have health club memberships. Hey Bally’s, are you reading this?

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Allegiance Banking Survey Got Me Thinking …

2008-01-08T18:02:31-05:00

A while back, I blogged about EFM firm Allegiance’s recent survey of bank customers, showing that banks could be doing a lot more to earn their customers’ loyalty. I think I came off sounding a bit bitter and I might have left the impression that I hate the banking industry, which isn’t really true, I appreciate what the banks do, for all of us -- and I don’t really believe that all banks are run by evil, greedy people.

But the Allegiance survey did get me thinking about some of the things I’d like to see my bank do, in order to serve me better. So here goes.

Like a lot of people, I keep a “coin jar” which I use to offload my coins when I have too many rattling around in my pants pocket. Actually, my coin “jar” is really a heavy duty freezer bag that I keep on top of my refrigerator -- I started using a bag because it forces me to deposit the coins sooner than when I used a glass Crystal Rock jug, which would sometimes reach a weight of over 100 pounds when it filled up with change. Sometimes when my seven-year-old daughter comes into the kitchen and sees the bag, she asks me what I’m saving the coins for, and I jokingly tell her that it is her “college fund,” upon which she usually laughs, because she knows I’m only joking (at least for now). When the bag gets too full to be manageable, I take it to an area grocery store which has a Coinstar machine – a fabulous device which quickly and conveniently turns your coins into bills (usually for a 10 or 15 percent “cut” of the total). To me, this is a far better option than throwing all that change into all those “tip jars” that are turning up everywhere (at the quick oil change place? You gotta be kidding me ….)

Not too long ago, I read an article which said that West Coast Bank, a leading Pacific Northwest community bank, was one of the first banks in the country to offer the new Madison coin-counting kiosk from Coinstar. According to the article, the service is being free of charge to bank customers in 10 Oregon and Washington branch locations.

I would love to see my bank put a Coinstar machine at every location. In fact, I think it would be really cool if you could deposit your coins into a slot right at the ATM machine, so that you’re not limited to banking hours (plus, as I mentioned, I have service free checking, so I don’t feel like I’m allowed in the bank building anyway …). This would be huge for the “little minnows” like me who see significant savings potential in coin currency. In fact, I’d even be willing to give my bank a small cut of the proceeds.

Sound trivial? Not at all when you think about the results of the Allegiance survey …

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Today’s Speech-Enabled Self-Serve Solutions Stand to Rob Speech Analytics of its Efficacy

2008-01-03T17:37:58-05:00

As I’m sure you already know, speech recognition and speech analytics are two related yet very different disciplines. In the call center world, speech recognition has evolved from the clunky DTMF touchtone solutions of a few years ago (which you basically bolted onto your switch to handle call steering), to highly advanced, speech-enabled self-serve solutions -- or “automated agents” -- which actually have “personas” and can guide you, just like a live agent, through a transaction via natural conversation (this facilitated through today’s advanced speech algorithms and increasingly sophisticated “full vocabulary” speech engines). With today’s self-serve solutions, very often the “automated agent” can handle the entire interaction – whether it’s informational or transactional -- and the customer may never need to speak to a live agent. Speech analytics, on the other hand, primarily relates to the “mining” of recorded call data, which typically takes place post transaction, and does not require the same level of speech recognition technology as an “automated agent” or IVR application takes. With speech analytics, organizations can “mine” their recorded agent/customer interactions, post-transaction, and gain new insights into customer and agent behavior – insights which can be used to drive key business decisions.

OK so there you have the basic functions/advantages of both technologies. And keep in mind that both are now largely viewed as being an application residing within the enterprise network – not just on the call center switch. I won’t bore you with my detailed list of the advantages of each – nor will I bother explaining how the value both of these technologies becomes exponentially greater when they work as part of a tightly integrated suite of applications. Suffice it to say that both are now being viewed as important, if not critical pieces of the contact center software ecosystem – and speech analytics is now being viewed as a critical tool for gaining business intelligence.

Here’s the point I want to make – and I make this point every time I do an interview with a company that deals in both technologies:

Speech recognition will one day begin to rob speech analytics of its value.

Why do I say this? Well, it’s a pretty simple observation, really. As more and more contact centers begin to deploy speech-enabled self-service solutions -- and as they are able to have those systems handle more and more of the transactions all on their own -- there will obviously be less need for customers to interact with live agents. But wait a minute – what about those important “insights” that are delivered through the mining of recorded interactions? What happens if a large percentage of your customers never actually talk to a live agent?

