By Jo Best, 17 February 2005 08:00
NEWS People are becoming less and less of a feature of call centres - despite the fact more and more people are using them.
According to Dimension Data's Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, call centres are increasingly turning to automated means to answer customer queries as technology gets better and better at recognising just what customers are talking about.
The report found that contact centres' biggest cost remains staffing and also revealed that the cost of contact per channel means that self-service interactive voice response (IVR) is five times as cost-effective as having the same customer query routed through an agent.
The average cost of a query with an agent is $10.72, while an IVR system only costs around $2.10.
The static nature of call centre budgets, coupled with the relative inexpensiveness of IVR, means contact centres are increasingly losing the human touch in favour of 'press one for...' type solutions for the more basic of customer queries.
Currently, 20 per cent of queries that are received are dealt with via IVR and an equal number of callers opt for IVR rather than speaking to a call centre worker.
Cara Diemont, Dimension Data's marketing director of customer interactive solutions, said: "Companies are now realising it's a good way to deal with some of the more mundane and simple queries." Seventeen per cent of contact centres are now planning to install the equipment within the next 12 months, according to Diemont.
Paul Scott, director of business development for customer interactive solutions at Dimension Data, added: "From a commercial point of view, speech recognition makes sense... It also means [call centres] can divert agents' attention into queries that require a bit more intelligence."
With news that machines are taking over from humans in answering customers' questions, call centre agents might be feeling a little superfluous.
No need to worry about job security just yet, according to Diemont, thanks to more people than ever before calling contact centres. Call volumes are up 20 per cent, according to the report.
And, the report found, call centre agents will see the scope of their job expanding and simple queries being left to automatons.
Diemont said: "We are seeing call volumes grow at such a rate... we're expecting to see call centres dealing with more and more complex things that used to be done by the back office."
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Nick Cole
Calling volumes are going up because more and more companies are taking the dismissive approach to customers!
These are coupled with the revenue generating 'national' numbers meaning we pay for listening to the menu structure every time we call.
The menus are appallingly designed with no catch all for the query that is not answerable directly except at the very end.
When organisations realise that it it is more expensive gaining new customers than retaining old ones and factor that into the customer service cost plan then I am sure they will take the more humanist approach.
Problems that a customer has already generate anger, distress and concern. The failure to recognise this and actually increase the scope of dissatisfaction and caller militancy by the use of inappropriate call routing systems is what generates all the perception problems. Call centres are necessary but it is the way they are structured and empowered to deal with the problems that hasn't changed so annoying further an already annoyed customer is not going to help.
Why do call centre organisations never publicise separately a different number or routing table to allow callers to go directly to the most appropriate point? They fail to realise that trying to listen to the menu options and interpret on the hoof whether or not the option is the most appropriate is the recipe for failure. Often human interaction is needed to decide the correct option. The success of IVR is solely dependant on the caller being able to interpret their problem in relation to manner in which the limited options have been designed by the organisation. Why not make use of the inate ability of humans to be infinitely adaptable unlike a machine?
2. Graham Wharton
I think that there is a place for interactive voice response within call centres but it depends on what you want to achieve. If agents are just transfering callers to other departments then this could be better done by IVR but if you are trying to give callers good quality information you can't really beat a well trained individual.
Personally I believe that some companies either cant afford the human
interaction or just don't want to pay for it.
While working for BT in one of its call centres I remember that the toilets were always broken, the carpets dirty and threadbare, the whole place was a mess. At the same time BT was in the process of losing billions of pounds in other countries on ill concieved business ventures.
The moral this story is that all companies should focus on their core businesses much more then some of them seem to. A couple of years ago, BT call centre staff went on strike for the first time in about 15 years, now you know why.
3. anonymous
At least the IVR voices are intelligible. Anyone tried getting pre-sales support from Dell recently ? - I can hardly understand a word, the accent is so thick !
4. David Ciccarelli
There are voice-over professionals that specialize in recording telephone applications for voice mail broadcasts and greetings, auto attendants, interactive voice response, on-hold messaging, and on-going telephony work to assist companies with their demanding and evolving telephony needs.
The next step is voice-activated interactive appliances, bank machines and the like...
5. anonymous
call queues are geting larger because.1 call centre's are becoming to target orientated.
2. advisors are not trained to a proper standard to deal with the queries.
VIR leaves people espically the older generation confused and angry, thus having to call back to speak to an advisor.
At the start of calls with VIR the option should be made available in the beginning of the call.
6. Charles Smith
Call Centres are there to answer calls quickly. The metrics of call centre performance and subsequent reward are based on how quickly calls receive an answer. It is rare that any measure of customer satisfaction is measured. If the call centre person can pass the call on to some one else she/he will have deemed to have dealt with the call.
They are a method of shifting the cost of problem resolution from the supplier to the client. It is the client who has to chase around to track down a solution,
Call centres are not there to actually solve problems. Hence any proposal to introduce robotic voices comes as no surprise.