Call Abandons Rising
Posted August 11, 2005

Dimension Data reports that the number of abandoned calls has risen for the third year in a row in 2005. A record 13.3% of calls are being abandoned before being answered. The situation is worst in the telecom industry, where as many as one in five calls are abandoned.

Abandons are rising, they argue, because nearly half of call centers surveyed (48%) cite cost reduction and increased efficiency as their main commercial driver. Six of ten centers have cost reduction targets built into their business strategies. And metrics that measure performance are based on call handling and throughput, rather than on outcome or first-call resolution rates (FCR). FCR is used by only 17% of organizations surveyed.

Callers are willing to wait just 65 seconds on average today, compared with 71 seconds in 2003. And more than half of centers (58%) are seeing call volume growth of 20% or more per year.

(For more information, see the Call Center Magazine article on this research.)

Modest Comm Spending Expected
Posted August 5, 2005

Forrester surveyed more than 1,000 network and telecom decision-makers at North American and European enterprises regarding communications adoption and spending plans. They found that communications spending will increase modestly -- 3.3% -- slightly slower than the rate of overall IT spending.

Security technologies will benefit the most -- 67% of respondents plan to increase spending on security.

Nearly half of the respondents have deployed mobile applications like email, calendaring and employee content -- 18% faster than originally planned for 2005. 36% are considering or piloting IP telephony, and 33% say the same for site-to-site VoIP.

Forrester found that both remote access and site-to-site IPsec VPNs are reaching maturation, with approximately 80% of enterprises indicating interest. These findings are gleaned from a new report: The State Of Network And Telecom Adoption.

Email Response Rates In Service Situations
Posted August 5, 2005

From a BenchmarkPortal study: many North American businesses are missing out on revenue opportunities due to poor or non-existent email customer service. Among key cross-industry findings are:

51% of the companies did not respond at all, versus 41% for enterprises.
69% of the companies failed to respond within 24 hours, versus 61% for enterprises.
79% of the companies responded with an inaccurate and/or incomplete answer. Here, SMBs performed better than enterprises, where 83% of the companies responded with an inaccurate and/or incomplete answer.
The ebusiness sector performed the best in responsiveness, with 52% responding within 24 hours.
The financial services and retail companies were the least responsive, with 72% and 60% respectively not sending any response at all.
90% of the financial services companies provided inaccurate and/or incomplete answers.
High-tech was the second worst sector with 86% of the companies providing an inaccurate and/or incomplete answer.

Executive Awareness of Customer Satisfaction
Posted July 21, 2005

The overall relationship between company and customer is getting worse, according to the 2004 annual survey and Customer Experience Management (CEM) report from Strativity Group, in cooperation with CustomerSat, Inc.

According to the survey conducted with 212 senior executives worldwide, 76% of the participants responded that companies have put customer strategies higher on their agenda then they did three years ago. But highlighting the disconnect between high-level executive strategies and employees actual ability to execute, only 31% of respondents affirmed that they have the tools and authority to actually serve their customers, down from 37% the year before. Amazingly, 59% of the executives claimed they do not deserve customer loyalty.

Other things the execs said:

59% of senior executives claim they do not deserve customer loyalty ¨C up from 45% in 2003
83% do not know the average annual customer value
65% agree that their executives do not meet frequently with customers - up from 54% in 2003
31% affirm that they have the tools and authority to serve their customers - down from 37% in 2003
57% agree that their company does not conduct a true dialogue with its customers (up from 55% in 2003)
65% agree that their executives do not meet frequently with customers (up from 54% in 2003)
54% agree that the role of the customer is not well defined (down from 60% in 2003)

Worldwide Outsourcing Market Projections
Posted July 21, 2005

Key findings of a report from on outsourcing:

The worldwide market for customer service outsourcing is set to grow from $8.4 billion in 2004 to $12.2 billion in 2007.
Through 2007, 80% of organizations that outsource customer service and support contact centers with the primary goal of reducing cost will fail.
Up to 2008, 60% of organizations that outsource parts of the customer-facing process will encounter customer defections and hidden costs that outweigh any potential savings they derive from outsourcing.
Despite the hype surrounding offshore call centers, offshore customer service outsourcing only represents a tiny fraction of the market - less than 2% in 2005, increasing to less than 5% in 2007.
By year-end 2005, 70% of the top 15 Indian owned BPO startups that offer customer call centre services will be acquired merged or be marginalized.
Outsourced contact centers have higher staff turnover than in-house contact centers.

IVR Spending Projections
Posted July 7, 2005

In a report titled The Definitive Guide to the IVR Marketplace: North America and EMEA, market analyst says it expects revenues from proprietary touchtone IVR in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa to decrease by more than 35% through 2009 as a growing number of businesses are opting to invest in emerging open-standard IVR platforms such as Voice-XML and SALT, to better leverage web infrastructure, improve functionality and potentially graduate to speech technology to further improve routing, transactions and self-service capabilities.

