Welcome to Fifth Quadrant and callcentres.net's first news issue for 2012. We are pleased to be back and be bringing you our regular contact centre and service sector news reports, Analyst updates and blogs.

I will start the year by sharing new insights from our Australian and New Zealand contact centre industry market reports.

For Australia…

The Australian contact centre industry has grown 7.6% since late 2010 to be about 214,300 seats. The industry is expected to continue growing at 4.1% (predicted 223,100 seats by end 2012).

48% of contact centres are using hosted solutions and there is an increase from 7 to 13% of centres using cloud based technology.

The top challenges facing the contact centre industry in Australia over the next 12 months include:

1. Inadequate headcount to effectively meet business requirements
2. Need to upgrade existing technology
3. Change management
4. Training/ Agent development
5. Budgetary constraints/ Expectation to do more with less

Now to NZ…

The contact centre industry in New Zealand is about 29,610 seats which is a 1% decline from 2010. This is exactly the growth rate (albeit negative) that the industry predicted it would achieve when researched in 2010. The industry predicts stronger growth over the next 12 months with a projected seat size of 31,500 by end of 2012.

The agent turnover rate is 24% p.a. down from 27% in 2010.

About 4 in 10 centres currently use hosted solutions and about 1 in 3 are using or about to use some type of cloud based application in their centre.

The top challenges facing the contact centre industry in NZ over the next 12 months include:

1. Inadequate headcount to effectively meet business requirements
2. Change management
3. Improving productivity/efficiency
4. Training/ Agent development
5. Better utilisation of current technology

Wishing you a prosperous Water Dragon inspired 2012.

Here is a question for you.. On average, across Australia, are contact centres hours extending in length to meet customer requirements? I reckon so. Please see the tables below that set out the average opening hours per business day, Saturday and Sunday. Since 2006 opening hours have extended by about two hours on a business day, and three hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

Also 16% of all contact centres are open 7 days per week, 19% are open days per week and 43% are open 5 days or less. 24% of contact centres in Australia service more than one country. Fascinating.

Why I wanted to note these stats is to point out that with the emergence of new channels, such as online and social media, we will continue to see other business units, such as Marketing and IT, who have launched social or online channels, soon become challenged in being able to resource and respond effectively to customer enquiries when their hours are Monday to Friday 9 to 5.

Speaking of social media… on November 3rd, we are hosting a webinar with world renowned social media celebrity, Dave Carroll, Canadian and writer of the You Tube sensation ‘United breaks guitars’ song. Dave’s song in protest to a bad service experience he had with United Airlines went viral. Please make sure you join us on the webinar for this rare treat to talk with a top Canadian bloke. Dave is also quite a funny guy and Jules and I have been mentoring him with regard to the rules of business and how these might be different to the rules of the music world. Here are some of the valuable lessons that Jules and I have shared with Dave...

• No Money No Honey.

• Only drop your daks (pants) on price if you are likely to get a Business Holiday (another term for an overseas Conference where some is paying for your airfare and accommodation).
• People who want contra deals usually have less than you have.

• Money is a direct reflection of your value in a capitalist regime. Go with it.

• Your sense of humour is a direct reflection of your value in real life. Go with it.

• Never do business with people who are not funny.

• Even if things go badly in a business deal but there was something funny about it then it didn't go badly.

• Never wear white joggers with jeans on casual office day.

• Be able to spot a TW within 30 secs of meeting (TW= Time Waster).

• Never wear a pencil skirt on stage when you have to sit down.

• Win over the gay community. They dress better than straighties so will make you seem cooler.

• Never ever do business with people with body odor. Smell is a critical business sense.

• Outside of Nth America try not to wear white tee shirts under other shirts.

• Destroy any cino pants or moccasin shoes you own.

In particular Dave has taken exception to our banning of the white undershirt. He will not budge on this one. So to hear Dave share his story and to support Jules and I lobby against the Nth American undershirt, click her to join us

Last week I shared a beautiful insight into how employee engagement moderated the relationship between customer service experience results and an organisation’s revenue performance. Lovely. So whilst I am in a service industry HR frenzy I wanted to share some more detailed HR stats from the Australian industry from 2010 (2011 study is in field now, click here to participate):

• The majority of agents are employed on a full-time basis (72%) and part-time agents account for 28% of all staff in the contact centre industry.
• On average, full-time agent wages were on average AU$44,967 (base wage).
• The average hourly rate paid to part-time agents was AU$23.32.
• On average, full-time contact centre supervisors were paid an average annual base salary of AU$59,923.
• The average annual salary for contact centre managers was $96,180.
• The average number of sick days taken by agents was 10 days per annum. In contact centres with 100+ seats, the average number of sick days taken by staff in 2010 was 13 days per annum.
• 37% of agents in Australia regard their contact centre job as a career
• 22% of agents in Australia regard their contact centre job as a part time job only
• 23% of agents in Australia regard their contact centre job as a gateway to other jobs in the organisation
• 15% of agents in Australia regard their contact centre job as a transitional job whilst they wait for a different job

All so fascinating.

Almost as fascinating as the webinar we are hosting next week, where I will be talking with Chris Borg, from Club Houze as he shares his story of how he needed to rapidly ramp up a contact centre (with integrated CRM ) in order to meet a seven-fold increase in agents and a ten-fold increase in revenue within a 3 month period. Join us to hear how Chris did this and what he learned. It will be cool. Click here to register.

Earlier this year Fifth Quadrant in company with IBM researched and produced a cracker of a Whitepaper, titled Service Strategy Maturity: A Model for Business Performance. This was a study of over 100 Australian based organisations, the maturity of their service strategy and their business performance (efficiency, customer experience, employee engagement and revenue performance).

One of the key findings is noted below:

Employee Engagement and Operational Efficiency performance moderate the relationship between Customer Experience / Satisfaction performance and overall business performance.

Organisations that rate above average in terms of Customer Experience / Satisfaction performance are statistically significantly more likely to have above average Employee Engagement and Operational Efficiency performance. These two variables have a positive and significant relationship with Revenue Generation performance ratings.

This means that the study did not find a direct relationship between customer service and revenue rather an indirect relationship that was affected by employee engagement levels and efficiency and productivity levels.

This, ladies and gentlemen, straight and gay people, is very interesting.

We have long talked about happy employees meaning happy customers, a slogan which makes me want to vomit a little, but in fact now we have empirical evidence to prove that these two variables, employees and customers are intrinsically linked, cannot nor should not be untwined, and are highly dependent on each other. Only when this relationship is understood will organisations be able to optimise revenue performance.

This is so deep that I cannot write any more.

I am in a Zen state of reflection and wonder.

If you would like any more info on this please contact Chris at ckirby@fifthquadrant.com.au

He is not in a Zen state. He is in a Researcher state. Different.

He does not hear the sound of one headphone screeching in the forest as I do.

I will stop now.

Also please be sure to register for our upcoming webinar…