In January, I had the pleasure of chairing the International Quality and Productivity Council (IQPC)’s Call Center Summit in Orlando, Florida.  The Summit was attended by 300 individuals involved in the business of assisting, directing, or managing call centers.   The ratio of attendees was roughly 2 to 1 (practitioners to vendors).

The overall buzz at the sessions was that organizations are spending too much time considering technology and not enough time considering objectives.  An example supporting this opinion comes from Stuart Beame, the Director of Student Information Services at Central Piedmont Community College.  “Even with the talk around social media, 28% of customers studied note they would prefer to speak with someone on the phone vs. the 36% that prefer self-reliance for service.  To place all of our eggs in the self-service basket 1) without considering our callers’ objectives and 2) by not focusing on improving (based on those expectations) by improving the performance of our customer service representatives, would be inappropriate.”

There was a lot of talk about offshore solutions.  Studies conducted by Forester Research reveals the following:

• Going offshore extends talk time 39% – 105% on 18% of calls
• Average handle time on offshore calls is 40% greater than onshore calls
• Thirty percent (30%) of customers who have contacted customer support and been connected to an offshore provider say they won’t do business with that organization again.

We continue to look hard at using pre-employment testing to identify CSR candidates more capable of meeting the expectations of the calling customer.  We expect to roll out the results of our beta test in early spring.

Barry Maners

Managing Director, The Fraser Group