You see, as call centers push off more and more calls onto these automated systems, they are losing the valuable customer insights that they normally gather by mining recorded interactions through speech analytics. It’s kind of ironic, in a way, but one technology ends up sapping the power from the other. If you have less recorded interactions, then you have less data to mine, right?

Usually when I raise this point, most vendors explain that very few organizations are able to serve their customers entirely through self service solutions – in other words, there will always be an opportunity for a customer to talk to live agent when there is a problem. But with the industry really pushing for these self-service solutions, and with these solutions becoming more and more advanced each day, it is easy to imagine that one day most customer service centers will be able to handle the vast majority of calls using self-service apps. So, my point is, even if a call center is able to automate 60 percent of its transactions – that’s still 60 percent less recorded interactions which can be mined to gain valuable business insights. Now you can only mine 40 percent of your interactions – and those are probably the interactions where the customer was dropped out of the self serve system for one reason or another. In my view, this totally stands to “skew” the data that is collected from through speech analytics. Now, you are able to mine only the transactions where something went wrong, initially, or at least only the ones where the customer had to speak with a live agent (perhaps the call was escalated to a higher level to handle a higher value transaction, or whatever).

I see tremendous irony in this and I’m wondering if there are any other readers out there who also see that speech enabled self-service solutions are like a “knife in the back” of speech analytics. I’ve been told that some organizations are now recording and mining the interactions with the self-serve solution, to see if they can gain insights from those, but to be honest, I don’t really see the point in doing that. I mean, after all, if you’re customer completes his transaction with the automated system, you must be doing something right … right?

Anyone out there think I'm right?

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New Wonder Drug Will Enable Center Agents to Work 20 Hour Shifts and Still Sound Chipper

2007-12-31T14:30:22-05:00

Call centers are always looking for ways to get more productivity out of their agents.

Now, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have discovered something which could one day help call center managers squeeze every last bit of energy out of their workers: A brain chemical call Orexin A. The naturally occurring chemical is said to regulate sleep. The researchers found that when the chemical is administered to sleep-deprived monkeys, they can perform just as well as if they had a normal night’s rest. So now, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Actelion are developing new drugs which will let sleep-deprived people perform just the same as if they a full night’s sleep – supposedly without any side effects.

If and when this drug becomes available, you can be sure that the call center outsourcing firms in the Philippines and India will want to start slipping it into the water coolers. As many of you already know, call center agents in those parts of the world are expected to put in long hours – typically more than 10 hours a day – as there are no restrictions on shift length (or the labor laws simply are not enforced). With this drug, an agent could, in theory, work two 20 hour shifts in a row (or more) and still perform the same as if they had a normal nights’ rest.

Interestingly, the drug companies are working on a nasal spray for fast administering of the drug. In lab testing, Orexin A reportedly “reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.” The drug will likely be used initially to treat the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.

If the new drug is approved, it will probably be a great alternative to using stimulants such as coffee and Red Bull (however, personally I’d want to experiment with it and see how I really feel, before I try it “on the job”). Obviously, there are a lot of jobs out there where this drug might play a useful role -- not just call center agents, but also truck drivers, security guards, air traffic controllers … hmm, come to think of it, who wouldn’t want to use it from time to time?

To learn more about this new wonder-drug-in-development, click here.

Oh, and by the way, Happy New Year! Maybe next year, if the Orexin drug is available, you’ll be able to stay up and party all night and show up for work the next day refreshed and ready to go another 20 hours! Too bad it’s not already on the market … I have to be back in the office bright and early on Wednesday morning!

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Software-as-a-Service Model Continues to Gain Traction in the Contact Center Industry

2007-12-18T14:49:57-05:00

The Software-as-a-Service trend continues to take hold in the contact center industry – but how many more organizations will take this route for their contact center systems over the next few years is anyone’s guess. Although some organizations still seem dead-set on keeping their systems in house, the vast majority now seem like they are at least open to the idea of going with the hosted delivery model. From where I sit, it appears that a surprisingly large number – perhaps upwards of 20 percent – of all contact center operators have already deployed hosted solutions – however, it seems most are using only one hosted application, or a set of applications, to test out the waters, and not very many have not shifted their entire architecture over to the SaaS model.

