By Matthew Hall

Businesses and customers are looking for each other in the wrong way.

Is the traditional call centre finished as a customer service platform now that social media and crowd help are the new fashion?

Strutting the floor at a promotional event for Salesforce.com in New York earlier this year Marc Benioff, the cloud computing company’s founder and chief executive, declared landline call centres antiquated, if not entirely deceased.

Benioff would say that – Salesforce sells products enabled by social and mobile technology. That aside, he also has a point. As communication technology rapidly develops, Benioff said businesses must rethink how they approach servicing customers.

Significant numbers of customers today will turn to online FAQs, email, instant messaging, online forums, and virtual agents rather than pick up a phone.

Research from industry analyst Forrester suggested that while a majority of customers in the US at least still use the telephone for customer service, that number is declining. Forrester’s research indicated Twitter was the least-used but fastest-growing channel for customer service.

“There is so much change, there is so much happening today in the world, that the ability to listen to customers, empathise with them and understand them, is the single most important thing that we can do,” Benioff said.

More than 4.5 billion people are connected on social networks, according to Forrester, and each is connecting through social media with friends and colleagues both at home and at work. That’s not only a big audience for enterprise customer service it is a huge platform for customer relations. The market is also growing – more than 1.7 billion touch devices were shipped in 2012.

Research in Australia, however, suggests that while businesses are trying to use social media for customer service, consumers are slower to use those channels for their own benefit.

A report on Australian customer service trends by Fifth Quadrant found that businesses and customers were looking for each other in the wrong places.

Australian consumers consider Facebook to be their number one choice for customer service engagement, followed by online forums and communities, and YouTube.

Networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the least popular options. Tweet this – according to Fifth Quadrant, more than seven in ten consumers claimed they “rarely” or “never” turn to Twitter, LinkedIn, or blogs for customer service.

Yet Twitter is used by more than three quarters of Australian organisations and businesses, perhaps tweeting at themselves rather than customers. Company blogs, websites, and online communities were ahead of Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn as preferred tools for businesses.

“Simply creating a new service channel then standing back and waiting for the customers to come won’t work,” said Chris Kirby, Fifth Quadrant’s head of research. “If organisations want to offer customer service through social media, they need to go to the networks that their customers use.”

Anecdotal evidence is inconclusive for the merits of social media over a traditional telephone. For every customer that says an issue was resolved through Twitter, another claims their tweet to a company was ignored.

There may, however, be some firmer evidence that call centres have a short-term future. Reaching out to the Philippines, US and Australia, no call centres or industry organisations, including the ATA (previously known as the Australian Teleservices Association), responded to requests for comment on this story.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/pulling-the-plug-on-call-centres-20130508-2j6m6.html#ixzz2T4LCDlUa

By Katherine Rushton

TalkTalk has been fined £750,000 for bothering thousands of would-be customers with nuisance calls, but has ruled out paying any compensation to the individuals affected.

The telecoms company, which has spent the past three years battling to shake off a reputation for poor service, made around 9,000 silent and so-called “abandoned” calls to prospective customers, as part of a drive to drum up new business in 2011.

The calls were made through two of its call-centre operators, who relied upon automatic dialling systems to contact people but did not always have anyone to speak when the call was connected. Although it is legal to make a certain number of these silent calls, or abandoned ones – where people are greeted with a recorded message rather than a human – TalkTalk far exceeded the limits set by Ofcom.

The telecoms regulator said it was coming down hard on TalkTalk to send a “strong message” to companies that they have to stick to the rules about nuisance calls, “or face the consequences”. “Silent and abandoned calls can cause annoyance and distress to consumers,” said Claudio Pollack, Ofcom’s consumer group director.

The £750,000 fine will be handed to the Treasury. TalkTalk has already sacked Teleperformance and McAlpine Marketing, the call centres that landed it in hot water, and has vowed to recover the funds from them.

