Cultural shift required for effective contact centres, says report

To obtain value for money from their contact centres, organisations need to start seeing them as central rather than peripheral to the business and as an investment rather than a cost.

While this will require a huge cultural and attitudinal shift by senior management, such a rethink is becoming increasingly necessary in a world where the customer experience is progressively viewed as an important differentiator, according to Nicola Millard, a futurologist at BT and author of a report entitled 'From Agent to Expert: The Future of the Contact Centre Advisor'.

"There's a tension in the industry between customer expectations, which are going up due to advertising messages from companies saying that they’re customer-centric but which aren't always met, and organisations wanting to control costs. But the contact centre is in the middle and it’s important to recognise why customers are calling it in the first place," she explained.

Customer calls are often related to issues around service delivery so if organisations are simply "counting how many calls they get, they’re missing a trick in finding out where the problems lie, which could be solved if they listened to contact centre advisors", who are on the front line.

While about 80 per cent of contact centres in the UK employ a 'mass production' approach to their contact centres, a more effective up-and-coming model is 'mass customisation'. This involves placing less organisational emphasis on cutting the length of time agents are on the ‘phone with customers and more on training them to undertake an advisory and problem-solving role.

"It’s about moving from a mass production mentality of processing calls to adding value for the customer, addressing their issues and, over time, designing their calls out by listening to feedback from advisors. This cuts costs by eliminating waste," Millard said.

The next stage in the evolution of the contact centre, however, is the 'network advisor' model. Although this approach is starting to appear in the US, she believes that it is about five to ten years away from widespread adoption in the UK.

Network advisors are expert problem solvers, consultants and specialists that do not necessarily work in customer service, but come from all parts of the business. They do not need to reside in a centralised contact centre, but are mediated using a triage function, with the aim of putting customers in contact with experts that are in a position to solve their individual problems immediately.