Home > Global Home > your call

Please let us know what you think of the callcentres.net blog using the comments facility below, or drop us a line at info@callcentres.net Please ensure you adhere to our blog guidelines at all times when posting comments. 2009 Blog Entries | 2008 Blog Entries Follow us on ....   Welcome to Your Call. Hi, Catriona here.  A warm welcome to Your Call, the contact centre industry-related blog from callcentres.net. 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….;) And it’s Your Call so you can submit comments at any time to tell me exactly what you think of the topics being discussed, to proffer new ideas, and to make general observations about the industry we work in. I hope you enjoy the blog and find it useful. Catriona 'your call' is read by 9,000+ readers per week General Comments (4) Developing a Service Strategy for Organisations and Contact Centre... Post date: 27th July 2010 This week I did not offend anyone in a public forum. Brilliant. Instead I have been focused on writing the last pieces of a strategic plan and business case for a large financial services contact centre. Which got me to thinking that usually I blog about the research side of callcentres.net mainly ‘cause everyone loves a good stat, but I thought that it may also be interesting to hear about some of the strategy stuff we are doing with both private and public sector. Some of the most interesting projects we do now is working with senior teams on three year strategic plans for multi-channel service delivery. Typically we find, most organisations, even the major brand names, do not have an explicitly developed or written Service Strategy. Often when I say, ‘Can you please tell me about your corporate multi-channel service strategy' most C-level executives respond "Multi-what? What's a channel?" Most organisations have a corporate strategy that mentions service but that's about it. Traditionally the strategic plans that support an overarching corporate strategy have been marketing and sales; IT; HR, Operations and Finance strategic plans. No Service Strategy. Service strategy usually gets lost in operations plans. Hence service still struggles to find good air time at CEO or Board level. So in the interest of my passionate commitment to make service the most important strategy that businesses have, I want to share our approach to developing Service Charters, Service Promises and Service Strategy (a lot of which comes from my work at the Australian Graduate School of Management. Like, when I was a brown cardiganed, leather elbow patched, flat sensible laced up shoed Academic). (Actually no, my elbow patches were silk). When consulting with organisations, in order to develop a Corporate Service Strategy we: Analyse Corporate Strategic Plan Objectives Corporate Strategic Plans for the ensuing 3 years are analysed and any core service or customer objectives and initiatives identified (often missing at this high level). Analyse Brand Essence The essence of the corporate Brand is analysed to identify inherent existing service promise or messaging (if it exists at all). If not then this is developed with the Senior Leadership Team and Marketing departments. Analyse Core Value Proposition (CVP) The organisation's CVP is analysed to identify any inherent service offering or promise. If it does not exist then this is developed. Assess Organisation Values and Culture An analysis of existing values and culture for the organisation is conducted in order to identify core values and artefacts of culture that are reflective or supportive of service. Assess Customer Research and Information We either conduct primary research with an organisation's customers or analyse existing data to establish customer needs, requirements and current experience, engagement, loyalty and advocacy. We also assess channel preference across sub segments of customer databases. From this analysis we are clear on what the customer believes the organisation's Service Promise is (and this can shock a few senior execs let me tell you.. when the customer's assessment of the Service Promise looks nothing like what the organisation thinks it is. Funny. Not funny.) Develop Service Charter – all channels A Service Charter is then developed which supports the Strategic Plan objectives and is reflective of the Brand essence and CVP of the organisation. The Service Charter sets out the intentions, objectives and key initiatives that the organisation is committed to that relate to delivering service. Customer, Employee and Business outcomes related to effective service delivery are also outlined in the Service Charter. Develop Service Promise A Service Promise is the promise that an organisation makes to its customers related to the type and level of service that will be delivered. The Service Promise should be a reflection of the Brand essence and also reflected in values and culture of the business. The Service Promise usually will include a number of core attributes of service delivery that the organisation promises to provide to its customers. These promises ideally should be consistent across all channels but may differ slightly depending on channel or customer segment. Diagnostic Review of Service delivery A detailed diagnostic review of the organisation's contact centre and other service channels may be conducted. The aim of the diagnostic review is to objectively identify the performance of the contact centre with regard to service delivery and to assess how closely the service delivery reflects organisation's Service Charter and Promise. Benchmarking Contact Centre Performance against wider industry At this stage one of the most powerful initiatives we undertake is to benchmark the organisation's Diagnostic Review results with other organisations. We can easily do this as we typically benchmark over 400 organisations across APAC every year. Gap Analysis of Current State and Future State with regards to the Service Promise and delivery Once the Diagnostic Review of the contact centre is completed and the Service Charter and Promises developed a gap analysis of current and future state is conducted. Operational Service Plan An Operational Service Plan is developed for the contact centre in order for it to be delivering the Service Charter and Promises and overcoming existing service limitations. 3 year Service Strategic Plan Once the Service Charter, Service Promise and Diagnostic Review are completed a 3-year Service Strategy and Model for the organisation is developed. Interesting huh? And as much as I LOVE research, I think I might love doing this even more.... Let me know if you've got any questions. About this or about fashion. Either. ..... and a reminder for this year's G-Force 2010 | Melbourne, 17-19th August 2010 - full agenda details here: www.g-forcemelbourne.com.au .... see you there! Post a comment here  Launch of WFO Benchmarking and Network Groups and Catriona back in the Long Hall of Mirrors... Post date: 21st July 2010 Last week saw me, Julie-Anne, Jules, Honey and the callcentres.net team focus on the launch of the inaugural Asia Pacific Workforce Optimisation Benchmarking Report in Sydney and Melbourne. The programme was sponsored by Verint and NICE and it was wonderful to see two vendors who normally would be actively competing working together to support bringing this important information to the industry. The events in both Sydney and Melbourne were both full houses which doesn't cease to surprise me given the 8am start in mid winter...eeewww.... I don't exactly know why we continue to do breakfasts as I am far funnier at lunch time. But let me tell you about something that wasn't funny... OMG ... that's me making the world's worst faux pas during the Sydney event. Let me tell you what happened. Julie-Anne, as the star of the show was on stage talking about all things workforce planning and we had posed the audience a question .... "What are the top KPIs a Workforce Planner's performance should be measured on?" We had all the attendees talking with each other about this topic on their tables and I was walking around facilitating the discussions. Actually, more like interrupting discussions. Anyway, I would approach a table and make the usual smart arse comment like, "Hello my lovelies, an intelligent looking group you are, what do you think the KPIs should be?" and so on. Until I arrived at a table that was all men. I stood with my hands on the shoulders of one of the men at the table and made the crack "Well looky here, ladies and gentlemen, a table of men. What on earth are they going to have to say?" Well, what they did have to say was ... "Actually Catriona the man you are touching is a woman..." OMG!! Around my head goes until I am looking squarely into the eyes of yes, indeed, a wonderful woman, whom I had incorrectly referred to as a bloke.... I was mortified... so I did what all professional speakers do and screamed at the top of my voice and embraced the woman as if she was my long lost sister, whilst I sobbed into her shoulder "I AM SOOOO SORRY." This amazing woman then said to me with a big grin on her face, "Don't worry Catriona, I am just an old Dyke" and I say simultaneously to the woman and into the microphone I am wearing thus broadcasting to the other 120 people in the room, "Some of my best friends are old Dykes" and then bury my head into her shoulder again sobbing "I AM SOOOOO SORRY". Once I compose myself and turn to look at the audience I see James Organ, my business partner banging his head on the table; Honey my PA, with her jaw wide open in shock; Jules running from the room in a fit of hysteria; my Research Manager Laurence saying "That was like all my nightmares rolled into one moment."; Amex's Fiona Keogh leaning over to Laurence asking "How is it that Catriona is not sued every week?" and the ATA CEO, Mike Meredith identifying his gender prior to asking a question. OMG. I would now like to make a public apology to the lady in question. I don't want to identify her as I don't want to cause more embarrassment than I already have. Please know lovely lady, that since the moment I uttered those man words and realised the error of my way, I have indeed taken myself into the Long Hall of Mirrors (a place well known to me) and had a good look at myself, did some self flagellation (not in that way) and .... still feel mortified.... Please know that I meant no disrespect to you wonderful woman, you who handled the moment with such grace (unlike myself) and do know that I am an active supporter of the gay community and would never mean to say anything that would cause hurt. Indeed, by way of evidence I have spent many nights whilst with the Kings Cross Detectives (in a former career), teaching Drag Queens how to apply make-up that makes them look... well, perhaps less like Drag Queens; I purposely look to hire gay people into my business; I have been to the Mardi Gras party for the last 15 years; I was the birth partner of one of my best friends (who is a an old Dyke..;); my fashion idle is Liberace and indeed I am widely described as a gay man trapped in a woman's body...;) So sorry. Righto, now to some WFO stats that will rock your world... Only 37% of Australian contact centre managers or Workforce Planners think they know exactly what the term Workforce Optimisation (WFO) means. callcentres.net's definition of WFO is: Workforce Optimisation is a contact centre, organisation or enterprise strategy which involves the gathering and use of data and information to optimise the performance of the employee, processes, systems, management and customer experience. Workforce Optimisation solutions typically incorporate workforce management, quality monitoring/full-time recording, e-Learning, performance management, speech and data analytics, and customer feedback. 72% of contact centres have WFM software Only 15% of contact centres have speech analytics Base salary of a Workforce Planner is about AU$64,000 Top two KPIs for Workforce Planners are Forecasting Accuracy and Service Level consistency The other magnificent thing that Julie-Anne launched last week was the WFO Exchange Networking Groups in Sydney and Melbourne. We had an overwhelming response and attendance to the first networking group meetings which we will conduct every 3 to 6 months in both Sydney and Melbourne (to start with as we will organise something for the rest of Australia then also do something for the Kiwis and our Asian brothers and sisters). Those of you who are interested in joining these groups (no cost) please contact Julie-Anne at jhazlett@callcentres.net. I am now going back into the Long Hall...... x Comments: Keep digging, only 9000 people know about it now and one of them is sure to be able to find you some casual work on the phones, or at least be able to recommend a good lawyer!  But in relation to your actual topic, it'd be interesting to see a list of your common terms/acronyms and what they mean - I've found when reading other material for this industry that everyone likes to have their own (differentiating) definitions and sometimes it's a pain trying to translate between them all. Your definition includes some elements of what others call employee engagement and other elements from workforce management/planning. Some others prefer the word development to optimisation (who wants to be optimised?). Surely if you can publish a list of words not to use (snowball, for a blog example) you can come up with one for industry terminology - maybe you could even engage the other big industry players (whose names we won't say)(following Kevin's mature example) and attempt a common vocabulary? I know it's a big ask, but with your talent for the spectacular we should put it to good use occasionally! -- Neil Hi Neil, Yes, good idea. I do have some lists of call centre language/terms that I may well just publish. Nice idea. I may just make up some random ones and put them in as well. C Dear Catriona  I can't believe that your gaydar failed you. Never fear you are still much loved and admired by your loyal gay and lesbian.  Your status of number one faghag remains.  As a dyke I too often get mistaken for a guy, it mostly happens in restaurants when some wait staff make a quick decision about my gender, which obviously doesn't involve taking a cursory glance at my curves. Of course all of our contact centre staff around the world can tell fun stories about making a judgement call about someone's voice, assigning the wrong gender to a customer and ending up in a right pickle.   Don't take your booboo too seriously. Your apology was gorgeous nonetheless.  -- Simone Thanks Simone, your blog comment has been enough to encourage me out of the Long Hall of Mirrors and has made the gay man inside of me feel warm....C x Post a comment here  Indian Contact Centre Consumer Experience and OMG! Indian Service Now Rocks... Post date: 13th July 2010 I am just back from a week in India. As ever India was amazing. In the next few months a new academic and practitioner Journal will be launched by a UK based publisher, which is titled the Journal of Contact Centre Management, which will include articles from international researchers and practitioners. I have written a paper for the inaugural issue, titled, "The Indian Call Centre Experience: Better than you might think". The paper focuses on the Indian consumer experience of the Indian contact centre and reveals that Indians rate their own contact centre experience a lot higher than mature market's consumers, such as Australians, rate their own country's contact centre experience. And indeed India has come a long way with regard to the level of service it delivers to its domestic customers as well as international customers. And this is not just contact centre service. Big new airports have been built in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, which surpass many other international airports (certainly much better than Sydney airport). Service in 5-star hotels will also now rival service in any country in the world. In fact, I will go as far to say that the Trident Hotel in Gurgaon, which is the contact centre hub of Delhi, is one of the best hotels I have ever stayed in. The setting of the hotel was beautiful and the service impeccable. So the old mantra we analysts used to trot out about India, e.g. India is great at technical work but not so good at service work, may no longer be true. So what do we know about the Indian contact centre experience? Last week I toured with the team from Avaya to present to the press and to conduct Executive Round Table discussions with CIOs from both outsourcers and captive contact centre organisations in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. The main topic of discussion amongst the Indian CIOs was the coming of the multi-channel contact centre. We talked about the integration of the following channels into the contact centre: Voice: live attendant (i.e., person speaking with person) Voice to IVR Voice to Speech recognition Voice to Click to Call Email Web chat Internet (form and application submission etc) SMS Social Media Of great interest to the CIOs was the Virtual Hold, or Automatic Call Back or Call Back Assist applications which allow a caller to choose to have their position held in a queue, then hang up and the agent will make an outbound call to the caller, which will be either the same time that the caller would have been answered if they were still on hold, or it could be at a specific time that the caller has indicated they want to be called. 77% of Indian consumers state that they would be very happy to use this service in a contact centre. As was the case when we have had discussions about social media channels in Australia, NZ, Malaysia and Singapore recently, the Indian industry is also at the "we are waiting and watching" stage rather than any company having well developed strategies about how to handle social media as a customer channel. Here are some of the findings from the Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index in India: 1. 77% of Indian consumers believe contact centre service in India has improved over the last 12 months 2. 51% of Indian consumers believe that contact centre service is better than face to face service 3. 34% of Indian consumers believe that interacting with call centres is always problematic 4. The preferred channels for Indian consumers are: Phone 63% Internet 16% Email 11% Visit store 6% SMS 2% Webchat 2% 5. Time willing to wait on hold for: To be answered by a live attendant 63 secs To have a webchat answered 60 secs To have an email fully responded to 7 hours 6. Hence, almost equal with Malaysians, the Indian consumer is one of the most demanding in the region with regard to tolerance of hold time. 7. And how many Indian consumers would call, webchat or email an alternative provider if they had to wait longer than what they thought was reasonable? 34% 8. And Indian customer satisfaction with contact centres: 69/100, which is one of the highest in the region (other than the very nice Kiwis). In this year's study of the Indian contact centre consumer experience, we only included the Indian domestic consumer's experience, but rest assured international consumers, we are actively lobbying Avaya to include a sample of international consumers and their experience of Indian contact centres. So interesting. Next week I will share with you the story of the Indian Crystal Snake Ring, that ended up with me visiting the Long Hall of Mirrors so as to have a good hard look at my behaviour. Funny. And, don't forget the IQPC Customer Experience Asia 2010 Event - 14-15 September 2010, Novotel Kuala Lumpur City Centre: http://www.customerexperienceasia.com/Event.aspx?id=323620 Comments: Hello Catriona  I love your blog and the demographic breakdown.  Having visited your office in North Sydney, (which was a very pleasing environment), it was resfreshing to read some good factual data. Suzie Thanks Suzie, Great to hear from you. I was not aware that you had visited our office in North Sydney. Sorry to have missed you. We are in fact about to move out of that office and into a new office in Miller Street. This is because our current building is also the Chanel Head Office and we can no longer stand the Chanel girls hogging our bathrooms, but also because we are growing so quickly now that I have three people who sit in my office and my office is an arm chair in the analysts room.... We would love you to visit again when we have the new office set up. I have briefed the designers that my new office must resemble and Indian Opium Den or Bedouin Glamour. C x Post a comment here  Men don't like to talk and call centre industry does wonders for people with crap attitudes... Post date: 6th July 2010 I am now somewhere above Thailand headed to India to present the results of the Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Report for India. I will be speaking with the press and industry in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. All in four days. Outstanding. For me, it doesn't get much better than speaking to Indians about contact centre experiences. I have a great love and respect for the country of India, its history and people and .... India being the contact centre capital of the world.... makes it about the perfect destination for me. That, and you can buy really inexpensive fabulous jewellery. But I will save sharing the Indian results with you until next week. What I will share with you are some of the very cool demographic and industry vertical differences in the Australian Contact Centre Consumer Index. Get a load of this.... In Australia: Male consumers are significantly more likely than female consumers to agree that interacting with call centres is always problematic. (Typical) Generation Y (under 33 years of age) are significantly more likely than Baby Boomers (45-65 year olds) to agree that they prefer to use the Internet or email rather than to ring a call centre. (Yes, perhaps didn't need statistical significance testing to work that out) Gen Y and Gen X are both significantly more likely than Baby Boomers to disagree that the service they receive from call centres in this country is better than the face-to-face service they receive in branches or stores. (Hard to get your head around this statement, it means the younger you are the more you think face to face service may be better than call centre service) Generation Y consumers are significantly more likely than all other generations to agree that they will give more business to a company that has a contact centre that is open 24 hours by 7 days per week and that they would be happy to talk to a customer service representative who they know is based in a foreign country. (Go the young ones – this is the future – 24/7 and they don't care where the call centre agent lives) The older a customer, the more strongly they agree that it is important for them that they have a close relationship with any company that they are a customer of. (Bless) Males are significantly more likely than females to contact a company via email. (Fascinating. Does that mean women like to talk more than men?) The younger a customer, the more likely they are to prefer the Internet or Email as a method of contacting a company. Conversely, the proportion of customers preferring the phone increases with age. (Not rocket science admittedly but we can scientifically prove this is a truth. Well, actually as Behavioural Scientists we are not allowed to use the word ‘truth' rather ‘there is less than a .05 percent chance that what we are saying is wrong') Consumers who interacted with Telecommunications and Utilities companies rated the level of service received significantly lower for having their query resolved, easy and accurate identification of their details, and the level of knowledge demonstrated by the CSR compared to customers of Finance, Banking & Insurance companies. Additionally, customers of Telecommunications companies rate being provided with the correct information significantly lower than customers of Finance, Banking & Insurance, and Hospitality, Tourism & Entertainment companies. (Poor Telcos. Sorry Utilities we put you in a category with Telcos as a standard industry classification). Customers of Telecommunications companies rate the lowest levels of happiness after their call, whereas customers of Finance, Banking & Insurance and Hospitality, Tourism & Entertainment companies give the highest ratings. (I am feeling very sad now) Consumers with negative attitudes towards contact centres generally rate a significantly lower level of overall satisfaction and happiness with their last call. (Poor general attitude means poor overall rating of a call centre experience regardless of which company it is with). And finally.... Consumers with negative attitudes towards contact centres tend to experience a stronger positive shift in their happiness (measured before and after the call) compared to those with positive attitudes. YES!! It's true. Consumers who come into a call with a crap attitude will have a higher level of increased happiness (relatively speaking) than consumers who come in to the call with a good attitude. There we have proved it. The social worth of the call centre industry. Feeling shitty? Then ring a call centre! You may still rate the experience lower than someone with a good attitude but the call centre experience is going to make you happier than you were! Woohoo. Love this work. Comments: Does anyone else sense that a certain Neil has a little crush on a certain Dr. Wallace? Cute! - Nicole Hi Nicole, thanks for your blog comment...;) At least Neil blogs right? Most Aussies are too shy to blog back. I had a blog in China and I used to get about 100 responses to each blog posting. I couldn’t read them and when they were translated for me they were usually comments like " Yeah, right on" "You go girl" in Mandarin. Bless. C x Damn. My secret?s out there. How foolish of me to think that I could obscure my heart behind a thin veil of industry dialogue and personality. How naieve of me to underestimate the intuitive capacity of your readers to read into my blogs and discover my true intentions. What light from yonder window breaks? It is the East and Dr. C is the sun! - Neil Neil, you crack me up. C Catrina great blog, pretty darn informative. Just thought i'd make the point that, "The older a customer, the more strongly they agree that it is important for them that they have a close relationship with any company that they are a customer of." Seems to be the opposite to the way marketing is moving more to building relationships with their customer's. With the rise and rise of scoial media it seems the young are building stonger relationships with a company then their elders. What do you think? Cheers, Leigh Hi Leigh, You make an excellent point. Much marketing effort is focussed on how to use social media and online channels and it is really the Gen X and Gen Y who are keenest to embrace these channels. What will happen to the older, more moneyed Boomers and Silent generations? Well, some companies will force them to use channels they are not comfortable with and other smarter companies will have segmented channel strategies that cater for demographic differences. This is called Rapport Based Routing or Psychometric Routing. The interesting finding I have had in the last 2 months of travelling through Aust, NZ, Malaysia, Singapore and now India, is that no company really seems to have any idea about how to handle the social media channels. Most of the CIOs I spoke to have said they have no strategy for the emerging channels and no idea about how they might resource it. So it will be interesting when the marketers meet the contact centre operations people and say “Right we have this big social media campaign running” and the contact centre manager says “Good for you. We have absolutely no idea on how to handle that”. Such an interesting topic. C x Post a comment here  Singapore Contact Centre Consumer Experience and Tigers in Fashion Post date: 29th June 2010 I have just arrived back from a country I love... Singapore. I presented the Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index results for Singapore, the third year we have conducted this study. The study was based on the interviewing of over 300 Singaporean customers of Singaporean contact centres. Here are some results..... Singaporeans are classified as "Ambivalents" of the contact centre experience, that is, they have only a moderate level of positive attitude towards dealing with contact centres. This compares to Australians who are classified as "Detractors" of the call centre experience, that is, they have largely negative attitudes to dealing with any call centre. When asked if, given the same level of resolution, a Singaporean consumer would prefer to use a call centre channel or an internet/email channel, 60% stated they would prefer to use an internet/channel (compares to 71% of Australians). 55% of Singaporeans agreed that interacting with call centres in problematic. 36% of Singaporeans believe that call centre service is better than face to face service. A fabulous 49% believe that call centre service in Singapore has improved over the last 12 months. 73% of Singaporeans currently use the phone as their primary channel however when asked what their preferred channel was only 58% stated that they preferred the phone channel. 