This blog did set out to provide an interactive, entertaining and informative dialogue between the callcentres.net portal and contact centre industry related people, globally, however most of you are too shy to blog with me so instead the blog tends to be my ramblings about what’s happened in the industry over the last week with some news and research commentary.
True, it must be said, that second only to my unbridled interest in the contact centre industry is my devotion to all things fashion and travel. So very regularly readers will need to suffer through my fashion and travel tips for the industry. Once a person did comment to me that the call centre industry ‘was not very glamorous’, so this is my small contribution to remedying this misconception….;)
I hope you enjoy the blog and find it useful.
WFO Benchmarking Report and The Avaya Consumer Index taking Shape.....
Post date: 8th February 2010
A couple of exciting things to note this week. First is our launch of Australia and Asia Pacific's first WorkForce Optimisation Benchmarking Programme. Throughout all my time of analysing and consulting to call centres I have realised that the absolute key and most fundamental aspect required for an effectively functioning contact centre, in-house or outsourced, is good workforce planning. No matter what size of call centre you have, being able to effectively analyse historical data, forecast demand for different call types and then schedule resources accordingly, so that the contact centre can stay agile and flexible to customer and employee needs, is critical. Particularly at this current time when the major challenges the industry faces are 1) budgetary constraints (doing more with less), 2) inadequate head count to meet business requirements and 3) change management.
We intend to be in field across APAC speaking to workforce planning employees in March 2010 and then have the results ready to present in May-June this year. Outstanding. We define WorkForce Optimisation as:
- workforce planning
- quality monitoring
- customer analytics
So each of these topics will be covered in depth.
If you are in the WFO space and are keen that we research particular areas of interest to you, please contact Julie-Anne Hazlett, who heads our WFO Consulting Practice at jhazlett@callcentres.net or Amita Krishna (if you are in Asia) who is our MD for callcentres.net asia at akrishna@callcentres.net.
The other brilliant study that we are finalising now is the 2010 Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index for Asia Pacific. For the third year running we have partnered with Avaya to produce this stunning piece of research which explores the consumer experience of call centres across Aussie, NZ, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and India. We are currently planning the events and will let you know asap when you can hear the findings presented. Quick teaser .....
Did you know that 38% of callers into contact centres 'don't feel happy' prior to making the call, and did you know that these people will rate the call, no matter how well it is handled at a statistically significantly lower level than a person who feels happy prior to a call. Bad attitude = bad rating of a call. Not fair really, but a reality.
Bet you didn't know that 'poor call centre service' ranks as number 4 driver of customers taking their business away from a company.
Much, much more rich information to come when we present the full findings. Keep you posted.
Only other news is that my having severed fingers, although still looking a bit gross... (I showed my fingers to Westpac's Graeme Baker last week and he gagged and said "Eeewww... cover those things up") means that I am getting lots of queue jumping in airport lines. Love that.
Post a comment here
Westpac's Graeme Baker we salute you ......
Post date: 2nd February 2010
The highlight of this last week in the Asia Pacific Contact Centre Industry was definitely Graeme Baker, head of contact centres, Westpac. Graeme attended as a guest speaker at the Contact Centre Asia 2010 conference that callcentres.net hosted in partnership with IQPC in Singapore.
Even though actually Craig Lee, Global Director for Customer Experience, Emirates, was a much better speaker than Graeme, and gave a stunning presentation about how Emirates work their brand essence right through their call centre and all customer touch points, Graeme was by far the funniest and most engaging speaker.
To put this in context we have to take you back the night before Graeme's talk to the bar in the Goodwood Park Hotel. This is how the conversation went:
Ian Aitchison: "This conference must have had good penetration into the Asia markets to get such multinational attendeeship".
Amita: "Eeeew, Ian I can't believe you just said the word "penetration"!"
Graeme: "What on earth is wrong with the word "penetration"?
Catriona: "OMG! How can you ask that?? Penetration is on the top of the list of words not to say in business"
Graeme: "What, you mean there are other words?"
Jules: "Of course there are, we have published a whole list of them."
Graeme: "Really, like what?"
Catriona: "Like .... spread, firm, semi, stiff, plug, floater, dump, flap, amongst others..."
Graeme: "Sorry, are you girls still in high school? What's wrong with the word "semi" anyway?"
Ian: (Guffawing with hysteria) "I can't believe you don't know what the word "semi" means."
Graeme: "I think you are all very immature."
Now cut to the next morning, as Graeme Baker is introduced as a keynote speaker to probably the most senior multinational senior audience that has ever been assembled in Asia.
Graeme: "Good morning Ladies and Gentleman, last night I realised that I had only SEMI completed my presentation, so in order to get good PENETRATION of my messages, I knew that I had to PLUG my laptop in and then I poured myself a STIFF drink and SPREAD my papers out ......."
Jules, Amita and I were beside ourselves with laughter as the other 70 delegates stared blankly at Graeme and us.
Graeme gave a fantastic presentation on the programme he has used to engage his 1800 employees which has resulted in a positive shift in the centre's Net Promoter Score and Graeme also spoke about how his removal of average handle time and sales targets as KPIs from all of his employees has actually increased Westpac's sales and decreased handle times. Outstanding.
We would like to take this moment, and publically acknowledge the great man that Graeme Baker is, holding one of the most senior call centre industry positions in the world at the same time happily participated in classic irreverent Australian humour. Graeme we love you.
If anyone is interested in downloading my keynote presentation on Contact Centres 2012, where I talk about the past, present and future of the contact centre industry, and also where I sneak in a sly image of a some boobs, please click here.
