Brilliantly exciting news ..... lock in your diaries 3pm October 27th 2009 Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report results webinar. Link to register your attendance coming shortly. Free to attend. We will also organise a Kiwi webinar shortly thereafter. Stunning.

Righto, onto this week's blog topic ..... yesterday's Daily Telegraph ran a story on the contact centre that is based in the Dillwynia correctional facility for women, based in Windsor, NSW.

As mentioned in previous blogs, the gaol has a 20 seat contact centre and employs women inmates who make outbound calls such as database updating or telemarketing. Of the women prisoners in goal, 42% of them once released will reoffend and end up back in goal, which is a tragic outcome. Those women who are trained in a job and who do secure employment on the outside are significantly less likely to reoffend and significantly more likely to become active and valuable members of society again.

Did the Daily Telegraph report this? No. As expected from a tabloid, the article by Joe Hildebrand was a sensationalist piece which positioned the Dillwynia contact centre as crims making calls so that the government can "swell its coffers" by offering reduced cost outsourcing work to external companies. Idiot newspaper.

Let me assure you, valued reader, that this is not the purpose of the centre. The centre has been set up so that the inmates (most of whom are there for non-violent crimes such as fraud or drug use), can have a chance at living a normal life when they are released, and not reoffend and not be a burden on society. That's it, that's the entire purpose.

Last Friday, I attended a jobs expo at the prison, where the inmates had a chance to sit down and talk with me and my Operations Manager, Doan, about working in a contact centre when they are released. Most of the 20 girls I spoke with said that the work they have been doing in the contact centre at Dillwynia is the only opportunity that they have ever had in their lives. Many of the girls I spoke with had obvious signs of the trauma they had suffered, many had scars on their arms where they had cut themselves (usually as an act of self-harm) in their earlier lives. Heartbreaking.

Of all the people I have ever interviewed or spoken to about working in a contact centre, I have never heard any more passionately engaged and interested workers than these women. The fact that this industry of ours may consider giving these well trained girls a chance at a normal life is worth more than we on the outside will ever know. A job in a call centre may be the difference between imprisonment or freedom, between life and death for these girls.

Indeed, one girl said to me, "I have been trained as a call centre agent, and it is what I want to do with my life. I love the work, I am good at it and I will make a career out of it. I get up every day and look forward to getting on the phones. If I can just have a chance I will be the best worker."

What else can you ask for?

Now many of you may still be awkward about the idea of employing a previous inmate and most of you may have never been to a prison or even met someone with a criminal record. It is really not what most people think. The Dillwynia prison is not a razor wire, metal barred prison, it looks more like a university campus. The girls are not scary criminals, they are women who have in the most part, suffered huge trauma in their early life and have not been given support or opportunity at any time in their lives.

At the jobs expo, the inmates put on a concert where a number of talented prisoners sang songs they had written about their lives. A young Islander girl sang a rap song called "I'm Tired" which talked about her life and the exhaustion that she felt at her young age as she tried to cope with living on a day to day basis, and how she desperately wanted to have a life that was right.

Real people with traumatic pasts who have paid their dues and now want a chance. I had difficulty not to cry throughout the whole performance.

Anyway, please ignore mindless tabloid dribble and if you are interested in hearing the real story of the Dillwynia contact centre, then do contact me or Mike Meredith at the ATA.

Now, even though Mike Meredith and I do totally share a committed support for the Dillwynia contact centre, we do have different views on Senator Fielding's Ant-Off-shoring Bill.

On the 8th October, in company with a number of CEOs of Australian outsourcers I will be visiting the Senator's office to talk with his advisors about the economic benefit to Australia and Australian companies that off-shoring can provide. We will lobby against the introduction of the Bill.

Another emotional and controversial topic I know ....;)

Now, another diary date to note: At 1-5pm 3rd December in Melbourne, I will be hosting a conference where we will talk about the Social Impact of Off-shoring with regard to the empowerment of women and girls in developing countries. You will hear from academics, practitioners and women from off-shoring countries themselves. If you are interested please pencil in your diary and I will give you more details later (free to attend and will be totally engaging).

This blog has a bit of a 'girl' theme doesn't it. Bit of a change from the Transvestite theme of the last few weeks eh. Actually no, Tranny's are girls. It's all about the girls....;)

Last week was the ATA National Conference and Awards, held in Sydney. A galaxy of stars turned up to hear from the likes of Graeme Baker head of Westpac contact centres who spent a good chunk of time on stage rolling golf balls .... (what is it with blokes like Graham and Mike Meredith CEO of the ATA that they have to always have golfing analogies in their presentations?) Admittedly, my presentation on Customer Engagement and Customer StoryTelling did feature a strong cross-gender theme, so I guess golfing metaphors are tolerable ...;) Anyway, Graeme was funny. Not bad for a banker.