1 in 10 would prefer to use other channels including internet, email, web chat and sms. In a fascinating turn of events, email is the Singaporean’s second preferred channel after phone. This has been largely influenced by the coming of the smart phone. The top three areas that consumers rated Singaporean contact centres performed well in included courtesy, easy and accurate identification of customers and the knowledge of the CSR (exactly the same attributes as in Aust and NZ) and poorer performing call attributes included (in order of magnitude) the offering of additional products and services, wait time and having the customers best interests at heart. The level of satisfaction as rated by Singaporean customers was 67/100 (up from 65/100 in 2008), which equates to ‘fairly satisfied’. And, 50% of customers who had had a poor contact centre experience had or were planning to move their business from that organisation within the next 12 months. Woohoo... that’s huge. Like huge bad not huge good. But emphasises the importance of the call centre with regard to consumer behaviour. Also presenting in Singapore was the very beautiful Ann Khong who is the head of the OCBC contact centres and one of the most impressive senior Execs I know in Asia. Ann talked about OCBCs automated SMS customer feedback programme. Extremely impressive with a 20% response rate from customers responding to a post call sms survey. Nice. So in conclusion .... Singaporean contact centre managers the work you and your people do, is of tremendous influence on the consumer and of primary benefit to the organisation. You rock. Almost as much as my new tiger face long sleeve top. Yes, fine, I did buy animal print clothing even though I promised not to. Seriously should only be worn by teenagers but .... I am sure Liberace had animal prints so I have to as well. I am off to India on Sunday so will blog from Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai or Mumbai. Outstanding. Comments: In one of the articles in this week's contact news the headline is  "NZ consumers more proactive than Australians in penalising poor service". It states  "The new study, commissioned by IT company RightNow, found that nearly two-thirds (61%) of New Zealanders had switched their allegiance based on customer experiences, compared to 58% of Australians." 3% difference. Hardly headline material. If RightNow want to see their name in lights, ask them for some better content. Enjoy India! Neil Post a comment here  Malaysian Contact Centre Consumer Results...pretty good..... Post date: 22nd June 2010 I am currently in Malaysia talking with the Malaysian contact centre industry and press about the experience of the Malaysian consumer. What do we know about the Malaysian industry? Loads. The contact centre industry is about 43,000 seats, growing at a rate of 12% from 2008-2009 and with a predicted growth rate of about 15% in 2010. The median seat size is 100 seats, so from that we would estimate there are about 430 centres in Malaysia. 56% of centres service international customers, 44% service domestic customers. 51% of centres are customer service, 17% technical support, 13% inbound sales and 13% outbound sales and 3% collections. And what does the Malaysian consumer think of their contact centre experience? The Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index for Malaysia tells us that.... On average, respondents say level of service they received during their last call was fairly good across all service attributes. The best performing attributes are the customer service representative's courtesy, level of knowledge and providing the correct information. The survey showed that there was a marked improvement in contact centre service in Malaysia with 62% of respondents respectively agreeing. 66% were satisfied with their last call to a contact centre, with customers of Finance, Banking & Insurance, Professional & Business Services and Hospitality industries having a significantly higher level of satisfaction with their last call compared with Utility industry customers. Among the dissatisfied, 59% say they have moved or are likely to move their business to another company. Based on respondents' last call experience, 69% are likely to consider current company for additional products of services. Off to Singapore tonight to present the Singaporean consumer experience tomorrow. Just doesn't get any better. Comments: I like it when people LOVE what they do. Enjoy Singapore! Neil Thanks Neil. C Post a comment here  Government Contact Centre Consumer Experience and Animal Prints Post date: 15th June 2010 As part of the Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index (study of 100 consumers in Aust, NZ, Japan, Singapore, India and Malaysia) we conducted a separate study of the Australian Government contact centre consumer. Marvellous. Government is a very important sector of the contact centre industry as it accounts for about 18% of total seats, about 37,000 seats. So how does the Government consumer experience compare to their private sector cousins? Kinda the same, but with some differences. Here we go.... Percentage of Govt consumers who would prefer to use internet or email than use a call centre (assuming same level of resolution)? 69 % compared to 71% in private sector. Percentage of Govt consumers who think interacting with call centres in always problematic? 69 % compared to 61% in private sector (not so good eh?). Percentage of Govt consumers who think that contact centre service has improved in the last 12 months? 23% compared to 13% in private sector (nice). Percentage of Govt consumers who think that contact centre service is better than face to face service? 19 % compared to 13% in private sector (good one). Level of satisfaction of the Govt consumer with contact centres is 66/100 'fairly satisfied' and up one point from last year. Positive emotional state of consumer after call is 63/100 which is one point up from last year. This compares with the private sector consumer satisfaction which was 64/100 this year, a drop from 68/100 last year. There was also a drop for private sector consumers' emotional state after the call from 68/100 to 61/100 this year ...;( So it seems that the experience between Government and private sector is similar however the private sector seems to have had a greater decline in customer experience over the last two years. Interesting to see what role the economic downturn had in this difference. It will also be interesting to see how Government fares in the next 12 months as growth in Government seat size is only predicted to increase by 1%, compared to 6-7% for private sector. Can anything be more interesting? Well, yes, more interesting is that animal prints (mostly animal eyes) are in this winter ....and I think that just possibly I am tooooo old to wear a massive leopard print on my shirt .... without looking like I live in Double Bay or ......a cougar .... eeewwww..... Comments: Wow, this is a new experience. End of your blog and I don't quite know what to say. I'm not sure which is more challenging to my current state of awakeness - statistics about government, or animal print clothing? Maybe it's just me, caught in the angst between mourning a 4 nil World Cup loss (born in Australia) and celebrating it (German ancestry). Enjoyed the webinar, just started reading the full report. Still interested in what you've got that (scientifically) demonstrates FCR as the best measure of customer engagement, and anything about how you actually measure FCR. Neil Hi Neil, my Analyst William wdieu@callcentres.net will be able to talk with you about FCR and the regression analysis that deduces FCR as the primary driver. Do get in touch. C Post a comment here  Contact Centre Response Times, We Cry for Rob Edwards and Global Market Sizing Post date: 8th June 2010 We are amazingly excited to be launching the first vendor agnostic Workforce Optimisation Networking Group for Asia Pacific in July. Woohoo! If you are a workforce planner make sure you belong to this group - please register for free information updates here or contact jhazlett@callcentres.net. I have just completed a tour of Australia and New Zealand talking about the contact centre consumer experience, based on the findings of the 3rd Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index. The topic of most interest to the many service executives and contact centre managers we spoke to was the coming of multi-media channels and how to implement and manage them. Also of great interest was the increase in the percentage of consumers who want to interact by email with companies they are customers of (15% of consumers rate email as their first channel of preference). Do remember that for years I have said, "Oh, [groan] please, do not bother with email as it is always been about 7-8% of total customer interactions (i.e. 7-8% of 16 million interactions a day are emails handled by Aust call centres), [moan] and year after year it just doesn't change [oh let it go]." However, even though the percentage of interactions handled by email hasn't changed what has changed is that email is now the second strongest preference for customers to interact with organisations. Fascinating. And what response times do customers think is reasonable or tolerable from email, voice and webchat channels? In Australia the average time that consumers are willing to wait to: Be answered by a CSR (customer service representative) is 82 seconds Get a response from a webchat is 72 seconds Get a response (not just an automated reply) from an email is 9 hours In NZ the average time that consumers are willing to wait to: Be answered by a CSR (customer service representative) is 87 seconds Get a response from a webchat is 72 seconds Get a response (not an automated reply) from an email is 9 hours Want to know what consumer wait times Asian consumers think is reasonable? Well, join us on the Asia Pacific webinar to hear about channel preference and consumer response times https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/932840841. It will be brilliant. Now to matters of political importance ..... Submissions for the Senate Enquiry re Senator Fielding's Keeping Jobs Onshore Bill are due by this Thursday. Even though we know that Melina Rohan from ADMA will be very upset (as we all are) that the industry luminary, CEO of ADMA, Rob Edwards has recently resigned from his position with the Association, Melina has had time to summarise the Keeping Jobs Onshore Bill. Key requirements of the bill include: a) any organisation that wants to transfer personal information overseas must follow one of two procedures. a. If an organisation wants to transfer personal information to a country with similar privacy protections to those in place in Australia it will need to inform the individual whose information is being transferred. An organisation will be not permitted to transfer information overseas if it the individual objects to the transfer b. If an organisation wants to transfer personal information to a country that has lesser privacy protections to those in place in Australia it will need to: i. Inform the individual in writing ii. Outline in the notification to the individual the information that it will be transferring overseas iii. The individual will have to consent to the transfer in writing every 12 months b) Organisation must not deny the provision of goods and services to an individual, change the terms of a business relationship or refuse to enter into a business relationship with an individual who doesn't consent or objects to the transfer of information overseas c) The relevant minister may certify that a country has adequate privacy protections and may publish a list, from time to time, of countries that have been certified to have equivalent privacy regimes d) Additional call centre disclosure requirements will be enacted as part of the bill that will require foreign call centres that makes a voice call or a telemarketing call to identify the city and country from which the call centre is located Keep you posted on what happens with the Bill. callcentres.net wants to acknowledge the incredible contribution that Rob Edwards has made in his long term career with ADMA (Australian Direct Marketing Association). Rob is immaculately professional, a man of significant influence, very much a gentleman and who has had a tremendous positive affect on the direct marketing industry. We wish Rob all success and happiness in his next endeavours. Lastly, Julie-Anne and I have been talking about the size of the global contact centre industry market and we estimate it to be around the following numbers (in seat size): Australia - 205000 NZ - 30,000 Malaysia - 40000 Philippines - 170,000 India - 1,000,000 China - 400,000 Korea - 350,000 Japan - 550,000 Thailand - 30,000 Indonesia - 40,000 US - 3,500,000 UK - 650,000 Canada - 550,000 Latin America - 2,000,000 Africa - 500,000 Europe - 2,500,000 Total - 12,515,000 So cool this industry. Comments: Interesting stats. Here's a visualisation of the data you posted for the geographically challenged. Steve (Salmat) http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/GlobalContactCentreSeats/Dashboard1?:embed=yes&:toolbar=yes or for a bigger world map click here: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/GlobalContactCentreSeats/GlobalContactCentreSeats?:embed=yes&:toolbar=yes I think your estimate of 12.5 million is out by a lot. Europe has significantly more than 2.5 million agents - not sure how many more there are, but I think it is approx 2x.  Hope all's well.  