However, on Thursday the company faced calls to go further and compensate the people who had to deal with the nuisance calls in the first place.

“It’s not enough just to pay a fine to the Treasury,” said Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice. “Silent and abandoned calls can be very distressing. The elderly often bear the brunt as they are at home more often and it can be particularly unsettling for people waiting for an urgent call from family or friends.”

Other companies guilty of silent calls, such as Homeserve, have put their hands in their pockets to compensate the people affected. However, TalkTalk ruled out following suit because the individuals being bothered are not customers.

Homeserve, which offers repair insurance for home appliances, was fined £750,000 last year – setting a new record at the time.

However, TalkTalk scoops the prize for the largest ever fine from Ofcom. In 2011, it was forced to pay £3m for billing errors at its subsidiary Tiscali UK. TalkTalk has since focussed its attention on improving customer service, and has made considerable headway.

Regulators are cracking down on nuisance calls after the government called on them to take tougher action and increase the maximum fine they could levy from £50,000 to £2m.

By Katherine Rushton, Media, Telecoms and Technology Editor

UK Telegraph

By Rosemary Howard

Offshored call centres can often produce superior service to domestic ones. But companies already doing this badly should beware thinking that moving it overseas will solve their problems.

We have all had at least one bad experience with dialing through to an Australian firm’s call centre. A long wait. Finally an operator. Answering lots of questions the firm already has in their database. Getting disconnected as they transfer you to another division, and then having to start all over again.

We often assume that these experiences are with outsourced, offshored call centres in India or the Philippines. But this is not always the case.

Sometimes offshored call centres can provide superior customer service (and at lower costs) to Australian call centres, and provide better data analytics.

When we think about the offshoring of Australian financial institution jobs, what questions should we ask?

The first I suggest is why is an organisation thinking of doing it. If the answer is as simple as cost due to Australia’s high wage structure and high dollar, then one probably needs to ask more.

As revenues are harder to come by, there is no question that Australian financial institutions (like all Australian firms) need to manage costs more carefully.

However, the outsourcing or offshoring of call centre and IT jobs should be a more strategic decision.

All firms – including Australian financial institutions – need to consider their long-term strategy and therefore how they operate in that context. They need to reflect on the key trends of our time, namely globalisation and digitisation.

In the constrained post-GFC world, Australian financial institutions cannot grow sufficiently to meet investor expectations without the support of offshore markets, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. This insight is reflected in the Government’s recent Asian Century white paper.

As companies consider the optimal destinations for the demand side of their business, they need to also think about where to best locate supply side functions.

This raises the question: what supply side functions are best located in Australia, and what are the sources of our national competitive advantage?

With the finance sector, the GFC has demonstrated we have some real competitive strengths. These include the strength of our banks, our financial regulatory system, our universities and our superannuation system. Given this, what jobs are best located here versus offshore?

There is no question that on face value at least, lower paid roles such as call centre and IT processing can be delivered more cheaply offshore. India and the Philippines come to mind and even our nearest neighbour, New Zealand, guarantees at least a 25-30% cost savings based on wages and overheads.

But then some strategic questions need to be asked. Can these roles be performed to a high standard offshore? Will customer satisfaction data be readily available to drive innovation? Are there hidden costs or risks from having functions offshore? What is happening to wage relativities given wages are rising faster in China and India?

Australian organisations often send offshore the functions that may not be working for them. But you cannot offshore what you cannot manage well yourself.

Organisations also need to consider that by offshoring, they may throttle their employment pipeline of younger workers. Up to half of call centre employees in Australian financial organisations are university-qualified and may likely be suited to progressing to higher-level positions in the firm.

If offshoring is strategically right (not just short-term cost cutting), and the whys have been thought through, then it can work. In fact some specialist offshore firms who focus on call centre management or IT processing can offer superior services to some available in Australia or delivered in house.

Outsourcing particularly offshore requires a high level of partnering between the Australian firm and the outsourcer, and this requires the right supplier.

