Expanding the Contact Center’s Reach
Customer
Management
ANNO 1 - NUMERO 6
Ottobre 2012
Lavorare nei contact center (5 &86720<6 6859( )5 21 7
67 /,1 $) ) (
06 )258
Salute e benessere dei lavoratori, nuove forme contrattuali e offerte di assunzione, sono i temi in discussione. Letizia Olivari
Il numero di ottobre dedica molto spazio al tema del lavoro nei calla center. Oltre alle due rubriche dedicate una alla selezione del personale e l’altra alla salute e benessere dei lavoratori, pubblichiamo un articolo sul tema del telelavoro che prendendo spunto dall’esperienza Usa si domanda come possa essere possibile allargare all’Italia la diffusione di questa forma di lavoro. Il secondo articolo è un’intervi-
sta a Luca D’Ambrosio, presidente di Assocontact per fare chiarezza sull’occupazione nei call center, tema che è stato al centro dell’attenzione della stampa anche con forti polemiche. Una nuova survey, tradotta in italiano, ci porta nel cuore della tecnologia, come vengono
scelte le applicazioni per i contact center, quali sono i fattori determinanti e cosa si può migliorare. Completano il numero il caso di Camomilla che ha investito in un progetto di Crm relazionale e due articoli dedicati all’uso dei Social Media. Buona lettura!
Acting on Customer Insights Translating data into outcomes. Integrate more actionable customer insights into the mix. By Susan Hash
Organizations are swimming in data. Large volumes of customer information are being collected, stored and sorted to allow companies to better target customers. Marketing groups have embraced customer analytics, and many are using the data to craft highly personalized promotions based on customers’ individual preferences. In the contact center, however, the ability to analyze and act on data to enhance the customer experience
has been progressing at a slower pace. For most centers, separating actionable information from the noise is a challenge, and the technology has developed well ahead of the typical organization’s internal processes and culture. Many are still struggling to overcome internal barriers that block the ability to act on customer insights. The following are some of the most common challenges: • The customer data resides in disparate systems across organizational functions. 29
Enter into a conversation with any enlightened executive about the value of an effective, well-run contact center and you are sure to hear plenty of supportive comments. Great contact centers lead to high customer satisfaction levels, increased revenue per caller, and improved levels of loyalty. Today’s leaders understand this and they appreciate the impact that our operations can have on the bottom line. Admittedly, many of those enlightened executives may not fully recognize the difficulty in developing and maintaining a well-run contact center. The challenge of a live queuing environment, the controls required to consistently service thousands of customers per day, and the management of multiple technology platforms are just a few of the not-soobvious challenges that confront us on a regular basis. And as with all challenges, the better we do it, the easier it seems to be to those who observe from a distance. We are on the front lines, though, so we know differently. Our success has not been achieved by accident. Over the course of many years, we learned from our mistakes, shamelessly copied best practices, and developed creative ways to exceed customer expectations without breaking the bank. Our efforts have paid off handsomely throughout the center. So why limit the success to 31 just our organization?
Optimize the Agent Desktop Desktop complexity is a primary driver of inefficiency in contact centers of all sizes. Product silos with disconnected development and upgrade strategies, disparate applications for different customer segments, multiple enterprise customer information systems, and multiple information sources force agents to use an array of non-integrated applications for contact handling. To top it off, the contact center is often treated as the poor stepchild, getting “hand-me-down” applications that were built or bought for other business areas and got shoehorned into real-time interaction flows. Desktop complexity isn’t merely unsightly or an inconvenience for your agents. It’s a serious impediment to delivering world-class service. Tell-tale signs of trouble include: • Needless workgroup segmentation with low occupancy • Long average handle times 33 • Long training times