Ian Ian, Hi, we had the European size data estimated from some of the European associations, however we were of the opinion that the industry in Europe was considerably larger. So, we are with you on this. C Hi Dr. C, Dissappointing to see that the new WFO forum will be operating "without knowledge" ... "vendor agnostic Workforce Optimisation Networking Group". Didn't realise that you were a Greek Scholar as well amongst your many talents (Gk Ag - without, Gnosis - knowledge). Ah well, someone else does the workforce planning here so not to worry. Do you have anything published about our discussion last week re FCR being the uba metric for customer engagement? I'd be interested in having a look at it. Neil Hi Neil, Yeah agnostic is a weird word and I am certainly not suggesting that the vendor community is 'without knowledge' although I know a few .... Re your interest in First Call Resolution as a driver of customer engagement - please email Laurence at ljackson@callcentres.net and he can go over it with you. C Post a comment here  Kiwis vs the Aussies...who's nicer? Beautiful random stats and the Senate Inquiry Post date: 1st June 2010 I am now in the wonderful New Zealand city of Auckland. And as all Australians look upon the Kiwis as our cousins; and as all Kiwis look upon the Aussies as, well, let's be honest, wankers from the mainland, it strikes me to ask the question... are there really differences between these antipodean nations? Bloody oath bro. Here's how the Kiwis and Aussies fare.... The Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index (in depth study of 300 New Zealanders and 300 Australians) shows the following differences in the consumer experience of contact centres: Kiwis are rated as Ambivalents in their attitudes towards contact centres (42/100) whereas Aussies are rated as Detractors (39/100). Only 48% of Kiwis agreed with the statement "that interacting with call centres is always problematic" compared to 61% of Aussies. Here's a cracker.... we measure the change in emotional state pre and post call for consumers and the Kiwis call experience elicits a more positive emotional change in the consumer. Go the Kiwis. So, I am going to go out on a limb and say that the NZ contact centre consumer experience is marginally better than the Australian consumer experience. The Kiwi public has a slightly better attitude and a slightly better call experience than the Aussies. All of this amazingly interesting stuff will be talked about in full (as well as Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and India) on the APAC webinar on 10 June https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/932840841. Seriously don't miss it. Righto, now to a couple of topics that people have been asking us about in the last few weeks. The ole "how do you measure First Call Resolution (FCR)" has come up with some work we have been doing with Government. Here is what our research tells us.... 44% of contact centres in Australian measure the FCR metric. Of those who measure FCR, the main methods of doing so are: Call is resolved on first call - no further action required: 26% Call is resolved on first call - without transfer/escalation: 23% Customer does not call back for same reason - timeframe specified (ranges from 1 day to 4 weeks): 13% Call is resolved on first call - agent specified: 12% Please let us know other definitions because at one stage a few years ago, I had counted 12 different definitions of FCR. Btw, FCR is the strongest statistically significant predictor of customer engagement in Australia and NZ. And here's another piece of stunningly random, yet fascinatingly compelling data that my Analyst, William, cut for a special lady in a large bank..... Of the approximate 3,925 contact centres in Australia in 2010, the distribution is roughly as follows: NSW - 1400 VIC - 1290 QLD - 520 SA/NT - 310 WA - 285 ACT - 80 TAS - 40 Finally, we know that Senator Fielding's Keeping Jobs from Going Offshore (Protection of Personal Information Bill 2009) has entered Senate Inquiry and submissions for the Inquiry need to be lodged by 10 June. callcentres.net will be submitting a response, as I think the Bill is flawed in its intention and in its proposed execution. Click here for a copy of the Bill If you would like to submit a response the details are below: On 13 May 2010 the Senate referred the Keeping Jobs from Going Offshore (Protection of Personal Information) Bill 2009 for inquiry and report. Submissions should be received by 10 June 2010. The reporting date is 18 October 2010. The Committee is seeking written submissions from interested individuals and organisations preferably in electronic form submitted online or sent by email to eca.sen@aph.gov.au as an attached Adobe PDF or MS Word format document. The email must include full postal address and contact details. Alternatively, written submissions may be sent to: Committee Secretary Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 Australia The positive side of all the political agitation around the Anti-offshoring Bill and the DNC Register for B2B, is that is signifies that the contact centre industry now has a status and presence that generates heated political debate. About time. Also, please remember the launch of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Workforce Optimisation Benchmarking Report in July. Oh yeah, I gave Steve Vials from Avaya a general public speaking tip today, that is worth sharing: "When you are on stage, unless you are someone really famous or exceptionally hot.... no-one wants to hear your personal anecdotes..." Steve disagreed and then told me another personal anecdote. And finally a fashion tip for the week: "No-one needs to see knees over the age of 42". Except perhaps Liberace in his sequined shorts. That wouldn't count. Post a comment here  Comments: On what basis do you declare that "Btw, FCR is the strongest statistically significant predictor of customer engagement in Australia and NZ".  We're in retail and I would have thought that repeat shoppers was a better predictor of customer engagement. And Kiwi contact centre experience may be better (or it may just be that they're not quite understanding the big words in your questions) but their definition of sex is "one less than sivven". And on your way home make sure that you go to the beggage chucken before you go on the sivven sucks sivven earplane, and enjoy the fush and chups! Neil Neil, too funny. Um, yes, well we do declare that FCR is the strongest predictor of customer engagement because that's what our statistical tests show us. It's science. The truth no less. C Snorkelling, Consumer Index and why NZ consumers seem to be the nicest... Post date: 25th May 2010 Top news of the week is that I have been invited to debate Senator Fielding on the Anti-Offshoring Bill on stage on 26th October in Sydney. Woohoo. Keep you posted with details. Tomorrow in company with Avaya, I will start to share the results of the latest Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index. This is the third consecutive year we have conducted this programme. The Index assesses in depth the experience of 1800 contact centre customers in Australia, NZ, Japan, Singapore, India and Malaysia. Marvellous. The best way to get involved in hearing the results of the study is to join us on the webinar where we will talk about all things Asia-Pacific customer and contact centre. Is there anything better? Certainly not for me. Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/932840841 Well, actually, coming close to the amazement I have with the consumer experience of contact centres is my 6-year old son's response to a question I asked him this morning. Here's how it went... Me: "Saxon, what do you think love is about?" Saxon: "Snorkelling." So, is understanding the male mind somewhat akin to understanding the contact centre consumer experience during the economic downturn?....... Perhaps so. Let me give you some quick highlights to give you an idea of the cool stuff we will talk about on the webinar. Compared to results in 2008, the customer experience has..... Declined in India Stayed the same in NZ Declined in Australia Improved in Singapore; and Improved in Japan The highest level of agreement with the statement "Interacting with call centres is always problematic", is in order of strongest to least agreement.... Australia Singapore Malaysia India Japan NZ (go the Kiwis with your positive Kiwi Can Do attitude) Now for the controversial question we always ask.... Please rate your level of agreement with the statement: "I would prefer to use self service technology such as a speech recognition system than having to talk to a call centre worker who I know is based in a foreign country".... Strongest to least agreement is: India Singapore Malaysia Australia NZ Japan Hhhmmmm..... Greatest reason for not feeling happy on a call to a call centre in Asia-Pacific? Lack of resolution Wait time too long Operator lacked knowledge Highest to lowest level of satisfaction with call centre experience.... NZ India Singapore Malaysia Australia Japan There endeth the preview of the Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index, and we have loads of brilliant stats and info to share with people across the region. The economic downturn has changed consumers perceptions and experience with call centres, so join us to find out.....;) https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/932840841 Also, please remember the launch of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Workforce Optimisation Benchmarking Report in July. Post a comment here  Comments: Interesting ... let me skate on some thin ice (knowing how important these numbers are for you!) ... Doesn't the statement "Interacting with call centres is always problematic" skew the results by bringing to mind the problematic experiences when considering the level of agreement? If there are ~193,000 seats in Australia alone (Your Call Feb 24th 2010) is 1800 a statistically significant figure? It may be contraversial, but does the question "I would prefer to use self service technology such as a speech recognition system than having to talk to a call centre worker who I know is based in a foreign country" polarise those who prefer talking to machines with those who prefer talking to people, or does it polarise on or off shored centres? And love? I'm surprised that you need to ask this question - I have yet to meet a female who can't sing word perfect karaoke to the love medly by Ewan and Nicole in Moulin Rouge. What more answer do you need? Looking forward to the webinar, we'll have the Team Leaders all there. Neil Hi Neil, I have now worked out the Love=Snorkelling equation. In all the movies and TV ads where couples are in love, they go snorkelling. Simple. True. Needs no more explanation. But yes, I too do adore Nicole and Ewan in Moulin Rouge. Re your statements about the wording of the questions being somewhat leading ... these are agree-disagree questions so we need to make a stand either positively or negatively then ask for levels of agreement. What we do make sure is that we have a balanced number of positively and negatively oriented statements so that the results are not skewed. So we have statements like "The service I receive from call centres is better than the service I receive face to face". I am delighted that you and your team leaders will join us on the webinar. It will be magnificent. C x Perhaps come 2011 you might use 'which would you prefer?' questions rather than agree disagree. No need for balance at all. Why confuse the masses? Eric Thanks for your comment Eric. We actually do have other questions in the same survey that ask preference of channel, so we have that covered. C Home-based Agent Readiness, Biased Banking Reports and 2010 Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index Results Post date: 18th May 2010 I have just finished conducting the "Making Home-based agents a Reality" workshops with Telstra. Today was the Brisbane event which was perhaps the most interactive and most highly attended of all. Love those Queenslanders. And there is a load of good stuff happening up here on this topic and great interest from government bodies already having home-based agent programmes and looking to ramp up. If you haven't yet downloaded the Key Success Factors for Home Based Agents whitepaper please do, here: http://www.callcentres.net/HomeAgentsAReality and if you would like a totally free Home-based Agent Readiness Assessment please contact Adrian Middleton at Adrian.Middleton@team.telstra.com. An item of annoyance to me, amongst other people, last week was the releasing of the Better Banking Report by the Financial Sector Union. The report is based on an online survey of 2744 Australians and focuses on the consumer experience with their main bank. The press release issued last week by the FSU largely hammered the Australian Banks and their performance, stating that 29% of consumers are dissatisfied with their bank. Union commissioned surveys are always of great interest to me as usually when we analyse how they are conducted and how the questions are written and presented to respondents there is a tremendous amount of bias. This Better Banking Report is no different. Let me give you some examples of the questions asked: Over the past few years, would you say your bank is moving in the right direction or wrong direction? Answer: 25% thought their bank was moving in the right direction, 38% in the wrong direction. What on earth does this mean? Moving office in the right or wrong direction? Moving strategically in the right or wrong direction? Moving offshore in the right or wrong direction? Moving their money in the right or wrong direction? This is an invalid question open to vast interpretation from respondents. On each of the following aspects of banking, do you feel banks in general have been improving or getting worse?? Showing a commitment to employing Australians. 