Thought I would also share some more stats from the Aussie and Kiwi Benchmarking studies:

• Percentage of contact centres in Australia with home based agent programmes = 12% and predicted to grow to 19% by mid 2010. NZ = 11% currently with home based agent programmes, but this is not predicted to grow strongly in 2010 (<1%).
• Ranking of (self-reported) customer satisfaction (even though I don't support customer satisfaction as the dominant measure of customer experience in contact centres...) from highest performers to lowest in Australia:

1. Retail & Wholesale
2. Govt, Education, Health
3. Finance, Banking & Insurance
4. Hospitality
5. Information Technology
6. Transport & Freight
7. Business Services
8. Outsourcers
9. Manufacturing
10. Telco & Utilities

Bet the utilities are annoyed they are categorised with the Telco's eh? (sorry guys, standard research groupings... can split out if anyone is upset...:)

• 28% of Australian and NZ industry plan to invest in CRM technology in 09-10.
• 21% of Australian and NZ industry plan to invest in WorkForce Planning software in 09-10. (Interesting that the stats are the same in both countries. Maybe that's because the Aussies and the Kiwis are like the same?)

Anyway now on to the glam event of the week - the ATA National Awards on Friday night. As promised I came as Trinny and the Tranny shoes and Jules did a “Hot or Not?” shoe survey amongst attendees. Mixed response but largely the thumbs up....;) Jules and I then made it to the centre of the Gaymuda Triangle, this year led by lone dancer, Shano from Australian Central Credit Union, recently back from marrying Steve in Thailand. Nice.

Congratulations to the winners on the night who included:

Call Centre Champion: Dina Kotsopoulos – BT Financial Group – NSW

Teleprofessional of the Year: Ramona Ansell – Energex – QLD

Team Leader of the Year: Samantha Delaney – Flexirent – NSW

Contact Centre Manager of the Year: Kylie Chambers – Energex – QLD

Contact Centre with under 50 FTE Employees: City of Stirling – WA

Contact Centre with 50-120 FTE Employees: IAG Lifestyle and Leisure – NSW

Contact Centre with more than 120 FTE Employees: Australian Insurance Holdings – QLD

Other important stuff to note:

ICSP Customer Service Week and Event: http://www.icsp.com.au/icsw/icsw.html

Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Results Webinar – 3pm 27 October, pencil it in - details to come soon (free to join and will feature celebrity contact centre manager Lawrence Booth from Mackay).

Social Impacts of Outsourcing and Off-shoring Forum: 3 December

I am working in company with Mark Ingram from Business for Millennium Development and Kristi Mansfield from Greenstone Group on this exciting event. Mark's organisation is a partnership forum that connects Australian business with profitable opportunities that deliver poverty reduction outcomes in support of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Asia Pacific region.

Kristi's organisation is a Philanthropic consultancy, and also works to support the MDGs, particularly in the area of empowerment for women and girls.

We are organising a conference on 3 December in Melbourne where we will talk about the topic of outsourcing and offshoring work to developing countries. Our hypotheses is that off-shored work provides empowerment for women in developing countries, thereby providing better life opportunities for women and girls.

We will have a number of outsourcing experts on a panel as well as hear directly from women from developing countries about their life experiences working in outsourced contact centre jobs.

My interest in the programme is to continue to raise the level of discussion about the net benefits of offshoring and to educate the industry and media on the macro economic and importantly the social effects of outsourcing and offshoring.

Again, please pencil in 13:30 pm on 3 December and we will provide more details (free to come).

Crikey, there just isn't a more exciting industry than this eh?

Last Thursday saw 210 contact centre industry executives gather at the Westin Hotel in Sydney to hear callcentres.net's 2009 Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report results. And it wasn't just me on stage at the ungodly hour of 730am, I also had Brett Waters from RIghtNow Technologies and Justin Aldrich from pink one Salmat, industry celebrity, Mike Meredith from the ATA and top chick, Melina Rohan from ADMA.

The morning started out in typical fashion with a brief mention of how pregnancy occurs and then moved onto breast feeding. These important topics out of the way, I then told a story about the contact centre industry's journey from mid-2008 through the GFC, into 2009 and then what lay ahead for 2010.

Some of the highlights included:

• Australian contact centre industry seat size currently 193,000 seats having grown 1% from 2008. The government sector at 34,000 seats contributed 6% growth, which, (call me a statistician) means the private sector was in negative growth over the last 12 months. Thank goodness for the government I hear you saying. Yes, indeedy, it is true, the govt contact centre sector has fared well in the last 12 months.
• 81% of all customer interactions are handled by the contact centre in 2009, up from 77% in 2008. We saw a drop in use of traditional channels such as the branch, accounting for only 8% of all interactions and the sales force accounting for only 4% of interactions. Go the contact centre.
• Contact centre operating budgets decreased by 5% from 2008, with human resource related costs accounting for 69% of budget, an increase from 61% in 2008. Partly, this is influenced by a 6% increase in agents' base pay to a mean of $45,118.
• Revenue generated by the contact centre from both inbound and outbound calls was .... $49 billion .... bloody marvellous...... and an increase of 7% in 2008.