Proactive communication is needed with all stakeholders so as not to tarnish the brand, reputation and image of the Australian firm with customers and employees alike, and affected employees need to be given every chance to be supported and move to a different role.

But there is no question outsourcing often fails and is followed by a period of insourcing and onshoring – we are seeing this happening at present with many US and UK firms.

Many would argue that more regulation is required to stop jobs going offshore.

Australia now ranks 96th in the World Competitive Index in terms of regulatory barriers to business performance, down from a ranking in the 60’s. We also rate more poorly than we should for strategic, people and sales management.

Australia’s focus needs to be on developing high value-adding jobs. That’s why we should only regulate where necessary but educate and develop wherever possible. I am a strong advocate for the ongoing development of those in leadership positions to enable optimal strategic and people management decisions to be made.

To optimise our firms’ performance, business and government need to work collaboratively together. We need to work harder at improving in the areas of management practice, active stakeholder communication, long-term strategy, sales, marketing, innovation and creativity.

Better-educated and developed leaders will ensure that the right strategic decisions are made and the right jobs stay onshore.

AUTHOR

Rosemary Howard

Adjunct Faculty AGSM Executive Education and CIFR at University of New South Wales

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Rosemary Howard does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Telstra says its customers will get better service from Filipino or Indian call centre workers who will take over from many of the 648 staff the telco axed last week.

The managing director of Telstra’s Sensis directories business, John Allan, told BusinessDay ”the vendors that we are considering provide services for customers that go beyond our service today, such as 24/7 operations and unique technologies that assist in processing efficiencies, which they do for many directory businesses around the world”.

Earlier , Mr. Allan reportedly told union officials that ”Australians will get better customer services from Manila or India. They have better technology and innovation.”

The Community and Public Sector Union spokesman Julian Lee said the comments were made during a meeting with union officials after Telstra announced the job cuts at the ailing Sensis unit.

The cuts, which include moving 391 customer service positions to the Philippines or India, come just two weeks after the telco booked a record half-year profit of $1.6 billion.

Telstra is slashing costs to arrest falling revenues at Sensis, which was once a cash cow for the company.

It hopes to turn the struggling print-based media business, which produces the Yellow Pages and White Pages directories, into one that is better suited for the digital market.

”Until now we have been operating with an outdated print-based model – this is no longer sustainable for us,” Mr Allan said. ”Our future is online and mobile where the vast majority of search and directory business takes place.”

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, described Telstra’s decision as ”really dreadful news particularly for the staff members”.

”It’s always incredibly tough when someone loses a job,” Ms. Gillard told the Adelaide radio station 5AA.

The union condemned the company’s actions. ”Telstra has done well out of Australia, its profits have risen off the back of hard-working staff and loyal customers and this is how it repays them – by sending almost 400 jobs offshore,” the union’s national secretary, Nadine Flood, said.

”And to add insult to injury, we have been told that one of the reasons why they are doing so is because Australian consumers can get better customer service in the Philippines or India.”

The Sensis business has been under pressure in recent years as customers desert print for digital advertising. At Telstra’s most recent half-yearly results, the unit reported a 12.6 per cent fall in revenue.

Telstra remains obliged to produce the White Pages as part of its license conditions.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/outsourcing-will-deliver-better-service–telstra-20130221-2euby.html#ixzz2MApdPaDa

By Clay Lucas - Workplace Editor for The Age

Telstra and other companies that reap millions of dollars in public money from contracts with the Australian government should lose this work if they send large numbers of jobs overseas, unions argue.

Telstra’s fully owned subsidiary Sensis last week began the process of sacking 400 staff, many of whom are based in its Melbourne office.

Telstra will out-source sales and call centre staff, graphic artists, web designers, online editors and production employees.

Much of the work is likely to be moved to the Philippines or India, where wages are significantly lower.

