Somewhere around the year 2000, we started
noting that some call centers were experiencing dysfunctions caused by growth.
Centers in certain metropolitan areas showed higher turnover rates and wage
pressures that were not shared by all geographies.
A few years later, we
did a landmark study with CB Richard Ellis, in which we overlaid our
performance metrics database with the CBRE geographic/demographic database and
discovered some very interesting things.
In effect, we noted
that North Americans love to communicate with companies, and the desire to do
so was only increasing over time. Even at that time, this growth was straining
the ability of America to come up with enough call center agents to satisfy the
voracious demand for information from consumers. Already somewhere between 3
and 4% of the working population in the U.S. and Canada was employed in contact
centers, up from a fraction of that twenty years before. Our study showed that
in certain employment regions (e.g., Phoenix, Tampa, Charlotte), the high
demand for call center agents was causing dysfunctions such as high turnover
and wage pressures.
With no weakening of
growth in demand for access and information in sight, we saw that there would
not be enough American workers to meet the demand. Instead, three "safety
valves" have served to relieve the pressure on brick-and-mortar centers
tied to specific employment "basins":
- Outsourcing. Both
onshore and off-shore outsourcing have helped to spread out the geography over
which brick-and-mortar agents can be found to answer calls. In many cases
companies outsourced a portion of their calls while maintaining a sustainable
workforce in-house. In other cases they have moved their entire operation to
outsourcers, causing considerable pain to those affected.
- At-home Agents.
Technology introduced over the past decade has rendered at-home agents a
reality. Here, as well, the operation is freed from a specific geographic
locale, and a greater element of flexibility is introduced. Paying on-shore
at-home agents on a per minute basis can be financially competitive with
offshore outsourcing. Apple and others have been very successful with the
at-home model, which has also been a blessing for people trying to piece family
life together with work life, or people trying to reconcile physical
limitations with career desires.
- Self-Service (voice,
Web, social media). Making it easy for customers to find the answers they need
by interacting with technology is the key to self-service - and self-service
has increased customer contact capacity hugely over the past ten years.
Self-service through the IVR and through the Internet has made a major dent in
agent-assisted calls, especially in certain vertical markets such as financial
institutions. Most customer contact functions are still trying to understand
how to harness social media
- and we see exciting
things happening.
The key is to anticipate
demand for information and to provide seamless quality of service that makes it
a pleasure to deal with your customer contact function, whether that be through
IVR self-service, chat, telephone agent or other. Remember, there are not
enough workers in North America to handle every inquiry by phone the way it was
done at the turn of the millennium. If everyone were to talk to a living North
American every time they had a question, the volume and cost would simply be
unsustainable. You need to determine how to optimize your operations by using
all of the technology and personnel options available to you.
If you would like to
talk about ways to optimize your contact center operations or discuss how
social media can be your friend, please contact us at Info@BenchmarkPortal.com
or at http://www.BenchmarkPortal.com
Bruce Belfiore
CEO & Senior
Research Executive
BruceBelfiore@BenchmarkPortal.com
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