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UK Contact Centre market 2008
25/07/08
Most companies
claim to put a lot of emphasis on quality customer service and
maintaining customer loyalty. Currently, communication and financial
services companies are doing a better job than other industries at
using customer service as a strategic differentiator because they
are most sophisticated and proactive in terms of the type and depth
of contact centre technologies implemented.
A study of US
companies by Genesys Communications Laboratories has shed new light
on which industries are leading the charge in customer service
offerings, and which are lagging behind. The study polled 385
contact centre managers from communication, financial services,
insurance, government, utilities and healthcare organisations to
determine what business practices and technologies were being
deployed or planned for improving the customer experience.
One common
characteristic - a strong likelihood that companies not currently
using an IP-based contact centre will implement one in the next two
to three years. In fact, 66 per cent of financial services
companies, 45 per cent of communications companies, 58 per cent of
utilities and 83 per cent of healthcare companies not using the
technology are moving toward IP installations.
"Consumers
often have intuition about which industries offer the best customer
service experience, and which ones use more dynamic customer service
technologies," said Paul Segre, CEO, Genesys. "This research gives
us insight into where each vertical segment is in the adoption
continuum."
The research
also indicates that government organisations have more clearly
defined measurements for contact centre performance, agreed upon by
both contact centre managers and executive management. However, they
still lag behind other industries, having fewer installations of
dynamic contact centre technologies, such as outbound calling,
customer-to-agent e-mail, instant messaging or Web callback.
Utilities also
fared well for an internal agreement of contact centre measurement,
while the other industries examined showed a significant disconnect
between the goals and objectives of the contact centre manager and
that of senior management.
Additional key industry findings from the research included:
Although
almost two-thirds of the financial services companies are not
currently using an IP-based contact centre, over half of them are
likely to implement one in the next two to three years, enabling
them to integrate multiple channels of customer contact.
Insurance
companies are the highest users of touchtone IVR as 92 per cent of
those surveyed are using the technology.
Communication
companies are leading in use of SMS/text messaging and Web chat,
significantly higher than any other industry.
Only 23 per
cent of healthcare contact centres are likely to attempt up- or
cross selling because they view the practice as "not appropriate" or
because it would involve time-consuming training requirements.
Customer
satisfaction measures are least important to government agencies
when judging the success of the contact centre.
Utilities have
the highest levels of outsourced staff (31 per cent). An additional
30 per cent are considering outsourcing in the future.
Nick Gibson, editor
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