The move by Sensis, which provides directory services, to sack 20 per cent of its workforce came just weeks after Telstra posted a first-half profit of more than $1.6 billion.

A report by two white-collar unions recently found that, in the past four years, 80,000 jobs in Australia had been moved to countries where labour costs were cheaper.

Among the firms to move large numbers of jobs overseas is insurer QBE, which this week confirmed it will shed 700 jobs and hire staff in the Philippines, to save $250 million a year.

The move by Telstra’s Sensis to sack staff and likely hire overseas workers has enraged unions.

”Should Telstra get public money and government contracts if they offshore jobs?” asked Paul Bastian, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union’s national secretary.

Staff and unions rallied outside Telstra’s Lonsdale Street offices to protest against the sackings.

The manufacturing union demanded the federal government step in to punish firms like Telstra when they took jobs overseas, by denying them access to projects like the National Broadband Network.

Mr Bastian said corporate Australia had an obligation to keep jobs in Australia where possible, and that their record on offshoring must be directly relevant to bidding for federal government contracts.

The Gillard government in February released its ”plan for Australian jobs”, which provided new incentives for companies to use local goods and services.

Mr Bastian said it should also have included new rules on sending jobs overseas.

But Industry Minister Greg Combet’s spokeswoman said making companies ineligible for government contracts in this way would be in breach of Free Trade Agreement rules.

”It could also put at risk the ability of Australian businesses to win overseas contracts and the jobs that come with them,” she said.

And she said 98 per cent – or work worth $22.5 billion – of government service-based contracts entered into in the last financial year were with Australian suppliers.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/union-rage-as-jobs-go-offshore-20130228-2f98u.html#ixzz2MQgHpvdx

By Allison Mathiebe

It’s frequently the case that there are differences in performance between permanent and temporary staff, but there may also be a big divide between the two.

Alison Mathiebe looks at the practical steps that you can take to overcome this divide.

Temporary agents are often effectively employed in call centres to handle simple transactions and call peaks, or to run short-term campaigns. Call centres may also consider employing temporary agents on a longer-term basis in order to avoid a commitment to increasing or replacing permanent staff. In this case, the employer needs to be aware of staff resentment issues which can emerge when the same duties are performed by both temporary and permanent staff on a long-term basis, and how to prevent and resolve these problems.

Once temporary staff are fully trained and have sufficient experience, a performance division can occur between the temporary and permanent agent groups. In particular, where permanent staff are burnt out and no longer find the work challenging or interesting, they can be outperformed by newer temporary staff wanting to prove their capabilities so they can be kept on for more work.

At the same time, temporary staff can resent being paid less for the same work and being strung along with hopes of permanent work which may never materialise.

Despite ongoing positive feedback, temporary staff may feel that their good work is unrecognised because they haven’t been awarded a permanent role, when the reality may just be that these roles are rare because of the organisation’s hiring restrictions and there is a lot of competition when a permanent position becomes available.

When performance levels between temporary and permanent staffing groups become obvious to everyone in the team or centre (e.g. call taking or quality scores are consistently higher amongst the temporary staff) this can cause deep divisions within the team. Long-term permanent agents can resent the positive attention received by the outperforming temporary staff.  As a result, there may also be objections to reward and recognition schemes which publicly reward the best agents and, by default, reveal which staff are never or rarely rewarded.

Permanent staff may believe that their permanent status and long period of service for the organisation makes them superior to ‘the temps’, even when job descriptions and duties are the same. In some sense, this is correct as permanent staff will be treated more favourably in times of cutbacks; however, this feeling of superiority can set up a situation for bullying if left unchecked.

In addition, where there is a performance division between temporary and permanent staff, the call centre’s service provision will be more seriously affected if the higher-performing temporary agents are automatically let go at a time of staff cutbacks.