11% of respondents said their banks were improving on this. Again, what does this mean? That the banks shouldn't employ people from other countries? How would consumers know? That they are not hearing as many accents over the phone? Ridiculous question. As internet, phone and SMA banking has become more common, which of the following statements best describes how banks' customer service levels have changes? (Assume they mean SMS banking) Customer service has improved. There are more ways to get my banking done, and banks have done a good job keeping staff levels intact. Answer 24% agree Customer service has stayed the same. There might be fewer people in branches, but there are more people on the phone or on-line to help with my banking needs. Answer 34% agree Customer service has got worse. The banks have closed branches, and have not hired enough people to provide help on the phone or on-line so I just end up waiting longer. Answer 42% agree How on earth would customers know the resourcing plans of banking contact centres or online services? Stupid question. Thinking of your experience at your principle bank, do you agree or disagree with the following statements: There never seems to be enough staff Answer 46% agree I always have to wait in a queue or on hold to get served Answer 57% agree I'm always under pressure to take another product Answer 31% agree OMG! Can there be any more leading negative questions? I think not. And then there is the section which gives good insight into the Union's Better Banking plans. Here are the statements that they ask respondents to give' support or opposition' to: There is a proposal for a Better Banking charter to deal with a wide variety of banking issues. Please indicate your level of support or opposition to different aspects of the charter below? Commitment to stop off-shoring of Australian jobs, and development of Australian skills Answer 90% support Changing how bank workers are paid. Currently, bonuses pay increases can be linked to meeting sales targets for things like credit cards. These sales targets should be de-linked from remuneration Answer 79% support Reducing consumer debt by requiring interest rate decisions in line with the Reserve Bank. Answer 80% support Currently, large portions of CEO and executive pay are linked to bonuses. These bonuses are often geared towards meeting short-term targets. These should be restructured so better customer service and long-term business growth have more of a priority. Answer 90% support Requiring a direct link between bank fee increases and providing better customer service Answer 82% support Again the problem with how these questions are asked is that they are all negatively positioned and are leading to respondent to the outcome the survey author would like data to support. The correct way to gather data on questions like this is to have a mix of negative and positive questions and to make sure the wording within the statement is also not biased. Also the concept of respondents 'giving support or opposition to' is not defined, has political undertones and again is open to wide interpretation. Thus my point is that many of the Union commissioned surveys related to this industry are biased and not a true reflection of how Australian consumers think and feel. My warning, dear reader, is to read such reports with due caution to the political agendas that runneth there under. And for those of you who are in the FSU please know that I am not underplaying the role of the Unions in the customer service sector, it is more that much damage can be done with misleading and biased research reports. Other exciting news is that I will be presenting the research results from the 2010 Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Japan, with Steve Vials from Avaya on the 10th June 2010, 1 pm Sydney time, free to attend, register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/932840841 Another really nice piece of news this week was the purchase of Australian founded contact centre IT company Holly Connects by large outsourcer West Corporation. I remember the days when I would go clubbing with Lance and the wild Holly Connects boys, only to see them now mature into an international Australian success story. Nice. There endeth my blog this week with the only other point of note being..... pale grey is in this winter. Post a comment here  Mobile Care, Chairman's Lounge vs Doughnuts Post date: 11th May 2010 We have recently completed a piece of qualitative research that I wanted to share with you. But first let me take you back to the last interaction I had with Nuance CEO and hottie, James Brooks, which was his impassioned statement to me that "...mobile customer intercept technology is the best thing I have seen in 10 years, and it will transform contact centres as we know them". Often we do hear CEOs of technology companies espouse these types of random statements during Xmas parties, as was the case with James, but this time, interestingly enough, under the careful watch of speech recognition and racing car superstar, Adam Spence, Nuance commissioned callcentres.net to undertake a qualitative research programme to explore the reaction of customers to such technology, termed Mobile Care. Mobile Care is a method of self service technology on the mobile handset. This technology features a call intercept functionality, where customers simply dial their traditional customer care support number and are prompted to look at the screen of their mobile phone. This then immediately displays all of the relevant self service options for the customer as well as the option to speak to the right customer care team for their query. So, it's like IVR on your mobile/cell phone. Nice. callcentres.net conducted focus groups across various age groups, locations and customer experience demographics with a range of mobile carrier customers in February 2010. Key findings included: The benefits of Nuance Mobile Care were perceived to be the speed and convenience to access personalised customer service. Participants reported the new technology to be easy to use and intuitive, providing access to many frequently asked questions currently under serviced by existing customer service channels. Initial reactions to the 'call intercept' involved surprise followed by acceptance. The diversion to look at the handset initially surprised participants who were then reassured by the presentation of the personalised information on the handset. The mobile self-service was readily accepted by those involved in the trial due to improved functionality and convenience of the service. The ideal handset self service was perceived to be a streamlined website with a back up support of a call centre if desired. The research showed that research participants would like to use this technology in their customer care experiences with banking, finance and utilities relationships as it offered greater flexibility and portability to the customer service experience. So expect to hear more about this type of customer service application in the next 12 months, probably initially from your telcom provider. Of particular interest to me (as I am an ex-copper, surprising yes I know, I only left because the uniform required women to wear culottes (like skirt pants) eewww..) yesterday was doing a tour of the South Australian Police department's 000 and Police Call Centre. Very interesting. We have been measuring the NSW Police Assistance Line (PAL) customer engagement for the last 5 years, and you may be surprised to know that according to the callers who have used the NSW PAL, they rate their experience with PAL as better than experiences they have with private sector call centres. We also measure the emotional reactions callers have pre and post their call to the PAL and it is amazing to see the distinct positive shift in emotional state that occurs as a result of the PAL agents' call handling. They do a great job. Another cracking highlight for me over the last week was bumping into Westpac's Graeme Baker at Sydney airport. Although there was one moment of distinct awkardness that occurred between Graeme and I at the airport.... Graeme is a man, he is travelling interstate for the day. He wears flat shoes and carries a small folder with him. I am a woman, I am travelling interstate for the day. I have a massive handbag, a rolly bag, a coat, ridiculously high heels and a scarf. We get to the security check point and as Graeme places his small folder on the conveyor belt he watches me fumble unpacking a laptop, no, make that two laptops. I then strip off my necklace, my watch, my scarf, my coat, my belt and my shoes, thereby entering a state of near undress, whilst Graeme watches, in mild horror/amusement. Any awkwardness between Graeme and I instantly dissolved as Graeme invited me into the Chairman's lounge. Woohooo! Outbloodystanding. Who's ever been in the mysterious, secret hand shaking, only for immensely special and usually old people, lounge? Not me that's for sure. And, dear readers, can I tell you..... I was ...... not totally loving it.... Shattered I know you will be by that comment, but quite frankly I think all airport lounges are stuffy and boring. And the Chairman's lounge is no different (unless you are with Graeme). Except you get to sit on soft beige leather seats. Usually my staff and I give the lounges a miss and prefer to stand opposite the Krispy Creme doughnut counter and guffaw at the people who buy a dozen doughnuts before getting on a plane. Post a comment here  Comments: Went to the recent Nuance presenation lunch in Sydney that demonstrated this solution.  My take is that it rocks, and will hit the spot with our Gen Y and Gen Z? consumers. Another smart technology that makes sense. Good Thought Leadership and great lunch venue Nuance ! Looking forward to seeing this technology in action with our customers soon. Cheers, E Thanks Erin. I also think it a cool technology and it will be interesting to see with carrier picks it up first for their customers. C Troglodytic tendencies aside, I'm not convinced that the relentless pursuit of techological increases (I deliberately stayed away from advances or improvements) actually improves the customer experience. Yesterday my answering machine recorded 4 messages from an automated bill payment reminder service - One machine rang my phone, another machine answered the call. I'm sure they both felt satisfied with the interaction and my wife did pass on that Telstra had rung 4 times, but I still didn't listen to the messages. I still find myself saying repeatedly to IVR's "Can I talk to an operator", even when it doesn't recognise my response to it's question as valid.  I like people - outsourced, off shored, on shored, satellite, near shored, whatever. And even when they're incompetent, at least I can get politely irritated with them! I'm with you on the doughnuts though, although my particular amusement lies with those who order the dozen doughnuts ... and a large diet coke. Ex-copper eh? Curiouser and curiouser! Neil Hi Neil, If I had any clue whatsoever about what your blog post was about, I would respond. We do however very much like the randomness of many of your comments...;) C A brief translation ... I'm not convinced that more technology necessarily improves customer experience. A couple of personal anecdotes to illustrate the concept. I like dealing with people rather than machines - a postive angle to the negative opener. A parting humorous line connecting to the original blog closer...Neil Hi Neil, Neil, truth is one third of Aussies like talking to machines, one third don’t and one third are ambivalent. I am guessing which third you are in. Personally, I love machines. C Home Based Agents; Senator Conroy says F.OFF.DNC.B2B; Panty hose and WFO goes Global (almost) Post date: 4th May 2010 Aaaahhh, what a great week it has been for the contact centre industry. Why you ask? One, because we hosted a webinar on Key Success Factors for Home-based agents, sponsored by Telstra with industry mega-star Jacob Murray-White from Salmat on the programme. Two, because finally the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, has seen the light and realised extending the Do Not Call Register for Businesses, IS NOT A CLEVER IDEA..... Three, because my PA, Honey, discovered a brilliant website for stockings http://www.les-queues-de-sardines.com/index.html Hot. And four, our WorkForce Optimisation Benchmarking Programme has extended to the US, Canada and Latin America. OMG! Brilliant. The Telstra webinar attracted several hundred participants who listened to me talk about case studies we had done with Fisher and Paykel, Vic Roads and Salmat. Key findings were that benefits from home based agent programmes included: Increased flexibility of the workforce; Increased efficiency; Higher productivity; Increased effectiveness and quality; The minimisation of infrastructure costs; High workforce management optimisation including: Very low shrinkage Very low sick leave High adherence rates 10-20% cost savings compared to traditional contact centre models. So what were the key success factors that resulted in Salmat, Fisher & Paykel and Vic Roads realising such benefits? Well, I would love to tell you, but best you do one of three things: Download the Whitepaper: Success Factors for Home-based Agents: Case Study Evidence http://www.callcentres.net/HomeAgentsAReality Download the Webinar recording: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/618796257 Register free of charge for Syd, Melb and Brissy events where we (me, Jacob, and Telstra) discuss how to set up or improve a home based agent programme. http://forms.telstraenterprise.com/forms/CallCentreCampaigns Outstanding. Now onto the greatest decision that Senator Conroy has made in some time .....not to extend the DNC register to business calls. The decision has been embraced by Rob Edwards and Melina Rohan from ADMA who have led a fearless battle against the proposed legislation, resulting in its quashing. Quashing is an excellent word. Little the industry may know that Melina gathered a tireless task force of industry representatives who gave time every week to pull together evidence and information on the potential damage that this legislation would result in. However, despite the no go with the B2B calls, the Do Not Call Register Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 will still go ahead with planned extensions to include fax numbers, (however this is fully supported by ADMA). Another change is that the legislation will be amended to extend the current requirement of re-registering telephone numbers every three years to every five years. Nice. The last piece of exciting news is that the WFO Benchmarking Survey is in field in APAC, and ... get yourself ready for this cracking great news ..... we are collaborating with the IMT (Institute Teleservices Mexico) who will be fielding our survey in Latin America and Benchmark Portal who will field the survey in the US and Canada. So this means we will be able to have loads of other comparative data for you. Bloody marvellous. So it’s a global research programme without Europe and Africa and the Middle East. But who cares? The regions that really count are in! OK, fine, yes really we would like Europe and Africa so maybe we will have them next year. A heartfelt thanks to Verint and NICE who are sponsoring the APAC programme. You both rock. And as for stockings .... hot. Post a comment here  Comments: Hi Catriona, Nice listening to you last week. We've moved from a "not even on the radar" position to a "let's keep exploring this one" in the space of a few whitepapers and webinars. I'll attempt next time to keep my comments and questions more in keeping with your global audience ... But you still haven't answered one of my original questions, made apparent again this blog in your seeming exaltation in all things call centre ... at what point did you decide that this was something that you wanted to give your life to? Just curious. And restating my invitation to lunch with our crew on the Northern Beaches next time you're over here. Neil Hi Neil, it was about 15 years ago, when I decided not become a farmer, that I devoted my life to all things call centre. It is a terribly common story. C Fringe-shoring: Not a hair cut but a new model of contact centre location.... Post date: 27th April 2010 As the last couple of weeks of blogging have focused on industry discussions about onshoring vs nearshoring vs regional vs offshoring, I wanted to share some stats on the regional contact centre industry sector with you. Just as it