According to Datamonitor, spending on traditional IVR licenses will dip from $277 million to $179 million in North America and EMEA by 2009.

Spending on open-standards IVR licenses will grow from $166 million to $332 million in North America and EMEA by 2009

Datamonitor expects North American and EMEA businesses spending in open-standards IVR platforms to double in the next five years to over $330 million.

Between 2005-2009, average annual spend on speech-enabled IVR in the US and EMEA markets will increase by 13.4%.

EMEA ACD Market
Posted July 6, 2005

Frost & Sullivan estimates revenues in the EMEA ACD systems market to increase from $456.1 million in 2004 to $731.7 million in 2010 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2%.

Internet protocol (IP) ACD agents comprise approximately 8-10% of all ACD shipments in EMEA.

IP agent seats are expected to account for approximately 35% of the seats shipped by 2002-2008 and rise to 50% by 2008. IP contact centers are particularly popular in eastern European regions such as Czech Republic, Poland and the Russian Federation where greenfield opportunities abound.

Supervisor Training
Posted June 23, 2005

ICMI's survey found that 30% of contact centers have no supervisory training program in place. Key findings of the survey:

Although 93% of respondents noted that a supervisor's ability to motivate and retain agents is critical, only 62.2% offer training in that area. Similarly, 70% of contact center managers said that recruiting and hiring is a necessary component of the supervisor's job, but only 58.3% offer training on how to find and select high-quality performers.

Only 40% of contact centers that offer supervisor training follow up with coaching to support and reinforce training objectives.

Only 42% of respondents feel that their frontline agent training and development efforts support the preparation and promotion of supervisor candidates.

On the positive side, well over half of respondents (58.8%) expect their supervisory training to increase over the next year. Nearly 90% said they plan to increase their supervisor training in leadership skills, and 87% plan to increase training in coaching and performance management skills.

Projected Growth in Asian Call Center Markets
Posted June 23, 2005

In a report The Future of Contact Center Outsourcing in Indian and the Philippines, Datamonitor expects more than 127,000 new offshore outsourced call center agent positions (APs) to be added in India and the Philippines over the coming five years.

Over a quarter of a million new call center agent positions will be added in India and Philippines through 2009. By 2009, close to 100,000 APs will be serving the Indian domestic market whilst the Philippines will have 21,600 APs.

Just 36% of the APs in India were offshore outsourced at the end of 2004 with the remainder located mainly in offshore in-house (captive) operations of big multinationals (MNCs). However, by 2007, the tables will have turned in the outsourcers' favor. Over the forecast period, new outsourced seats will outnumber captive ones by a factor of 10:1 in India and the outsourcers will continue to hold sway going forward. Just 12,000 net new captive seats will be added between now and 2009.

Call Centers In Africa
Posted June 23, 2005

In a report, Profiting from the North African Option Datamonitor says it expects 2009 outsourced call center agent positions in North Africa to almost quadruple on today's total of 3,500. In terms of location, Datamonitor expects the most prosperous regions to be Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, due to their friendly investment attitudes, and advanced state of technological and commercial development.

Expects 2009 outsourced call center agent positions in North Africa to almost quadruple on today's total of 3,500. In terms of location, Datamonitor expects the most prosperous regions to be Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, due to their friendly investment attitudes, and advanced state of technological and commercial development.

The number of outsourced offshore agent positions in North Africa will rise from 3,500 in 2004 to 12,800 by 2009, an increase of 265% over this period. While the market for these services is more mature in Morocco, Datamonitor expects growth in Egypt and Tunisia, due to their friendly investment attitudes and geographic niche-market advantages.

North America and western Europe's positioning is strong North Africa has generally been the offshore destination of choice for French-language customer care. However, potential also exists for English and Spanish offerings, depending on the particular location. An available workforce that is located relatively close to major EU centers, combined with advancing telephony infrastructures linking the USA and Canada, and cost-effectiveness all work in favour of call center outsourcing to North Africa.

Datamonitor also expects there will be 939 call centers in South Africa by 2008, almost double the current number of 494 - a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14%, over the period. The total number of APs in RSA meanwhile is predicted to rise to 69,600 by 2008. 6,200 will be offshore outsourced APs. 70% of RSA's offshore customer service agents service clients in the UK market today. Most of these APs are located in the Gauteng province - more specifically, in Johannesburg. However Datamonitor expects the balance will shift in favor of Cape Town in the Western Cape Province. The Dutch market is expected to be the biggest non-English language market that is served from South Africa.

Gartner on Worldwide Offshoring
Posted June 23, 2005

The worldwide market for customer service outsourcing is set to grow from $8.4 billion in 2004 to $12.2 billion in 2007. Also:

The worldwide market for customer service outsourcing is set to grow from $8.4 billion in 2004 to $12.2 billion in 2007.
Through 2007, 80% of organizations that outsource customer service and support contact centers with the primary goal of reducing cost will fail.
Despite the hype surrounding offshore call centers, offshore customer service outsourcing only represents a tiny fraction of the market - less than 2% in 2005, increasing to less than 5% in 2007. By year-end 2005, 70% of the top 15 Indian owned BPO startups that offer customer call center services will be acquired merged or be marginalized.

