Customer Consulting welcomes contact centre report

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} The customer and change managementcompany Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) has welcomed the findings of the ‘UKContact Centre Decision-Makers’ Guide 2009’, a report which examines theperformance, operations, technology and human resources aspects of UK contactcentre operations.   Commenting on this recentlypublished seventh annual report into the UK ’s contact centre sector, CCL’smanaging director, Simon Rustom ,said: “The good news from this report is that successful contact centremanagement seems now to be about providing a high quality customer experience,rather than hitting operational metrics to the exclusion of everything else.   “This puts the emphasis on theagent, rather than merely systems and processes, to provide customersatisfaction and overcome ‘failure demand’,” Rustom added. “It’s encouraging tosee from the report that 54% of respondents state that empathy – the ability tosee another’s point of view – is the most important characteristic in an agent,outweighing other characteristics such as sales ability, multi-tasking,reliability and teamworking.”   The report portrayed the successfulcontact centre agent as versatile, reliable, a good listener and, of course,empathetic. Rustom commented: “Callers must feel that that the person they aretalking to is both listening and understands their point of view.   “Moreover, callers must believe thatthe agent is trying to resolve the issue. As such, empathy is vital forimproving customer satisfaction and loyalty – as well as the increasingly keytasks of cross-selling and up-selling.”   The report states that UK contact centres handled 700m complaints in2009 – some 5.4% of all calls made to contact centres in the UK - with theretail and distribution sector receiving the greatest proportion of complaints(some 10.5% of all calls). The report revealed that 87% of all complaintsreceived by contact centres related to ‘failure demand’ caused by a breakdownof processes somewhere in the organisation, with only 13% of complaintsrelating to the contact centre itself and its staff.   Rustom said: “Failure demand resultsin more costs for the business because of the time and resources spent inresponding to additional customer enquiries and complaints as a result ofprocesses that do not work.   “In our experience, organisationsfind it hard getting to grips with this area of wastage.   “In fact, the only way is to carryout a ‘root cause analysis’, which discovers facts about the real causes ofunnecessary contact and the resulting costs of failure demand. This oftenaffects other departments outside the contact centre and so requires astrategic approach – enlisting Board level backing – to achieve success.”   Combating failure demand is justpart of CCL’s customer management strategy. This strategy enables CCL to workwith its clients to deliver against their core shareholder value objectives: tobuild market share; increase profitability; grow revenue and improve operatingcosts.   “In many circumstances the return oninvestment (ROI) can be tens or even hundreds of millions of pounds,” revealedRustom.   “An unprecedented shift of power tothe customer means that, to remain competitive, companies need to optimisevalue from a range of interrelated ‘customer management’ disciplines: customerinsight, value propositions, customer service, customer experience,relationship management, channel integration and so on,” Rustom explained.   “There is now evidence that neitherpiecemeal nor technology-led approaches to this issue have delivered value,” hecontinued. “To be successful requires strategic, organisational and operationalelements to be aligned within a long term plan - and those operational elementscomprise people and process as well as technology.   “It is all about improving thecustomer interfaces and internal processes that lead to increased performance.It paves the way for cross-functional and cross-business cooperation andintegration.   “It provides a powerful context tocarry out development from the customer’s point of view and it articulates therequired infrastructure, capabilities and culture needed to deliver all ofthese things.”   CCL advocates a three step approachto effective customer management: ‘fixing the basics’ and defining strategy;embedding best practice, and then growing customers’ lifetime value to theorganisation, enhancing brand value, matching investment with potential inmarketing, sales and customer service while also reducing marketing, sales andoperational costs.   CCL is currently implementing this threestep approach to customer management in a number of organisations – withexcellent and encouraging results so far.   For further details of thisapproach, contact Kathy Duxbury atCCL on +44 (0) 1908 441012 or email kathy.duxbury@customerconsulting.com   End     About Customer Consulting Limited   Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) is a specialist customer and changemanagement company. It helps organisations to optimise their return oninvestment in customer management - especially contact centres andcustomer-orientated information and technology.   Its vision is to demonstrate that abest practice approach to customer management delivers sustainable businessgrowth. CCL aims to deliver acombination of insight, intellect, wisdom and pragmatism - combined with a realunderstanding of people - to achieve commercial results that are beyond thenorm. Using a joint project teamapproach, CCL offers advice and support to help companies develop and implementcustomer strategies that produce results.   With its 100 consultants averaging 20 years experience, CCL helpsbusiness leaders and their teams – including those at Aviva, BUPA, South WestTrains and Orange – to activate their internal resources and ensure measurable success.   Further information from:   KathyDuxbury, Customer Consulting, 00 44 (0) 1908 441012/ 00 44 (0) 7976 405779; kathy.duxbury@customerconsulting.com   BobLittle, Bob Little Press & PR, 00 44 (0)1727 860405; bob.little@boblittlepr.com

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