Consumers have their say!

Information for the report was received from 166 contact centres across 24 countries and five continents, and a variety of industries. The report provides important benchmarks for businesses to measure their call centre operations against and offers decision makers valuable insights into how companies are choosing to listen to their customers.

The research found that 77.2% of Call Centres measure their customer's satisfaction, with a barometer of Customer Complaints being the most common measure (83.5%).

Andrew Briggs, CEO of Customer Interactive Solutions (CIS) for Dimension Data comments in the report: "...the one thing that will never change is that in order to provide excellent customer service we need to listen carefully to customers and resolve their queries as quickly and easily as possible."

Call centres are becoming a vital part of many businesses and it is important that the customer is given the opportunity to comment on the value of the service - be that service they receive providing information, resolving queries, making bookings etc.

In the past, customers may have felt that their comment on the service goes no further than the call centre operator or even that there was no way to give feedback on the service provided by the call centre agent. In this case managers may have missed the insight and opportunity to truly improve their service.

The report reveals that customers need an opportunity to express this satisfaction after a call. Synovate saw the need for a research solution which would allow customers to have their say. A tool which would pass that information on to the decision makers within the call centre operation, allowing them to improve their customer satisfaction levels and as a result, provide a better call centre service.

ViewsCast is the solution to ensure the customer is heard!

ViewsCast is Synovate's unique Contact Centre research tool, which uses technology to capture the voice of the customer. It is an automated feedback system that collects real-time information directly from the customer. Customers complete a short automated telephone, web, or sms questionnaire after they have used the contact centre service. The results are available online in real-time - enabling timely, informed, tactical and strategic improvement decisions to be made.

It is used by many of the world's leading brands to monitor customer satisfaction and call quality. With ViewsCast, contact centre managers can identify and monitor the burning issues for their customers on a minute-by-minute basis on-line, and significantly improve service and satisfaction levels. This makes continuous, real-time tracking of customer satisfaction and operational performance an economically viable and attractive option for contact centres. The beauty of ViewsCast is that the results are available only 15 seconds after an interview takes place, so customer satisfaction becomes immediately manageable and tangible.

Huge benefits for companies wanting to improve their contact centre customer service. A huge relief for frustrated consumers!

More information on the Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report is available at www.ccbenchmarking.com