remains a mystery why plane seat numbers jump from row 5 to row 23 without any explanation of what happened to rows 6-22 (I am currently sitting in row 31 and I could toss an Emu Bottom biscuit at the people in row 5 from here) so too remains the mystery surrounding what's the advantage of locating a call centre in a region. callcentres.net does a lot of work with governments and private sector organisations in evaluating locations for contact centre industries and for individual companies. As such we have loads of data comparing regional vs CBD locations. Please see the table below for a quick analysis of the differences in performance of Australian CBD vs regional locations. In essence we estimate that if you are moving a CBD contact centre to a non-CBD location then you will be looking for cost savings of up to 10% and you should expect the same or a better quality of service delivered. We recently published a whitepaper on the Brisbane fringe city of Springfield which now presents us with an alternative to just CBD vs Regional models. Please click here to download a copy of the whitepaper. Springfield is a purpose built city 26 kms outside of Brisbane in Queensland. As such it does not fall properly into a regional or CBD classification, so we are terming this "Fringe-shoring". Actually I just made that term up, simply because we couldn't think of a sexier name for a location that is not in the city and not in the country. So, Fringe-Shoring it is. Well it may sound like some new hairdressing technique and why it needs to have the word "shoring" in it at all is anyone's guess. But that's what we will call it for now. The cool thing about Fringe-shored locations is that they have some advantages of the regional locations and some advantages of the city locations (detailed in whitepaper). Wollongong in NSW might also be regarded as a Fringe-shored location. If anyone has a suggestion for a better term than Fringe-shoring then I am happy to give like a prize of some sort. Maybe a dinner out with Jules, a free WFO assessment and Irish folk song from Julie-Anne, a Welsh rugby tackle from Laurence, an hour long free statistics lesson from William and James, or.... a free copy of the up and coming WFO Benchmarking report! Woohooo...... Post a comment here  Comments: Catriona, I reckon the term you are looking for re 'fringe shoring' is 'city satelite'. I'll take the WFO report! rgds Luke Hi Luke, Jules can't believe that you chose the report over a dinner with her. Um city satellite sounds like a star trek adventure. Can you please re think and come back with something else....? C Catriona, I think Luke is almost on the mark.   A satellite town or satellite city is a concept in urban planning that refers essentially to smaller metropolitan areas which are located somewhat near to, but are mostly independent of, larger metropolitan areas.  Characteristics: Satellite cities are small or medium-sized cities near a large metropolis, that:  - predate that metropolis' suburban expansion  - are at least partially independent from that metropolis economically and socially  - are physically separated from the metropolis by rural territory; satellite cities should have their own independent urbanized area, or equivalent    Some satellite cities that are particularly close or well connected to their larger neighbors and/or have their own historic downtown may also qualify as the Uptown variety of edge cities, but the terms are not synonymous.    Some examples of satellite cities in Australia are: Gawler, South Australia (satellite of Adelaide)  Geelong, Victoria (satellite of Melbourne)  Gold Coast, Queensland (satellite of Brisbane) Gosford, New South Wales (satellite of Sydney)  Melton, Victoria (satellite of Melbourne)  Sunbury, Victoria (satellite of Melbourne)  Mandurah, Western Australia (satellite of Perth)  Moe, Victoria, Morwell, Victoria and Traralgon, Victoria (satellites of each other together forming the Latrobe City urban area)  Palmerston, Northern Territory (satellite of Darwin)  Queanbeyan, New South Wales (satellite of Canberra)  Redcliffe City, Queensland (satellite of Brisbane)  Sunshine Coast, Queensland (satellite of Brisbane)  Werribee, Victoria (satellite of Melbourne) Wodonga, Victoria (satellite of Albury)  Wollongong, New South Wales (satellite of Sydney)  Alan Alan, Thanks for your considerable knowledge on this topic, and I think you are right Springfield would definitely be classed as a satellite city. Maybe we could use the term Satellite Shoring, or do you think people might think we are talking about space stations? Do you have a suggestion for the term with regard to outsourcing? C Seeing you're talking all about shores I thought I'd pitch into the debate from the beaches. If it's not off-shoring, then from a making waves perspective it's quite simple - it's on-shoring. Leave the satellites with Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk or if we wait a few years, Richard Branson. Neil Neil, well problem is that on-shoring is the term for the total onshore experience. I need a sub set of that. Keep thinking ..... C Post a comment here Melbourne v Sydney: Races v Drag Shows .... Post date: 13th April 2010 I need to start this week's blog with a comment from a gorgeous Melbourne-based contact centre industry client of mine who said: Client: "Catriona, what is wrong with the women in Sydney? Me:"Um, gosh, I could name a few things, but what exactly are you talking about?" Client: "The races on the Easter weekend ...." And at that point I knew exactly where the conversation was going.... Me: "Are you talking about what they were wearing?" Client: "YES!! Sydney women DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DRESS. They were wearing gold mini dresses!!" And there is was dear readers. What could I say to a passionate Melbournian? She was right. Only Melbournian women really know how to dress for events like the races. We Sydney- siders do a great drag show (in fact when I was in Cuba we went to the Tropicana show which was women dressed in extraordinary showgirl costumes singing and dancing and I realised it was the first time I had seen showgirls who were actually born women .... and it was weird...Liberace would have turned in his bedazzled grave). So it got me thinking what other differences might there be between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne and NSW and Victoria. Here are some stats around the labour force related to the contact centre industry from our locations studies.... In both NSW and Victoria, about 60% of contact centre employees are female and about 70% are aged less than 35 years old. The mean hourly rate for part-time agents and annual base wage for contact centre managers are higher in NSW, while the mean annual base wage for full-time agents and team leaders and supervisors are higher in Victoria. Sydney CBD has a marginally higher number of employed, full-time workers than Melbourne CBD. Melbourne CBD has the largest total (all industries) labour force overall, compared to Sydney CBD. Interesting. Melbourne CBD, compared to Sydney CBD has a larger labour pool of people employed part-time, unemployed seeking full-time work and unemployed seeking part-time work. Melbourne CBD has a higher number of Graduate Diploma & Graduate Certificate and Bachelor Degrees compared to Sydney CBD as well as a marginally higher overall number of non-school qualified people. There are a higher number of mothers seeking to re-enter the workforce in Melbourne CBD than in Sydney CBD. The raw number of potential casual workers is higher in NSW than Victoria. Regarding areas of qualification relevant to contact centre work, assuming IT, Management and Commerce, Society & Culture and Creative Arts are most suited, Sydney and Melbourne are equal. So there you have it.... a tie. Well to be honest I was quite surprised and impressed with the analysis of Melbourne on a number of these attributes. No wonder Victoria has about a third of the 200,000ish seats that Australia has and knows how to dress its women. And you may also be thinking.... Catriona's stats are a bit dry at the best of times but these stats.... only a demographer could love..... But just as you think about taking a job in one or the other states, or when your organisation is thinking about relocating its contact centre, or on nights when you are finding it hard to sleep, these stats will be here for you..... And, we will have totally dead sexy stats related to workforce optimisation ready for you very soon. Next week we are launching our Asia-Pacific Workforce Optimisation Benchmarking Survey, led by the stunning, very Irish and extraordinarily capable (able to ride home on a push-bike clad in a leprechaun outfit on St Pats day), Julie-Anne Hazlett. We will email links to the survey to our readers however please feel free to contact Julie-Anne directly at jhazlett@callcentres.net. Post a comment here  Comments: Hi Catriona, The only reason that Melbourne women don't wear gold mini dresses is that it's too cold down there. A mini dress is rarely wrong. They're just jealous because no matter how much better dressed they like to think they are, all the cool people still want to live in Sydney! Regarding the insomnia alleviating effects of your stats, if anyone is still having problems after reading them I could send them some Safe and Well policies that will do the trick no problems! -- Neil Heeeheee. Thanks for being loyal to Sydney women Neil. We salute you. How about statistics around safe and well policies to really knock someone out eh? C Nearshoring Debate and Anti-offshoring Bill Stalling. Nice. Post date: 6th April 2010 Two weeks ago, Excelior released a report they had commissioned, in company with Burnie Council (Tasmania) Access Economics to write which was titled, "Nearshoring: Examining true value in customer contact networks". The report examines the costs associated with outsourced contact centres in Australian Capital Cities, international offshored locations, regional locations and also nearshoring e.g. to Tasmania. [Bloggers note: I have always thought of Tasmania as a part of Australia, hence we might classify Burnie as a regional area and would not classify as nearshore. Our Kiwi brothers and sisters would be nearshore I would think, but perhaps there is something I don't know going on in Bass Strait?] Essentially the report attempts to analyse the costs, both obvious and hidden, related to outsourcing, offshoring and nearshoring and then concludes that "nearshoring offers lower costs than metropolitan based activity, but without the quality trade-off that can accompany offshoring". Which means, I think, that they are saying outsourcing to regional areas is more cost-effective than outsourcing to a contact centre in a CBD location (yes agreed but this needs to be qualified) and regional outsourced call centres probably provide better quality of service than offshored locations (well, yes, probably largely agree with this as well). So, if this is bleedin' obvious what's the value of the report? To me, as it is to you I am sure, there is no greater pleasure than reading a business report related to the contact centre industry. So on reading this report, I believe the key findings were: Cost per hour per seat (assume Aussie Dollar) Australia Metro $45-50 Australia Regional $35-40 Australia Nearshore $30-35 Philippines $20-25 India $15-20 Access Economics argue that these costs do not include other hidden costs which inflate the real cost of outsourcing. For example not included in these costs may be: travel costs for executives, training costs, call charges, lower agent retention rates hence more training costs, higher rates of call escalation and risks associated with less stable socio-political environments. When Access Economics researched these costs themselves, and added them to the costs above, a different story emerges. The results were: Cost per seat per hour including published and hidden costs: Australia Metro $48-54 Australia Nearshore $33-38 India $22-54 (crikey – huge range but average of about $38) Philippines $26-48 (again big range with average of $37) So if we agree that Aussie call centres give a higher quality of service (and I know some of you will argue that this is indeed not always the case) then nearshoring, to areas such as Burnie, on the Shore of the Country of Tasmania, appear to have an equal or lower cost than India and Philippines, but with better quality, so why wouldn't you send your work there? Sounds simple enough. Access Economics concludes that whilst the old saying, "an activity is best done in the country that does it best' that indeed the more complex the function of the contact centre activity, the more attractive the nearshore option becomes. To me, this report is somewhat of a straw man argument [had to explain the definition of straw man to my staff as a "weak argument set up to be easily refuted"] but nonetheless I am delighted that the extremely lovely John Watkison and his team at Excelior and Burnie Council have brought this discussion to the table. It is a conversation well worth having. callcentres.net does a lot of work in assessing regional and offshored locations for contact centre industries and individual companies and we are big fans of the regional call centre consideration. Our findings suggest that Australia's regional centres are: Good at inbound service (but not so strong in sales or technical support) Have a more stable workforce Have a more engaged workforce Have lower attrition rates and higher retention Have more mature workers The status of working in a call centre is higher and employees tend to be more proud of their jobs Lower rental costs Some challenges with finding specialist skills such as Workforce Planners and managers Some challenges with local IT support So, in essence I agree with Excelior, Burnie and Access Economics, when considering the location of your contact centre do assess CBD, regional, nearshore and offshore options and be aware of all costs associated with these locations. For more information on the report you can contact: Professor Ian Harper, Director, Access Economics, 03 9659 8300 or John Watkinson, Chief Executive Officer, Excelior, 03 9272 8100. And I know there are a lot of our readers who are passionate about this topic, so do blog back if you have thoughts on the whole outsourcing deal. This topic also brings me to a quick update re Senator Fielding's "Keeping Jobs Onshore Bill" which is attempting to legislate that no contact centre work goes offshore to developing countries, via enacting privacy restrictions. Two weeks ago the bill was to be tabled in the Senate however, it was held over few days and then the Senator asked for a postponement of the bill till the next sitting which should be in May. Apparently the Senator isn't getting the support he was looking for so at this stage it appears unlikely that they bill will get through. Now there's a surprise! Really? Go figure. Post a comment here  Comments: Not sure where the description of a regional centre as "Good at inbound service (but not so strong in sales or technical support)" comes from? As a regional (Adelaide)outsource centre operating on the low end of the Access Economics price ranges and with sales achievements that put others to shame (won't quote names but I am told we over achieve other similar organisations) I dispute the 'not so strong in sales' comment. Stats to back it up? I know you must have some somewhere Catriona! -- Derek Love your challenge Derek. Without a doubt there will be pockets of great sales people in regional centres. Overall, however, across 7 regions we have analysed in the last 12 months, it is the managers themselves who make the comment that their people are better at service than sales, so I will stick by my assertion and maybe, just maybe, I will go and collect some comparative stats for you ...;) C I think I briefly touched on this during the panel discussion at the 'Empowering Women' conference a few months ago. Nearshoring is not the 'be all and end all' in itself but it is a vital consideration when it comes to a truly optimised customer contact solution, be that looking at Mexico or Canada in a US context, Czech or Poland in a UK context or Tasmania in an Australian context.   