Contact centres are undervalued

In the right hands contact centres can deliver much more than rage-management

People don’t like call centres, or their newer offspring, internet-enabled contact centres. Consumers feel that they are just there to assuage their anger: the contact centre as rage management system. Operators face high rates of staff turnover, low staff motivation and morale, a blizzard of performance data and a constant drive to squeeze costs.

The latest news about contact centres, however, comes from Britain’s Financial Services Authority. After visiting the operations of major UK and other banks in five locations in Mumbai and another five in Bangalore, the FSA has, in a report this month, pronounced itself “impressed” by the calibre of the graduate Indians handling calls. But it has also warned UK financial services providers to “identify, assess, monitor and manage” the risks of offshoring ? whether of call centres or of back-office processing.

The FSA worries about the difficulty of overseeing and controlling Indian operations. Somehow it believes that they are a risk to general market confidence. It frets about financial crime, consumer protection, and annual rates of turnover of Indian staff that run to 30 percent. Last, the FSA gets in a lather about the risks that offshore contact centres and related operations pose to business continuity.

Altogether, contact centres take a lot of flak these days. But in Getting more from call centers, an article published by the McKinsey Quarterly in April, Toronto staffers Keith A Gilson and Deepak K Khandelwal take a refreshingly different approach. They argue for a customer service strategy that balances costs, revenues and call quality. They call for better integration of the call centre with the rest of the organisation, and for investments in staff “coaching”, performance management systems and workforce management software programmes that co-ordinate work schedules, breaks, holidays and all the rest. Do all this, say Gilson and Khandelwal, and the call centre will turn from being a means of cutting costs to a strategic asset conferring competitive advantage.

The McKinsey duo admit that poor pay is a major cause of the high turnover of call centre staff. They are anxious about staff training and incentives. Yet much of what is wrong with contact centres could be put right by a greater appreciation of what consumers are looking for.

Research suggests that most European consumers are too busy to want to make a call in the first place. And while youthful Europeans are adept at self-service via the internet, and use it at odd hours, older people lead a general consensus in favour of personal attention by human beings.

The likelihood is that Europeans don’t want to know about brands when they are put on hold. They just want rapid service. Surprisingly, most Europeans feel well informed about goods and services, and unbothered, too, by all the choices put in front of them. So they probably hate being condescended to ? especially by staff little older than 21, with poor elocution and low IQs.

Contact centres don’t just manage rage. They also manage feelings of victimhood. They are both a vehicle for and a source of consumer complaints.

They deserve more sober analysis than has been bestowed on them so far.