Use of Self-Service
Posted June 20, 2005

The use of IVR is going up because of growing customer dissatisfaction with call center service. 20% of customers are opting for self-service channels over agent-handled calls, according to a report from . The report concluded that customers' calls are more likely to be resolved through self-service channels (76% resolution) than through an agent (50% resolution).

VoIP in the Enterprise
Posted June 20, 2005

A survey conducted for found that:

Amongst the enterprises represented: 52% are already deploying VoIP at some level, 46% have plans for deployment, and only two percent have no plans.
Voice quality and clarity was the number one concern of respondents, at 47%.
32% of respondents who planned to deploy VoIP planned no quality assurance steps in their project; yet only 3% of those who had already deployed VoIP actually took no quality assurance steps - indicating that as pilot rollouts begin, the need for more thorough QA is recognized.
Of those performing pre-deployment quality assurance, the majority reported using only basic network assessments (45%) and/or manual testing (41%). Automated testing was planned by just 31% of respondents.
Most strikingly, when asked, "Are you concerned about putting a VoIP phone on your CEO's desk?" nearly two out of three (63%) answered, "Yes."
VoIP Security was a key concern, with 25% of respondents citing this as their top issue.

Call Abandons
Posted May 16, 2005

The Merchants Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report 2005 found that the number of abandoned calls has risen for the third year in a row. Dimension Data, the consultancy behind the report, says a record 13.3% of calls are being abandoned before being answered. They also note that the situation is worst in the telecom industry, where as many as one in five calls are abandoned.

Abandons are rising, they argue, because nearly half of call centers surveyed (48%) cite cost reduction and increased efficiency as their main commercial driver. Six of ten centers have cost reduction targets built into their business strategies. And metrics that measure performance are based on call handling and throughput, rather than on outcome or first call resolution rates. FCR is used by only 17% of organizations surveyed.

Callers are willing to wait just 65 seconds on average today, compared with 71 seconds in 2003. And more than half of centers (58%) are seeing call volume growth of 20% or more per year. The clash of higher call volume with the drive for cost-reduction and efficiency leads to customer frustration, the report argues.

Customer Loyalty
Posted May 16, 2005

According to the 2004 annual survey and Customer Experience Management (CEM) report from Strativity Group in cooperation with CustomerSat:

59% of senior executives claim they do not deserve customer loyalty ¨C up from 45% in 2003
83% do not know the average annual customer value
65% agree that their executives do not meet frequently with customers - up from 54% in 2003
31% affirm that they have the tools and authority to serve their customers - down from 37% in 2003

When asked about the economics associated with managing customer relationships, a large majority of executives did not have access to basic information: 83% did not know the average annual value of a customer, 89% did not know the cost of a customer complaint, 90% did not know the cost of total resolution while 62% did not know the annual customer retention rate.

Offshore Growth
Posted May 16, 2005

In a report called "The Future of Contact Center Outsourcing in Indian and the Philippines," Datamonitor expects more than 127,000 new offshore outsourced call center agent positions to be added in India and the Philippines over the coming five years. The U.S represents the vast majority of overseas demand, followed by the UK. Whilst India continues to dominate the global offshore call center outsourcing landscape, the Philippines threatens to poach some activity as its own market grows in strength.

Over the forecast period, new outsourced seats will outnumber captive ones by a factor of 10:1 in India and the outsourcers will continue to hold sway going forward. Just 12,000 net new captive seats will be added between now and 2009.

Voice Applications
Posted May 16, 2005

A report from Datamonitor "Emerging voice applications: towards voice transactions," predicts global voice-enabled transactional solutions will earn technology vendors revenues of $377m by year end 2008 compared to $56m today.

According to Datamonitor, in North America and Europe, the Middle-East and Africa (EMEA), uptake in transactional voice solutions will be substantial, accounting for 75% of the global market by 2008. Growth in Asia-Pacific (APAC) will also be strong, due to voice business proliferation in Japan, China and Australia / New Zealand. However, Datamonitor says it is unlikely that transactional technology will be massively adopted in the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA), due to legacy technology and economic limitations.

VoIP Savings
Posted May 16, 2005

Yankee Group says that contact centers have been cautious in their adoption of VoIP technology. In cases where penetration has occurred, the switch has been driven solely by application needs and, in isolated cases, reduced infrastructure costs. These results prove the lower total cost of ownership metric is not driving migration of circuit-switched agent stations to voice over IP (VoIP).

Although the SMB sector is where the significant volume has been through 2004, larger centers are seeing advantages for distributed operations because the technology facilitates increased agent utilization over traditional circuit switching. Contact centers with packet switched technology could generate cost savings of 7% from additional use.