Govt call centres under the customer service spotlight

Government call centres are lagging behind their private sector counterparts when it comes to some areas of customer service, according to a new study. The survey was conducted by research specialist callcentres.net.

Government Contact Channels and Today's Consumer, released by call centre technology companies Avaya and Witness Systems, revealed that only 54% of issues presented to government call centres are resolved in the first contact, compared to the 78% first-call resolution rate average for all Australian contact centres. The survey also revealed that 84% of consumers classified the type of contact made with the government as “simple”, but 86% of those regarded the contact as highly important.

Overall this perceived importance puts pressure on government channels to deliver efficient service to the Australian public. The report provides insights into many other facets of government/consumer interactions including usage of electronic communication channels, consumer satisfaction with these alternate media and how these trends will change and impact government over the next five years. Survey results show that technologies such as the Internet, email and web chat are by far the least popular methods of contact with government. Surprisingly, while 64% of all homes are already internet-connected (and this is expected to rise to 75% within one year), only 5% of respondents use the web and only 1% use email when first contacting a government department, compared to use of landline phones (62%) and face-to-face visits (23%).

Nokia has officially launched its Indian call centre in India in a global collaboration involving Malaysian outsourcer SCICOM.

The centre, Nokia India Careline, is managed by SCICOM Contact Centre Services India, a subsidiary of the Malaysia’s SCICOM, with Indian staff. Nokia’s Peter Thomas said Nokia views India as one of the fastest growing market for mobile phones in APAC and there is increasing customers’ expectations for a higher quality of customer care.

“The Careline provides premium customer care support in English as well as a variety of native Indian languages such as Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Bengali,” he added. SCICOM’s Malaysian call centres provide clients with multilingual inbound customer care and technical support services.

In a bid to curb outsourcing to less expensive operating bases, French call centre operators have been ordered to introduce a new code of practice, requiring agents to divulge their location at the start of a conversation with a customer.

Agents in offshore, French speaking locations including Senegal, Tunisia and Morocco, regularly offer customers French names and speak with Parisian accents to disguise their identity. “It is unfair to let consumers believe they are enjoying a close relationship with a firm when they are in fact dealing with a sub-contractor, often in another country,” says the French Foreign Ministry.

Over the past five years, 55 French language call centres have been set up in Morocco, employing 6,500 people and generating total revenue of euro 85 million (US$105 million). According to recent French opinion polls, offshore outsourcing is seen as a greater threat to France than unemployment or terrorism, says The Times newspaper. A total of 200,000 people are employed in 3,000 French call centres.

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2004 Australian Call Centre Industry Benchmark Study:

The following graph represents the mean allocation of training resources. Click on image to view larger graph.

• Agents receive an average of 15 days of training each year. Larger call centres offer more training days than smaller centres.
• The majority of training in Call Centres is focused on product knowledge.
• Over one third (36%) of the Call Centres offer their agents industry recognised qualifications, compared to 45% in 2003.

Source: 2004 Australian Call Centre Industry Benchmark Study