Trends to Watch
Increasing stress levels, more demanding customers, the convergence of sales and service and call center outsourcing are just a few of the issues which customer service and call center managers will be facing this year. It will be a year of change and adaptation as the industry reacts to the following trends:
- Customer service work is becoming more stressful. The down economy has led many companies to lay off CSRs and substitute IVR or web-based self-help. Customers faced with long queues and frustrating electronic gatekeepers are often short-tempered by the time they talk to a live agent.
- Customers are demanding more. With tighter budgets and less money to spend customers are more demanding about what they get for their money, and that includes their expectation for service.
- Service and sales are converging. As companies become aware that good service sells products, more of them are asking CSRs to inquire about customer needs and to up-sell or cross-sell products that meet those needs. Further, many B2B companies have pared down their dedicated sales forces in the last several years, and will continue doing so. Personal sales representatives are being reserved for only the largest business customers; smaller customers must deal with contact centers, which now handle sales as well as service.
- Online training will become more popular. E-learning is less expensive and more convenient than instructor-led training and is growing rapidly in popularity. But don’t look for it to replace instructor-led training entirely.
- Consolidations will level off. The economics of call center size are changing. Smaller centers are more viable now that technology has enabled the “virtual call center,” and mega-centers are being perceived as risky, hard to manage, and likely to deplete local labor pools. Many companies now prefer to maintain several smaller call centers, none of them larger than about 600 seats.
- Outsourcers are becoming more sophisticated. After two difficult years, the call center outsourcing industry should see a recovery in 2003. Outsourcers are shifting their emphasis from cookie-cutter outbound sales calls to more complex inbound service calls, and providing value-added services such as CRM and response analysis. They are becoming less like contractors and more like strategic partners. Outsourcers are also moving jobs to India, the Philippines and Caribbean countries because these countries offer access to a highly educated, highly motivated workforce that can handle email, text chat, and complex help desk activities.
Source: Customer Service Group, Customer Service Newsletter
