LATEST NEWS

Budgetary Constraints Replace Staff Churn as Contact Centres' Top Challenge

Budgetary constraints or an expectation of doing more with less and change management have replaced staff turnover and recruitment as the top two concerns facing Australian contact centre operators in 2009. This was a key finding of the callcentres.net 2009 Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report, sponsored by RightNow and Salmat. Grow in seat size has slowed down compared to growth in 07-08 but remained in positive figures (1%).

"In 2008 we predicted that the contract centre industry would remain robust during the GFC due to it being the most cost effective service and revenue channel for organisations. As evidence of this, in 2009 more than half (57%) of the contact centres undertaking revenue-generation activities indicated that the GFC had not affected the amount of revenue earned by their operations. This is a positive sign that the industry has not been hit too hard," said Dr Wallace. "Only 27% indicated that the GFC had contributed to a revenue decrease while 17% said revenues had actually increased due to the GFC."

To hear the full contact centre industry Register Here.

GE Capital to launch speech recognition

Financial services company GE Capital will launch a pilot of its new open dialogue speech recognition platform next month.

Nuance open dialogue solution can recognise what a caller says and route them accordingly. GE Capital expects the system to reduce misdirected calls and increase the availability of phone banking self-service for customers.

A GE Capital spokesman told reporters the project would provide greater service to customers and provide the company with much more detailed information about why they were calling. "So we can help them more efficiently, rather than where the customer currently has to try and shoe-horn their reason for calling into a rigid option-based menu," the spokesman said.

Telcos warned over customer complaints

The Telecommunications Ombudsman is receiving some 20,000 complaints a month from telco customers, prompting a government warning for the industry to lift its game.

Poor advice, lengthy waiting times and a failure to act on requests were the main cause of consumer complaints during the first six months of this year, while rudeness and an inability to contact support staff were also major annoyances.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the industry had to improve its customer service or face tough new rules. "The volume of complaints is simply too high, and the challenge remains for industry to respond," he said. "I believe relatively minimal effort from industry could greatly influence complaint numbers."

"We will continue to work with industry to address this issue but, as I have previously warned, regulatory options will be considered if consumer interests are not adequately protected."

ATH ready to set up Fiji contact centre

Fiji's Amalgamated Telecommunications Holdings (ATH) will set up a contact centre for outsourcing by the end of the year.

ATH CEO Tomasi Vakatora told reporters that work is already underway on setting up the centre. "It was supposed to have followed a three phase strategy," Vakatora said. "The first is to serve ATH Group requirements then seek clients locally before moving into the international market. With strong indications of excellent local prospects, it may be necessary to speed up the second phase."

Vakatora said ATH is well placed in the e-health, e-education and e-commerce sectors, but would look to service the local market before attempting to attract international clients. "We have lots of feedback from the local companies who are interested in coming on board," he said. "We will have to establish that first before venturing onto the international market."

Vodafone to downsize Brisbane contact centre

Vodafone has confirmed it will lose about half the workforce at its Brisbane contact centre by the middle of next year.

The telco said about 125 people at the Toowong centre will be made redundant in a restructure that will send the jobs to its Kingston centre in Tasmania. The Toowong centre will lose its customer service role with all remaining staff concentrated in credit and revenue jobs.

Vodafone told reporters no one would be made redundant until June next year. Vodafone said the total job loss numbers had yet to be determined and some affected staff may be offered new jobs after the restructure.

Boys Go to Gaol with Girls and Contact Centres Getting Greener

A few weeks ago I blogged about the ATA's excursion to the Dillwynia women's prison contact centre and how impressed I was with the operation, Catherine and Cath, the managers, and the girls working there. They also had really crap technology. So I did a call to the industry asking for benevolent vendors to come forward and give a bit o' luv and a bit o' technology to the Department of Correctional Services. And low and behold out from the crowd stepped Avaya's Steve Vials and Global Connect's Pushkar Taneja, eager to have a visit to the gaol to assess the needs of the centre.

Read the full blog entry here

  Upcoming Events

callcentres.net invites you to attend the launch of the
2009 Australia & New Zealand Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Reports.

Melbourne, 2nd September
New Zealand, 4th September
Sydney, 10th September

Cost: AUD$88.00
Register your seats here
Seats are Limited - RSVP NOW

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  Podcast

Smart Call # 67 -
The tail wagging the dog

This week's show tackles a couple of long-held assumptions:

• Contact centres are rightly an unloved and expensive enclave in most businesses
• Offhsoring takes jobs from Australia

Many listeners'/readers' will be just about to leap out of their chairs upon reading this pair of statements, because they just are not true and this week's Smart Call proves it with two stories explaining how the call centre tail is wagging the dog.

We prove it in an interview with Genesys' Jason Stirling, who explains how the company is working to get every part of an organisation that touches a customer working together, instead of just leaving the contact centre to do it all - or just to cop all the flak when things go wrong.

We've also got an interview with Denice Pitt and Sadip Sen of Aegis, who together explain how Aegis - which has just formalised its takeover of UCMS - plans to bring 2000 new BPO jobs to Australia. Yep that's right - an Indian company BRINGING jobs to Australia!

Listen to the podcast here

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