Who are the sales champions during an economic downturn? YOU ARE!

ADMA's (Australian Direct Marketing Association) Melina Rohan presented an update of Senator Conroy's proposed Do Not Call Register for B2B and Fax numbers legislation. Our research showed that two thirds of the Aussie contact centre industry are neutral or non-supportive of the proposed legislation, and Melina did a great job in explaining the dire impact on business if the legislation proceeds. callcentres.net's position on this is to support ADMA in actively lobbying against the proposed Bill, which is in contrast to the DNC Register for B2C which we supported. ADMA has prepared a letter for organisations who would like to lobby government and Parliamentarians, click here to download. Alternatively for more info on the DNC Register for B2B, please contact Melina at melina.rohan@adma.com.au.

During the event I also introduced to the audience the team from the contact centre at Dillwynia Correctional Centre. I mentioned that I would keep the industry updated in how we are supporting this important part of our industry. We are working with Stevey Vials from Avaya and Pushkar Taneja, CEO or Global Connect who are looking to donate contact centre technology to the centre, and we have just been approved by the Department of Correctional Services as an appropriate place to employ women who have trained in the contact centre at Dillwynia and have been released. My message to the industry last week was, that if my company can look to employ some of these girls and give them a second chance, then maybe some other organisations can do the same thing. I will keep you posted on how this progresses.

So what lies ahead for the 2010?

• The colours Fuschia (light) and peacock blue.
• 7% growth in the private sector contact centre industry, and
• More ominous times lie ahead with a prediction of only 1% growth in govt seats.

This week is the highly anticipated ATA National Conference and Awards. I will do a session on how Customer Story Telling is a better research methodology than Customer Satisfaction measurement (which as you well know I believe belongs in 1980s along with perms, leg warmers and shoulder pads. Indeed I believe this so much that during my talk last week I showed a photo of me in the 80s with a massive perm...isn't it funny how at the time you think you are so hot, then some years later look back with unbridled horror...)

And finally, I have had such a response from readers about my Kiwi Tranny shoes that I am going to wear them to the ATA Awards on Friday night.

If you see someone you think has come in Drag.... that will be me.

Liberace would be so very proud.

Last Wednesday Jules and I presented callcentres.net's 2009 Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report findings to a gorgeous audience of about 160 private and public sector contact centre executives at the Sofitel in Melbourne.

The morning started off well with the usually inarticulate and terribly awkward dressed-in-black Audio-visual boys, who got in quite a lather when I ask them to turn me on from behind, then said ...

AV boy: "Um, excuse me, what colour lights would you like on the ceiling?"

Me: "Wow, you can talk, excellent. Ah, right, lights on the ceiling, clearly important. What colours do you have?"

AV boy: "Any colour that you like, even the colour of your dress"

Me: "Really? This colour is the totally on-trend Spring 09 colour of Fuchsia? Surely you don't have it?"

AV boy: [Beaming] "Like, yes we do"

And from that moment on the lights on the ceiling were totally matched to the colour of my dress. Outbloodystanding. Five minutes before speaking, other presenters may be concerned about the content of their presentation, but not when you're speaking in Melbourne... no.... the only concern is whether your outfit matches the ceiling (Sydney would never have thought of it....;)

A couple of gems from the report....

Of all contacts that an organisation has with its customers:

• 81% are handled by the contact centre (up from 77% 2008)
• 8% are handled by the branch (down from 11% 2008)
• 4% are handled by the sales force (down from 6% 2008)

What does this mean? It means that the contact centre, year on year, continues to replace the traditional channels of branch and sales force. Yay. Nice. As it should be.

Jules and I then travelled to Auckland to present the 2009 NZ Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report at the inaugural Contact Centre Institute of NZ (CCiNZ) conference.

The night before the CCiNZ event, TUANZ (the Telecommunications Users Association NZ) held their innovation awards. It struck Jules and I that either it was very coincidental or very bad manners that TUANZ held their event the night before the CCiNZ event and Awards. Anyway, we went along to the TUANZ awards in support of pink one Salmat VeCommerce who were contending for an award for their speech application for the MSD govt department. And they won! Fabulous.