View photos from Contact Centre Asia 2010 on facebook here
Also, coming up in March is the Global ContactForum in Mexico City, March 8, 9 & 10, 2010 where I will be one of the guest speakers, find out more here
Post a comment here | Comments(2)
Contact Centre Trends for 2012 and 80's Fashion Meets Prostheses .....
Post date: 26th January 2010
Jules, Amita and I are in beautiful Singapore for our & IQPC Contact Centre Asia 2010 event. I am presenting tomorrow on trends for the contact centre industry that I believe will be evident by 2012.
As I will also be the chairperson for the day tomorrow, it was firstly important that I knew what I was going to present (see below) but more important that I had well considered my outfit. And this has been made particularly difficult due to having to shove a plaster cast (please see last week's Xmas Carnage blog...) down the sleeve of a dress or suit. Nasty.
So I said to my physio, "Lara, I need to look intelligent and sophisticated on stage next week, in case my presentation is a bit dull, and this plaster cast isn't helping."
Lara, pyshio-for-the-working-woman said, "Um, right, no problem, how's a plastic removable cast with bright fluro green straps working for you?" Outstanding.
So that's what I have now - a fully co-ordinated 1980's style fluro striped cast elbow to fingers that can grace the stage with supreme elegance....
Topics I think hot for contact centres by 2012 are ....
- Higher level of C-level, Board and Executive attention
- Enacting of regulatory laws by government: e.g., DNC laws, privacy laws
- Revenue focus
- Multi-channel integration: phone, online, face2face, social media
- Integrating front and back office
- Virtual contact centre: home-based and remote agents; decentralisation
- Service Cloud: Cloud computing
- Mobility: contact centre functionality pushed to mobile devices
- Active outsourcing of Financial Services
- Greater acceptance of off-shoring: new markets - Africa, South America
- Government service improvements and outsourcing
- Disaster Recovery: ability to ramp up and down
- Speech, Biometrics, Knowledge Management, CRM focus; and ...
- It will all be about customer advocacy
Crikey, this blog has taken 2 hours to type left-handed and is half the length of usual blogs... bet some of you are greatly relieved that I marginally disabled at the moment, eh?
Post a comment here
Happy New Year ...and some Xmas Carnage
Post date: 19th January 2010
2010 is set to be a cracker of a year for the Asia Pacific contact centre industry with growth projections on average being about 10% based on seat size across the region, including a 7% growth projection for the Australian industry.
This year callcentres.net has a number of great studies to publish:
We will present our Asian Contact Centre Benchmarking Report results in Singapore next week at a conference we have developed in partnership with IQPC. The conference is solely focused on strategic contact centre topics with some great US, Aussie, Singaporean, Filipino and Indonesian executives speaking, including the enigma, Graeme Baker, head of Westpac call centres; Patricia Neo from Starwood Hotels and Resorts; Lulu Espino Ng, Western Union Financial Services; Craig Lee, Emirates; Mark Grieves, OCB; Arief Hamdani Gunawan, Telkom Indonesia, plus many more superstars. www.contactcentresasia.com
I will present a session on Contact Centres 2012 and callcentres.net's Managing Director for Asia, Amita Krishna, will present the APAC benchmarking study results.
Our next big focus will be on developing the first WorkForce Optimisation Benchmarking Report for Asia Pacific. This programme will be led by callcentres.net's head of WFO Consulting, the famous (and hot) Julie-Anne Hazlett. This study will assess workforce planning practices, policies, technologies, challenges, related KPIs and vendor performance across the region. If you are interested in contributing to this study please contact Julie-Anne at jhazlett@callcentres.net.
We are also planning a large APAC Outsourcing Benchmarking Programme as well as running our Telemarketing/Outbound Contact Centre Report again. Outstanding. Now this blog will be shorter than usual... and that's due to the Xmas Carnage story....;(
Let me set the scene....
It's Xmas Eve, and my 5 children are asleep waiting for Santa. Well, the teenagers are probably waiting for their girlfriends to sneak in the window rather than a fat man with a beard, but definitely the two little ones have put out food for Santa and his reindeers and are curled up joyously asleep.
My husband, Mark, and I, after wrapping 6000 presents and making talcum powder Santa footprints all over the floor, retire with a glass of wine to the backyard.
I then say to Mark..."What a great year, tough but fabulous. Here's to having a great Christmas"
With that, I step over towards Mark, catch my foot on the table leg and fall onto him....
The wine glass smashes, slashing both Mark's arms and then snaps off severing three of my fingers.
OMG!! I cut a couple of arteries, nerves and tendons so it looked like a murder scene.
I stumbled into the house, collapsed on the floor and said to 18 year old Hunter, "Call an ambulance..."
Hunter calls 000 and says, "Yeah, hi, like my mum and dad have had an accident, you'd better come. [rolls eyes] No, I have no idea what they have done, but there is loads of blood, and Mum's lying on the floor, but she can be a bit dramatic sometimes...."
Anyway, long story short, Mark and I were rushed to hospital where we underwent surgery. I checked myself out of hospital against the instructions of the Doctors so that I could get home before the kids woke up and thought that Santa had been slayed (get it?) in our house.... Heeeheee.
I have had a second lot of surgery and the hand is healing well. But I have to type left handed, which I must say, is not nearly as difficult as putting makeup on left handed.
My hand will be well scarred but nothing a couple of Cartier rings won't cover up....;)
Hope your Xmas was less dramatic. C x
Post a comment here | Comments (5)
2010 Blog Entries | 2009 Blog Entries | 2008 Blog Entries
