Consolidation has long been a strategy in the private sector to achieve economies of scale. The key benefits are that organisations will have access to a larger pool of resources, which allows for more flexibility in the workforce in order to handle varying levels of contact volumes across different parts of the organisation. Ultimately, consolidation results in streamlining of ongoing operating costs and processes, and allows for the consistent delivery of service to customers.

Nowadays, we are seeing the government sector showing increasing interest in consolidated and shared service models. One of the primary drivers for this is that consumers now have higher expectations of service and no longer differentiate their public sector service experience from their private sector service experience. The level of service consumers expect from anyone is the same regardless of what type of organisation it is! Ofcourse there are other factors that drive consolidated and shared service models, these include the need to operate more effectively and efficiently and for other political related reasons...

There are many successful examples of Whole of Government Contact Centres and Shared Service Models in the public sector. These include Singapore’s “Vital” shared services department, the UK’s Single Non Emergency Number, France’s “Allo 3939”, Spain’s single number for ‘administration’ services, the US 311 non emergency number for calls to government, along with various State government initiatives in Australia (Smart Service Queensland, Service SA, Service Tasmania), and many more.

And, just on Singapore’s “Vital”, it has recently been recognised for its customer service at the annual Asia Pacific Shared Services Excellence Awards. Well done!

So there you go, consolidation and shared service is not all about cutting costs, it is also about improving the customer experience.

Last week some of my colleagues attended an event in Sydney held by a Philippine outsourcer SPi Global where the purpose was to educate Australian businesses about the benefits of outsourcing to the Philippines, namely the westernised culture, English language skills, high level of university education, customer service culture, lower wages and lower attrition to name a few...

But what was more impressive was the fact that SPi Global had set up presence in Australia to form partnerships with local companies for their contact centre and other outsourcing needs. Now this is what I call proactive!

Local presence is a classic International Business market entry strategy, where an overseas company sets up presence in the target country – this is a significant investment but brings about benefits such as having the advantage of being treated as a local company and a shorter learning curve about the local market. This is particularly useful in a country like Australia, where mate-ship and support for local businesses is strong – thus having a local presence can only do your international business good and will help differentiate you from the competition by showing you have a genuine interest in the Australian market as seen through your investment into Australia.

Whilst you may have set up local presence in Australia, it is also important to understand the market’s attitudes towards outsourcing… based on the most recent Fifth Quadrant Australian Contact Centre Outsourcing Market Report 2011, we know that 24% of organisations consider outsourcing as one of their top 10 initiatives. Organisations in Australia believe outsourcing will help them overcome challenges related to maintaining operational costs, upgrading or implementing new technology and increasing productivity … to learn more about the attitudes and perceptions of Outsourcing contact us here to order a copy of the Fifth Quadrant Australian Contact Centre Outsourcing Market Report 2011.