Clearly in an ideal world a 'blended' solution (on/near/off) might look attractive but the management overhead can be daunting. I believe this is where nearshore comes into its own, offering some of the cost benefits within a localised delivery model.   As nearshore.com.au states on the home page, whilst nearshoring is not the answer to every contact centre problem it can be considered as an alternative or as complimentary to offshoring. -- Geoffrey Hi Geoff, We definitely agree that nearshoring should be a consideration and we need to include it in our vernacular, as opposed to talking about onshore and offshore. I am pleased the concept is on the table, with some numbers around it, albeit some of us would like to better understand the calcs behind the numbers...;) C x I've been working with and running offshore contact centres for +5 yrs, it's important to highlight that the offshore rates published in your blog seem VERY inflated. I suspect this is due to the sample size of seats considered for the pricing. Once you factor fixed costs for things like connectivity to an offshore centre the price becomes higher for low volumes. I'd guess this was based on a sample size of 20 considering the rates you've published, yet once you move to higher volumes of seats, you could easily shave off $5 per hour from your ranges.  There are additional costs included to support an offshore project such as travel and connectivity however these "hidden" costs are diluted as the seat/work volumes increase;  therefore as you scale up your volumes the hidden costs are diluted significantly.  I'd agree that if you have 20 or so seats that you want to outsource you'd possibly be better off going to a regional location, yet volumes higher than 40 will tell a different story, that's why our Telcos are closing regional centres and sending work offshore.  The comments relating to offshore contact centres producing lower quality also need to be debated. It's true that an offshore contact centre will take longer to get up to speed, yet due to the fact that you get access to agents with a higher level of education and job commitment the quality over time does not differ much and there are numerous cases where offshore centres score higher on CSat than on-shore and in some cases in-house centres. -- Max Thanks Max. I love your passion on this topic. I agree that some of the assumptions and assertions in the report should perhaps be debated more fully especially with people such as yourself who have considerable experience onshore and offshore. C x Post a comment here Indonesian Contact Centre Industry and What to Wear Post date: 30th March 2010 Just back from Indonesia. A complex but wonderful country and people. Not too much research has been done on the Indonesian contact centre industry, however we are starting to get quite a lot of enquiry about the country. What we know about Indonesia is that the country has over 230 million people, over 17,000 islands, is the world's most populous country and the world's largest Muslim community. There are also considerable Hindu and Buddhist populations. Our last study of the Indonesian contact centre industry (2008) revealed: The contact centre industry had just under 20,000 seats in 2008 with a growth rate of about 12%, hence today's (2010) size should be about 30,000, however we know that there has been a number of centres being set up in Indonesia, e.g. Teleperformance and Teledirect Telecommerce hence predict the growth rate to have increased over the last 12 months. So conservatively we would say the Indonesian contact centre industry is about 40,000 seats in 2010. 90% of centres service the domestic market and 10% service the international market. 6 in 10 centres operate 7 days per week with half operating 24 x 7. 66% of all customer contacts are handled by the contact centre with 21% handled by branches or offices and 8% by the traditional sales force. 81% of calls are inbound and 19% are outbound. 58% of contacts are handled by phone channel; 17% handled by IVR; 10% handled by email; 2% SMS; 1% web; 0.2% speech and 0.2% webchat. 58% of centres are measured as cost centres. Of total contact centre budget 46% is devoted to labour costs; 26% technology and 18% telecommunications. Some of the organisations with contact centres in Indonesia include: TELKOMSEL TELKOM INDOSAT INDOSAT M2 HTCP BAKRIE TELEKOM NTS BANK MANDIRI BRI BNI 46 BCA BANK MEGA AIG LIFE PRUDENTIAL CIGNA COMMONWELTH LIFE INFOMEDIA KPSG TELEPERFORMANCE TELEXINDO GARUDA INDONESIA MERPATI NUSANTARA MANDALA ACER INDONESIA Andi Anugrah does a great job with the Indonesian Contact Centre Industry Association and this really is a market to watch over the next few years. And finally ... the best restaurants/bars to go to include Ku De Ta, La Lucciola and The Living Room. What to wear in Indonesia while you are assessing contact centres? Tie-dye tee shirts and dresses are the go as is any short dress with brass studs. Men clearly should be wearing Bintang (local beer) tee-shirts. No, don't, they are nasty. Better to wear white tee-shirts with Ed Hardy style bling on the front. Actually only do this if you are younger than 30. Older than 30 stick with the Bintang singlet...... Post a comment here  Comments: Catriona darling, you either have that backwards or you just lost all your fashion credibility! The thought of me in a Bintang t-shirt is simply horrific - the more fabric the better, regardless of the print! -- Steve Pels Steve, if only all men had the fashion sensibility of yourself, places like Bali, would be better off. Much as it is my rule that no-one needs to see a woman over 42's knees, so too should no man wear a singlet of any type over the age of 30. Beer singlets for any age should be banned internationally. C x Post a comment here  Mexico, Booth Babes, Snowballs, Mentoring and Bars.... Post date: 16th March 2010 We are very excited to be involved with this year’s Call Design Bootcamp. For all workforce planning type people this is a must attend event. Please see http://www.calldesignbootcamp.com.au/ I am just back from the Instituto Mexicano de Teleservices (IMT) conference held in Mexico City. This was a gathering of well over 500 attendees from North America and Latin America to talk about everything contact centre. And... I have to say... in my opinion it was the best international conference I have been to. Seriously. IMT has been conducting contact centre industry conferences in Mexico for 14 years and absolutely know how to pull off the most professional and well organised conference. Also, the exhibition hall (for vendors) was like a full trade show and exactly how these conferences should position the vendor community. There was well over 60 exhibitors and the most fabulous part of the exhibition hall was the .... Booth Babes. Only in a Latino country would it be totally appropriate for the vendors to hire hot young models who stand at the vendor stands and spruke for business. Of course this amused me to no end so I buddied up with top bloke Jeff Pappas (a US based site location/real estate guy from Arledge Partners) who I made walk up to each booth babe and have a photo taken and then ask detailed questions about what the vendor did. This is pretty much how Jeff did it... Jeff: "Hi young, attractive Cisco employee in short black dress, may I have a photo with you?" Booth babe: "Um, Si Senor." Jeff: "So tell me... is Cisco a call centre?" Booth babe: "Um ...ah... yes... would you like to speak to one of these other men?" Jeff: "No actually I would love you to tell me about Cisco’s services" Booth babe [still looking hot but very uncomfortable]: "Ah, I am just here to smile." Jeff: "Lovely." [please see Booth Babe photos at insert facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5836626767 ] The head of IMT is Maria Eugenia Garcia who is one of the most influential and powerful business people in the Latin American industry. I have been very impressed with Maria Eugenia’s professionalism, entrepreneurship and vision for the Latin American contact centre industry. She is just fabulous and very inspirational. Maria Eugenia presented some stats on the Mexican industry which included: The Mexican contact centre industry constitutes about 450,000 jobs Has 320,000 agent positions 180,000 agent positions are related to outsourced work and 20% of these are from offshore. The growth rate of the industry is about 7.5% per annum (a drop from 18% p.a. pre Global Financial Crisis and possibly a bit of swine flu influence). Other highlights of the event were: Meeting my NBF (new best friend) Ann Harts (funniest American person I have met. Outstanding woman and total hottie) Seeing the world’s nicest analyst Peter Ryan from Ovum (I immediately think of a fallopian tube) Spending half an hour trapped in a bus with ATA head Tim Searcy. Tim is not only very influential (enigmatic some have said) but also hilariously funny, as is his second in charge, Raph. Who would have known that three Americans at the one conference could have more inappropriate and irreverent humour than an Australian. Be proud America. In Tim’s talk he presented his four points re how businesses (outsourcers in this case) should think about what they do. Questions Tim challenged the audience with were: What business problem does your business solve? For whom do you solve the problem uniquely? How do you solve problems differently than others? How much difference does your difference make? Tim then went on to talk about the level of difference an organisation should make in order to win a job over an existing incumbent which is in the order of 8-14% and is termed the "Harvard Hurdle". Keith Fiveson from New York talked about Emotional Intelligence and the downward dog. Bill Price, ex Amazon, shared his 7 principles of The Best Service is No Service: #1 Eliminate dumb contacts #2 Create engaging self-service #3: Be proactive #4: Make it really easy to contact your organisation #5: Own the actions (across the organisation) #6: Listen then act #7: Deliver great service experiences Bill talks about the concept of "snowballs" which are customer issues that get out of hand, however, as I know another definition of snowballs it was hard for me to concentrate on what Bill was saying. Other highlight was the gorgeous, brilliant and charming Yolanda Martinez de Medrano from El Salvador. Yolanda, working closely with the Vice President of El Salvador, is responsible for investment attraction for her country. Yolanda is one of the most impressive young people I have met in this industry. I was honoured that Yolanda asked me and my NBF, Ann, to be mentors to her. Our first lesson for Yolanda was about doing a PhD. My advice was "Yolanda, if you would like to spend 7 years waking up in the morning and sticking needles in your eyes then please consider. A daily hot chicken blood enema also comes to mind". Our second lesson for Yolanda was about being a working mother and the concept of childbirth. Ann and my explanation was "Childbirth is beautiful. It is the same as lying in the street and having a Mack Truck back up and down across your stomach every minute for 16 hours." Then I modelled trying to shove my handbag through my tightened fist and the fact that it was never going to fit, as the second child birth lesson. All going well so far with the mentoring. And the final Mexican story was that I took my husband Mark with me to Cuba and Mexico. On the first night in Mexico I was at a cocktail function so Mark thought he would go out on his own to a bar (he is English). He asked the concierge at the hotel, "Where is a nice bar tourists go to?" The concierge gave him an address and said "This is the nicest bar in Mexico City". Off Mark headed. Arriving at the bar, Mark was fast to recognise that the bar was in fact a strip club. Well, maybe the term fast to recognise is a bit strong because I understand that Mark had at least one drink and then realised it was a strip club. Of course, he was appalled and left quickly. Again, the word quickly maybe too strong and perhaps he left craning his neck 180 degrees, would be a better description. Back to the hotel he went. Mark said: "Concierge person, you sent me to a strip club. I am a married man with 5 kids, how could you have done that?" Concierge: "Well, sir, when a man comes to me wanting to go out on his own .... But of course sir, I have another bar in mind. This will be perfect for you. I know exactly what you are after." Mark heads out with the address to the second bar. And ... it is... a strip club. Again, only realising after a couple of drinks and being equally appalled Mark leaves in a hurry, or a slow and considered walk, and makes it back to the hotel where I regaled him with an assessment of the Mexican contact centre industry and Mark regaled me with an assessment of the Mexican strip club industry. Nice. Post a comment here  Cuban and Mexican Call Centre Industries, Cigars, Mojitos and Rum.... Post date: 9th March 2010 I have just had a week in Cuba analysing the Cuban call centre industry. I couldn't find one. It was like being in a 1950s time warp. A magnificent country but seriously lacking