By Jo Best, 7 November 2003 13:00
NEWS A new benchmarking report looking into the state of call centres worldwide has turned up some findings that will come as a blow to the industry and confirm what some have suspected - call centres are worse now than ever.
The Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report was based on interviews with 200 contact centres worldwide and discovered that when it comes to answering consumers' queries, call centres are taking longer to answer their phones and respond to emails than four years ago.
The average wait for someone to pick up is now around half a minute, while the response time for emails is a staggering 22.2 hours not a good result for an industry that's prioritising using email as a way to cut costs.
And it's the cost-cutting that's the problem, according to the report's managing editor, Cara Diemont from Dimension Data. She told silicon.com that economic pressures are driving managers to make do with what they've got, rather than invest.
And both blessed and cursed by budgetary constraints is the ICT that make call centres possible - it is one of the areas that's first against the wall when cuts are being made. Diemont said: "Call centres had a 'me too' technology culture but the current economic climate doesn't allow for it any more."
One technology that is picking up plaudits is speech recognition, with 54 per cent of contact centres saying they're looking at upgrading in the next two years. But will the rise of the machines mean more call centre job losses? It's unlikely, according to Diemont, who said that while the industry may see recruitment slowing down, the growth in call centres as a whole should keep employment levels healthy.
While the threat posed by technology might not be keeping workers awake at night, the general mood of gloom that's prevailing over the industry is having a knock-on effect on staff. With outsourcing casting a shadow over job security, it's no wonder call centre agents are less than chirpy plus the report has discovered wages in the industry haven't increased in real terms since 1999. That leaves a European agent with around £15,000 on average but that's against the average African agent's pay packet, which comes in at around just £6,000.
Churn rate, on the other hand, is high 19 per cent of all agents globally leave before a year and the figure rises to 25 per cent in the UK.
Nevertheless, call centre staff have their own way of getting a few extra perks not turning up. Absenteeism in the call centre industry equates to 10 million working days lost a year, a fact that Diemont puts down to bosses not doing their jobs. "There are management issues", she said. "Instead of saying 'let's fix the problem', they say, 'let's move it to India', which doesn't solve anything. It just lowers costs."
Next week silicon.com will be looking at some call centre success stories and asking what others can learn.
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Paul Wingfield
Indian call centres are to banking what road humps are to traffic flow. They both seemed like great ideas for others but the drawbacks mean they simply do not work effectively. Don't take my word for it, try it! Give HSBC a call - it's a hoot if you can afford the time.
2. anonymous
From my own personal experience nine years ago I observed the explosion in the call centre business. At the time my employers rather than feed and grow the business in a structured orderely way decided that numbers were the only factor of the day. A philosophy of "Just answer the phone" overwhelmed everything. Nothing else mattered. Collegues won bottles of wine for answering the most calls in a shift, the fact they were cutting the caller dead half way through each call was irrelevant. Customer needs, employee training, working conditions all become non existant considerations. These were replaced with management bullying, vast staff turnover and sick days were treated as secondary holiday. It was the only place I worked were I encountered not one but two suicides. What a shocking indictment on the industry that after nine years it would appear that nothing has changed with poor management and blinkered short term greed being the order of the day. Shame on you.
P.s. This call centre was for a major high street name.
3. John Beardon
Companies such as BT have obviously forgotten that they make their massive profits by providing a service. We were recently contacted by a business directory representative, obviously from a distant call centre to confirm our business details in the telephone directory. The call took over half an hour (as opposed to a couple of minutes) purely because the young lady on the end of the phone only had the most rudimentary grasp of English. This is utterly pathetic and a waste of not only our time but the call centre operatives as well.
To be able to provide a service, you must at least employ staff with the skills required to fulfill their roles. I would suggest that speaking English is a fundamental skill to work in a call centre serving our country!!
4. anonymous
I used to work for a major IT Technical CallCentre (until recently)
for a large highstreet chain of stores.
It was hell. All the managers concerned themselves with was the stats stats stats.
We were allowed 7mins per day to go to the toilet. We were being timed from every time you put in the "Toilet" Code on the phone.
If we overstepped the 7 mins we were in big trouble. Disciplinarys here and there left right and centre.
We were even given disciplinaries for being genuinely ill.
When in the disciplinaries you were questioned, as if you were a suspect in a high profile murder case. You were made to feel small.
We were told as soon as we started (by the training department) that promotion was easy - within 3 months we would have a pay rise and become fully fledged Technical Advisors's.
I worked there a year and we were told lies to hide the fact that we would not get promoted at all.
I had worked there a year and still was not promoted.
Our morale and motivation was low, many people left since i was there and many people have left since i have left.
The management weren't concerned with why people were leaving, as long as we were answering the calls and hitting the targets all was hunky dory!
It was disgusting to see how people can treat each other.
We were seen by management to be just a statistic in itself.
Even the chairman, when he came for his yearly meeting with then operations managers didn't shake hands with his staff and introduce himself (like any normal staff orientated manager with any people management skills about them would), just walked straight passed and went to the annual board meeting!
5. Diane Wicks
It took me two days to reach Vodafone and then I did it by being sneaky and ringing their free sales line!
6. Jeff Doran
I agree with many of the observations made in the article. What seems to drive most of the decisions made in a contact center these days is cost reduction. This is a management approach that runs contrary to providing great customer service. There must be a cost balance between employee satisfaction and customer expectation for companies to be truly competitive. My organization helps contact centers become Employers of Choice and our research tells us that the 2 lowest scoring categories from our CCEOC Employee Survey are Leadership and Compensation. You may not always be able to do much with compensation, but leadership is an area that if improved, can have a dramatic affect on the overall morale and service level performance in the center. Contact centers must also be recognized as great places to work so they can attract the right fit employees and develop pride and ownership amongst the employees. They need to start investing in their people (management & staff) if they are serious about improving morale and creating a sustained and measurable increase in performance and customer satisfaction.
7. Jayesh. T. Nadkarni
Hi there;
As far as it goes; What I see is: Right now; the word being that MOVE IT TO INDIA; This willl not help without diversifying and revamping the culture and there is a long way to go. Just looking at Quick fixes will not help; He who takes a longer route and work hard with patience will survive. We need to get it very clear that it is not about doing different things; but doing things in a different manner.
So lets not get down to results so soon; But we need to mark something:
We can do it and India is the polace to do it !!
8. MICHAEL ALLEN
YOUNG GUNS AND OLD GUARD
A Mitial Research Perspective
People love to find overall trends, its human nature. The reality is that some Indian contact centres outperform UK ones on a daily basis. The best Indian ones actually deal with the most complex technical material.
Benchmarking across the world is like comparing adults, teenagers and children and expecting them to look and behave the same.
The offshore markets are here to stay, the cost reduction and the new location phase is over. We are now focussed on quality to customer and profitability.
Emerging markets "Young Guns"are a mixed bag of course, but I have visited contact centres in South Africa, India and the Philippines and there are several such as ABSA, PLDT and Xansa that could compete anywhere in the world.
Having said that the "Old Guard" locations such as the UK & Ireland have upped their game in the last year and benchmarking them with developing businesses offshore dilutes their performance. This is why we at Mitial Research seperate UK & Ireland from offshore markets in outsourcing.