Bye-bye contact centre - hello customer management centre

South African contact centres have less capability in this regard - with 62.3% handling Internet, only 15.9% offering SMS interactions, and 10.1% providing web chat. Some 20% of organisations are planning to provide SMS facilities in the next two years and 37.7% have a plan for web chat.

Why South Africa differs

Siva Pather, Dimension Data's National General Manager, Customer Interactive Solutions, Middle East & Africa says that the difference in South Africa is partly due to a slower rate of consumer adoption of web chat and online shopping as well as organisations not yet having integrated SMS into their contact centres. "It is also a reflection of both the lack of availability of broadband and the high costs of extra bandwidth in South Africa."

This year's report also reveals that social media interactions are high on the agenda of contact centre businesses. Just over 18% of research participants reported that they're already managing these interactions, with 32% (including South African organisations) saying they're planning to do so over the next two years. Moreover, with products becoming more commoditised, service is increasingly being used as a differentiator as organisations recognise the contact centre as the heart of the business.

"The evolution of the contact centre to a full service customer management centre confirms that organisations view contact centres as profit generators," Pather says. "Where contact centres were traditionally regarded as cost centres, almost half (47.9%) of respondents said they regard them as *profit centres - 18.4% of them based upon sales revenue generated (up from 8.6% in the 2009 Report)."

Improving service is top priority

The research results also show that this year's top priority commercial driver for contact centres is improving service. "But," warns Pather, "navigating this evolution will require a strong focus on process automation. Smart devices are dramatically changing the communication landscape and enabling increased numbers of customers to help themselves and decide how, when and where they engage. Organisations will need to embrace smart applications in order to make popular transactions even easier for their customers. That's because self-service is fast becoming the accepted standard for providing customers with more choices to engage with the organisation."

Meanwhile, the top priority issue affecting contact centres across the globe is the drive to encourage customers to use these broader self-service channels. "We see a new focus on customer lifetime value (CLTV) management with a high number of respondents ranking it as the number one issue," Pather says. "This, in conjunction with improvements in customer satisfaction set to replace cost reduction as the prime self-service driver, underscores a renewed business focus on overall profitability."

Practical focus stays on cost

Ironically, although more South African than global organizations mentioned CLTV as their number one priority, their practical focus remains cost reduction rather than customer satisfaction improvement. Some 44% of respondents have a strong focus on increasing efficiency, putting pressure on cost.

Globally, however, the report indicates that there's a significant increase in the number of infrastructure upgrades being planned across contact centres as technologies become more affordable and advances in communications technologies continue to drive flexible change that makes CLTV easier.

"Businesses are pro-actively responding to customer demand while recognising improved service as the top commercial driver," Pather says. "In turn, they're using customer management centres as the vehicle to generate better service and revenue opportunities."

* North America leading the charge to profit centre at 56.7% with travel and transportation being the highest industry at 66.7%

About the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report

First published in the UK in 1997 by Merchants, Dimension Data's specialist contact centre outsourcing and operations division, this year's edition is the twelfth in a series of the industry-renowned benchmarking reports. This year's Report has drawn the widest level of participation over12 years, contains balanced global and industry representation from 546 contact centres located across 66 countries on five continents, and is an invaluable reference for all contact centre professionals. It provides managers with a set of best practice standards and benchmarks, including staffing and training, performance metrics, technology usage, budgets and development plans. The Report is researched and published by Dimension Data and includes a benchmarking portal for use by participants and partners. For more information about the Report, go to www.dimensiondata.com/microsites/ccbenchmarking.