It’s interesting to talk about the SaaS trend with the software vendors operating in the contact center space. Most of the vendors I’ve spoken with which do not yet have hosted versions of their software say they eventually will … in fact, most make it sound inevitable that they must move in this direction, regardless of the level of interest among current customers. Many of the software vendors which offer “middleware” or peripheral solutions are saying that as contact centers increasingly migrate over to all-hosted systems, they, too, must evolve to offer their solutions on a hosted basis (here I’m talking about solutions such as CRM integration, which have traditionally been on-premise only).

The benefits of going with hosted solutions are now well established. To name a few of the big ones, there is lower up front cost because companies don’t have to shell out for equipment, installation and maintenance; there are much lower initial licensing fees; and because the software is Web-based it can be accessed by any authorized user from any end point -- plus it can be centrally administered and typically offers more advanced reporting capabilities. What most companies like best about the hosted model is the fact that it helps them avoid unexpected costs: Now the software is consumed just like any other utility (electric service being the more common analogy), and thus it can be represented as a recurring line item in the monthly operating budget – there are no equipment failures or network problems to deal with and throw off the budget. It also takes the strain off the company IT department, as it is no longer required to maintain and troubleshot the contact center system when there are problems.

Because it is Web-based, hosted contact center software is also ideal for facilitating the “Virtual contact center” where all end points on the network are “equal.” Thus it is ideal for facilitating the home-based, or remote agent model, as well as the “informal contact center” model, where the walls of the contact center are broken down and other knowledge workers within an organization can be used to deliver customer service. In this sense, other knowledge workers in an organization – including back office workers -- can serve as “advanced contact center agents” who specialize in certain areas. They can handle more difficult requests, complaints or problems – or even higher value transactions – thus freeing up “regular” agents to handle more routine matters. The virtual contact center leads to vast efficiencies in operations and improves customer service across all touch points. With this model, the customer gets the sense that they are contacting a whole organization, not just some company division or department which is “siloed” away from the rest of the organization.

Another huge advantage is that organizations can get the latest software solutions and the very best Web-based technology through then third party providers that offer the software and the hosting services. Software updates are delivered automatically and the client gets the very latest versions of the software as soon as they become available. Best of all, these upgrades can take place remotely, without any expensive truck rolls or prolonged technician visits.

And, of course, the more hosted solutions you deploy the easier it becomes to integrate those solutions with other solutions, whether they are also hosted or in-house.

To learn more about the advantages of going with hosted solutions for your contact center, I suggest readers check out the new Hosted Contact Center channel on TMCnet, sponsored by Five9, a leading provider of hosted contact center solutions. Today, TMCnet’s Susan Campbell posted an informative article to the channel outlining some of the benefits afforded through the hosted, or SaaS deliver model. To check out her article, click here.

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What's the Real Culprit behind High Contact Center Attrition Rates?

2007-12-10T17:30:48-05:00

A recent report from the UK Contact Centre Operational Review confirms what most of us already know -- that low pay is one of the main reasons for the high turnover rates found in contact centers in the U.K. and the U.S.

From where I sit, it never ceases to amaze me that companies are now putting more emphasis than ever on providing quality service to their customers (in fact, providing good customer service is largely viewed as critical in order to stay alive in today’s highly competitive business world), yet the people on the front lines -- the call center agents who are expected to consistently deliver this high quality service -- are among the lowest paid (and often the worst treated) in the corporate hierarchy.

But, as the report points out, low wages aren’t the only reason agents leave – in fact, in the UK it isn’t even the main reason. Lack of opportunity and the repetitive nature of the work are more likely to result in high attrition rates, the report finds.

The report suggests that if companies offer more opportunities for agents to move up the ladder -- and also give them more varied roles and tasks to take on during the course of the work week -- it would go a long way toward reducing turnover and improving customer service.

However, the study recommends that contact center managers first survey their agents to find out what areas they would like to see improved -- whether it is wages, benefits, opportunity for promotion, more varied tasks or whatever -- before jumping to any conclusions as to why agents are leaving (after all, every center is different, isn’t it?).

I’m still waiting for the study that concludes that all the money spent on recruiting and training new agents would actually be better spent on offering higher wages to existing agents, which in turn, might, just might, make them want to stay longer …

For more about the report from UK Contact Centre Operational Review, check out Susan Campbell’s article.

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