The evening was hosted by some random MC who was doing an average job at introducing speakers and the award nominees, but then by some freaky, weirdy, turn of fate, decided to end his time on stage hosting this very conservative telco audience, by stripping off his business clothes to reveal a Rocky Horror Show drag queen outfit. He then proceeded to sing "Sweet Transvestite" and walk around the audience caressing senior executives. Hhmmm... now here's the thing. Super straight unfunny guys should never pretend they are really quirky and funny by impersonating a drag queen. Let's leave drag to the professionals eh? Members of the Gaymuda Triangle only I would have thought. Anyway, the poor bloke's act was a complete disaster in front of about 600+ industry executives .... funny... I mean ... not funny.

Speaking of drag, I have an excellent drag story coming up, but first a bit about the Kiwis.

• NZ contact centre industry seat size is about 29,000 seats
• Growth rate in seat size from 2008-2009 was 6% (kicked Aussie butt at 1% growth)
• Predicted growth 2009-2010 is 1% (Aussies reckon they will kick Kiwi butt at 7% growth)
• 7% decrease in operating budget 2008-2009
• Agent base salary NZ$39,253 (decrease of 1% from 2008)
• Agent attrition reduced from 35% in 2008 to 31% in 2009

And congratulations to CCiNZ for a great event. We are so happy to be supporting your work.

Ok, so more about drag....

In the half hour we had before flying out from NZ, Jules and I headed to cool spot High Street in Auckland. Into a shoe shop we went and started trying on bright coloured heels. And then it happened. Across the room I spotted a pair of shoes with 5 inch heels, two diamante encrusted ankle straps, and metal studded leather straps across the toes. Amazing, like Princess meets Bondage Girl. I raced across the room, grabbed the shoes and put them on. Hot. I then looked at Jules who looked horrified and here is how the conversation went:

Jules: "Get those things off your feet, they are dreadful"

Me: "Jules, what are you saying, they are amazing. Not for every day wear I admit but ...."

Jules: "Get them off. HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?"

Me: "Ok, so they are like shoes a Tranny would wear. Remember Jules, I am a gay man, in this case Transvestite, trapped in a woman's body, so they are perfect. Any Tranny would kill to have these shoes."

Jules rolls her eyes and I sit stroking my new shoes. Within 30 seconds of my Transvestite Validation statement, we hear the door of the shop open and in walks .... a six foot tall, short dressed, big boobed, well heeled Transvestite. "Brilliant!" I yell at the top of my voice.

Me: "Excuse me lovely lady, could I just ask you what you think of my fabulous new shoes?" [I stare at Jules with the look of total victory]

Tranny: "OMG, girlfriend, put those things down they are awful"

And in that moment Jules leapt up hands in the air, giving the salute of vindication and then collapsed on the floor in hysterics. Damn it when your fashion sense doesn't even make it into the approval process of a Kiwi Tranny.

Bought them. On Facebook now http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5836626767. Make your own mind up.... [no Tranny's allowed to comment]

Liberace would have loved them.... I think.....

I would like to start with a little known fact. Wearing skin coloured tiny-weave fishnet stockings all day may look sweet but really compares to exchanging your shoes for cheese graters. Whoever thought that fishnets should come off the street corner and into the corporate wardrobe? Not right.

Now onto other lesser known but perhaps more relevant facts....

This morning I presented callcentres.net's 2009 Australian Government Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking results to an audience of about 100 key government attendees at the IQPC Government Contact Centre Industry conference.

Celebrity attendees included Jane from ATO (govt contact centre industry superstar) Ian, Justin and Peter from Service SA, Damien from Centrelink, Mark from Engergex, Rhod from Child Support Agency, Julie from Attorney General's, Michael from Fair Work, Sharon from Dept of Health, Penny from Dept of Aging and Disability, Carlene from Fair Trading, David from Procurement, Shane from Vic DSE and Leanne from Veteran's affairs. Telstra's Timmy, Michael and crew were in attendance as was Fausto from Premier talking passionately about hosted contact centres and solutions.

Some of the key findings from our 2009 report (sponsored by RightNow and Salmat) related to government included:

• We estimate there are about 34,000 government contact centre seats in Australia (about 20% of the total market).
• 6.0% growth in number of contact centre seats (stunning growth rate due to govt continuing to fund contact centres during GFC).
• Full-time agent turnover (centre level) reduced from 19% in 2008 to 15% in 2009.
• Compared to 2008, a lower proportion of govt agents who left their contact centre in 2009 resigned (36% in 2009 vs. 46% in 2008).
• In 2009, a larger proportion of govt contact centres currently have an environmental impact policy (37% up from 17%) and a further 14% of contact centres plan to implement one within the next 2 years.
• Govt contact centre operating budgets increased by 17% (marvelous.... not the same in the private sector let me tell you....down by 5%)
• Projections for 2010... growth will slow to about 3% growth in number of govt contact centre seats.

A nice event with a good senior audience.

Tomorrow will be the launch of the full 2009 Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report results to a Melbourne audience. Mostly I am hoping I brought other non-fishnet apparel.

I wonder what Liberace used to wear on his legs when it was cold?