in any sort of modern telecommunications. Although not finding too much to do with call centres, what I did learn was this: The top brands of Cuban cigars in order of fabulousness are: 1) Cohiba, 2) Montecristo and 3) Romeo y Julietta. The best rum from Cuba is not in fact Havana Club but actually Varadero and Caney. Interesting. The best bar for Mojitos is La Bodeguita and the best bar for Daquiris is La Floridita, (as validated by Ernest Hemmingway). Do not go to a suburban nightclub called Habana Tunel. Cubans cannot buy a car that was built later than 1959. Revolutionist Che Guevara was hot. The impact of the US Embargo is very evident as there is very little development, food is very average and the average standard of living is quite poor. Very sad. There was no distinct poverty evident as there is in Western and other capitalist economies which is a positive. Fabulous architecture and a rich culture. It is not likely that Cuba will have a developed call centre industry anytime soon. But now I am in Mexico which has a very well developed call centre industry. Although it is difficult to find good benchmarking stats on the Mexican market, there was a report published by the Zagada Institute in 2007 which reported the Mexican call centre industry: Provides the largest number of customer care agents serving the Spanish world (over 60% of all Spanish speaking agents globally); Has Latin America's second largest agent population of over 150,000, (Bloggers note: the industry was projected to have grown by 200,000 by 2008, so if we follow that growth rate, annualised , knock a bit back for the GFC, then the industry should be somewhere around 300,000 agents); About one quarter of the agents serving US customers are bilingual (English and Spanish); The main BPO regions in Mexico include: Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Tijuana, León, Toluca, Ciudad Juaréz, Torreón and San Luis Potosí. Contact Center BPO revenues in Mexico are estimated at US$6.7 billion (2007 estimate); Internal growth rate in the sector averaged 17% in recent years while its international outsourcing business is growing at 27% annually; Traditional challenges for the industry have included relatively higher wages and real estate prices, high levels of software and intellectual property costs, and the need to generate more successful locally grown companies; some political tensions and social and main countries competing with Mexico include Argentina, Central America, and the Dominican Republic. No doubt after two days at the conference here www.imt.com.mx, I will have the full run down on everything Mexican and call centre. Just doesn't get any better for me than learning about a country's call centre industry. I am most keen to evaluate whether Mexico and the South American countries positioning as BPO destinations will compete for global market share with Asia-Pacific. What do you reckon? Keep you posted. Post a comment here | comments (4) Mexico, Australians who can speak English and Telemarketing .... Post date: 2nd March 2010 I am about to jump on a plane and head to Mexico to attend the 1st Global Contact Forum, which is a gathering of the Mexican, Nth American and South American contact centre industries to talk about all things best practice. Celebrity speakers will include: Bill Price - Former VP Global Customer Service Amazon Enigmatic Tim Searcy -CEO ATA (American Teleservices Association) Top bloke Peter Ryan - Senior Analyst Data Monitor Ma. Eugenia García - President IMT Kirk Laughlin - President and founder, Nearshore Americas Keith Fiveson - CEO ITES Bruce Belfiore - CEO of BenchmarkPortal Anupam Govil- CEO Global Equations Toni Portmann - Former CEO Stream I will be doing a keynote on 'Lessons and Best Practices from Asia-Pacific' where I will focus on analysing the performance of Australia, India, Philippines, China and Malaysian contact centre industries. Clearly the whole world is interested in why our region totally rocks as an outsourcing and off-shoring destination, and we are being watched eagerly as other regions such as South America gear up to take a chunk of the global market. www.imt.com.mx Interestingly, Mexico has been playing in the outsourcing market for years, it's just that we don't hear too much news from that beautiful part of the world (other than for natural disasters ...:(. And just as we perhaps don't get a huge amount of news about the South, Central or North American contact centre industries, they may not know too much about us either. Perhaps this explains why last year when I was in the US, a business woman I was at a dinner function with said to me, "Where are you from?" I said, "I am from Australia" she said, "Gosh, your English is excellent." hhhmmm.... Now to another important topic - ADMA has been very active this week lobbying Senator Conroy re the Do Not Call Register for Businesses and Fax numbers. The latest on the status of the Bill can be found at http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/eca_ctte/do_not_call_register/index.htm So speaking of telemarketing work, some terribly useful stats related to the telemarketing sector include: In the Australian contact centre industry about 1 in 10 centres (3860 centres in total) conduct some type of telemarketing activity. Of these, about three quarters are outsourced. Main industries who conduct telemarketing are finance, banking, insurance, utilities and telcos. On average, in Australia, the strike rates for telemarketers is about 4.9% successful conversions. Just over half of telemarketing campaigns use a predictive dialler. This data is from callcentres.net Telemarketing Industry Report which we published last year. We hope to do another study in 2010 into this most important contact centre type. Go the sales people. Post a comment here | comments (2) Women on Women and Journalistic Same Old .... Post date: 24th February 2010 Last week I talked about the Asia Pacific call centre industry to a group of women philanthropists (including superstars Dr Anne Summers, Wendy McCarthy and Eve Mahlab) who were congregating in Sydney for the Women Mobilising Millions programme (which is about women funding projects for women: nice), headed by two super fabulous US based philanthropists, Helen LaKelly Hunt (whose father won a Dallas oil well in a poker game) and Chris Crumm and organised by ex-call centre legend Kristi Mansfield. One topic I spoke about was the value to women in developing countries that directly results from off-shored contact centre work (yes, yes, gets some of your backs up I know...). Helen and Chris speak about research which reports that by providing economic independence to women in developing nations, families are better off, whole communities and countries are better off. Chris has a fabulous saying which is, “Buy a woman a fish and she will feed her family and probably go without... buy a woman a fishing line and she will fish and feed her family until the lake runs dry or becomes polluted.... but... buy the woman the lake and she will fish, feed her family, feed herself, feed the community and keep the lake clean...” So the women's philanthropy movement is now very much focused on creating high level strategic and economic change for women. Go the girls. Our industry has a big role to play here. The other area I spoke about is the work we continue to do with creating employment pathways for female prisoners who have been trained as contact centre agents whilst in prison. I have an ex-inmate of Dillwynia prison working directly for me and she won one of our top performers awards last year. She is fabulous. If you are interested in providing one of these girls an opportunity of working in your call centre, do please contact me directly at cwallace@callcentres.net (it may well be the only opportunity that these girls ever experience in their lives). Part of the events last week involved having dinner with Her Excellency, Quentin Bryce, the Governor General of Australia, who was most engaged with the story of the Dillwynia prison call centre. And I have to say I was most engaged with the Governor General's extreme elegance, grooming and dress sense. I could seriously do with a bit of GG style counselling. But just as I think that I have started to get the message out that the APAC contact centre industry has some serious social responsibility benefits, I get to do a radio interview with a journo, the ABC's Katya Quigley in this case, cranking out the same old anti-offshored call centre tripe. Anyway, below are the questions Katya asked me to consider prior to the interview.... How many call centres are operating in Australia now? About 3,860 centres with about 193,000 seats (workstations) and about 260,000 workers. How many companies are outsourcing overseas and to where? About 12% of centres are outsourced - and about 20% of this work goes overseas: Mostly to India, then Philippines then Malaysia. Why are so many companies are outsourcing- what's the benefit apart from cost and what is the cost benefit? Cost reduction is the primary benefit, being about 40% when offshoring. This is based on the labour arbitrage. For example 65% of total call centre budget in Australia is dedicated to HR costs. A base salary for a frontline call centre agent is $45,000. In India for example this is closer to US$4,000 per annum; Philippines about $5,500 per annum. The movement of service work overseas has been termed 'The Services Shift' and will continue to happen, just as it did with the manufacturing sector. Essentially organisations who off-shored ideally want to maintain the service level and significantly reduce cost. The best way to deal with call centres that are obviously overseas where there is a language barrier- some tips to get what you want and need as a customer: First of all recognise that if you are speaking with a call centre agent with an accent, there is a big possibility that they are actually located within Australia - so feel free to ask where the agent is based. If the agent is based overseas - they are likely to be in India, Philippines or Malaysia. Speak clearly and appreciate that the agent, who is probably being trained in accent neutralisation, will be trying their hardest to communicate with you. Be patient, be tolerant and if having any trouble ask to speak to a supervisor. Australians are regarded, along with the Americans, as the most aggressive and rude consumers who deal with overseas call centres. I would say, as a consumer just try to be a bit more tolerant. And remember that your premium or fees paid to the company you are dealing with have probably not increased as much as they would have if the work had stayed in Australia; and if you are a shareholder of a company, your return may well be better based on the work being done more cost effectively. Both these reasons should outweigh having to listen to someone with an accent. The way of the future- what is it? More outsourcing and offshoring and more automation such as Speech implementation and online channels as organisations try to bring down the very high costs of servicing in Australia (costs about $15billion per annum to deliver call centre services). In essence.... re offshored call centres...... we Australians just need to ....let it go ...'cause it's going anyway....;) And my final important piece of news this week, which sits nicely under the title Woman on Woman, is that I had my first significant near lesbian experience..... This is entirely the fault of the Islanders and their bringing the massage technique, Lomi Lomi, to our shores. Seriously, think of being starkers, a beautiful Islander girl and about 3 bottles of warm oil, hot rocks and much body to body rubbing and you got it. I am still getting over it. Go the Islanders and your fabulousness as I am seriously thinking about batting at the other end of the wicket.... Post a comment here | comments (2) Contact Centre Technology and Very Cool Outsourcing DigiMags..... Post date: 17th February 2010 I haven't written for a while about contact centre technology, mainly because some of the technology terminology is so long that it takes me too long to type the words left handed.... Actually, that's not true. I am getting stunningly proficient at typing left handed, but by crikey doing up the bra strap one handed is another story. Anyway, your interests may well lie in contact centre technology rather than in bras, so here are some interesting stats re what contact centres in Aussie, NZ, Singapore and Malaysia will be buying or implementing this year .... Malaysia IVR (Interactive Voice Response) CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) E-learning Call recording (voice) Workforce Management tools Singapore CRM (Customer Relationship Management) IVR ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) WFM (Workforce Management tools) VoIP (Voice over IP) NZ CRM KMS (Knowledge Management Systems) ACD Call recording CTI IP telephony Australia CRM WFM CTI IVR KMS So there is a strong technology theme across Asia-Pacific focusing on the customer, call routing (or rooting as the English would say. funny) providing knowledge to agents and managing the workforce. All terribly sensible. Now speaking of the English, on14-15 June this year in London the Contact Centre Outsourcing Forum will be held. This will be a fabulous event and the who's who of outsourcing and the who's who of those who outsource or who want to outsource will be there. Supporting the event, the infamous and totally lovely English based journo, Steve Hurst, is producing a number of DigiMags chocked full of outsourcing info. Check them out below. CCO FEB http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/a807c239#/a807c239/1 CE FEB http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/9c05c42b Any only a few weeks to the international conference in Mexico (9-10 March www.imt.com.mx). After the event I will report in full about the Mexican, Central and South American contacts centre industries......bars and dance clubs. Post a comment here  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 About Dr Catriona Wallace Dr Catriona Wallace is the Managing Director of callcentres.net Pty Ltd and ACA Research. Dr Wallace is regarded internationally as an expert in Customer Engagement and Employee Engagement and advises many organisations on service and employee strategies, with particular emphasis on contact centre service channels. Dr Wallace has a PhD in Organisational Behaviour, is Adjunct Faculty at the Australian Business School and is the author of The Complete Guide to Call & Contact Centre Management. In 2008 Dr Wallace was recognised as one of the top business women in NSW through the Telstra Business Women’s Awards.