While these issues are usually caused by the organisation’s HR policies (such as a freeze on hiring permanent staff and/or a performance management system which doesn’t have strict consequences for consistent underperformers), the call centre manager can do a number of things to prevent and resolve any such problems:

• Where possible, differentiate the duties of permanent and temporary staff.
• Set expectations at the time of employment so that temporary staff has an accurate picture of how long their tenure will be, the likelihood of contracts being renewed and other opportunities within the organisation becoming available.
• Continue to call coach and performance manage all staff to encourage continuous improvement, goal setting and career planning.
• Encourage long-term staff to apply for internal vacancies including any parent/subsidiary company or wider government department opportunities.
• Unless there are clear ‘temp to perm’ guidelines in place, let temporary staff know where they can see the call centre’s and organisation’s vacancies and how they can apply. Do let them know that to be in contention for a permanent role they have to apply rather than receiving the job out of the blue as a reward for good work.
• Organise work placements where call centre staff can do buddy/shadow work in other sections of the organisation for a limited time during low call periods.  This is an opportunity for agents to increase their skills and creates awareness of what other work they may like to apply for in the future.
• Encourage career planning for all – good temporary staff to permanent roles, long-term permanent staff to other opportunities within the organisation, and succession planning within the centre such as training possible future team leaders.  While this may be detrimental to the call centre’s attrition rates (and even service level temporarily) it is better than an unmotivated workforce who see no future opportunities and therefore no need to improve their performance.

Alison Mathiebe is the author of How to Survive (& Thrive) in a Call Centre, available from amazon.co.uk

By Martin Conboy

The hard lessons learned by Australian call centres in the last century have not carried across to call centre and BPO environments in Asia.

Staff turnover is a major challenge and no matter which way you dress it up, working in a contact centre environment is not for everyone. There are two types of people that work in a contact centre: one is stress hardy and the other is not.

People who are stress hardy are resilient and are less inclined to leave, whereas people who respond poorly to stress tend to leave as soon as they can. What some owners/managers of offshore BPO contact centres fail to realise is that their most is important assets are people. A new project comes in and they think that they just need to get people on the phones, and by and large anybody will do so long as they can speak reasonable English and navigate their way around a computer program. It never occurs to them that they have some of the brightest minds in their society and they are forcing them to do some of the dullest, soul-destroying most stressful work imaginable. Contrary to popular belief, working in a contact centre is not all that it is cracked up to be. I am not suggesting that all BPO work is like that – it’s just to point out that a young mind needs to be taught how do deal with the stress.

With staff turnover rates running at 40 to 60% that’s a massive cost to the industry when one considers the real cost in terms of replacement, recruitment, training, management time and lost productivity until new agents get up to speed.

For many, working in a BPO environment is a means to an end. On top of the stress is racial abuse. Sadly agents who have called into Australia will have experienced this first hand reducing some to tears. I am not saying that all Australians are racist, far from it, but there is an element in our society who think that they have a right to have a crack at overseas agents who are only doing their job. Abuse causes stress and stress drives staff turnover. It’s no wonder that so many resign from the industry.

John Winney blogged on The Sauce website, “So many BPO operators (and some internal centres), see the symptoms of the problems, and seem to think that a productivity/adherence crackdown of some sort is the answer, rather than looking outside of that box and examining the myriad of other contributing factors such as environment, technology, individual personalities and even call demand itself, that all make up the dynamics of a Contact Centre operation.”

He goes on to say, “We need to remind industry management that Call centre agents are as intelligent as they are precious, and that they are being asked to perform one of the most stressful jobs available, in that they are required to be physically tethered to their workspace (even by wireless headset) and then be subjected to having every movement they make measured and monitored.”

Of course a lot of this staff turnover could be addressed by selecting people who are suitable for the industry in the first place rather than the catch as catch can approach by many BPO service providers.

You can have brilliant technology and terrible people and you will not have a good call centre, where as you can have good people and poor technology and your business will survive. It’s a people business; it’s all about people talking with people. Sounds simple; however, it’s amazing how this message gets lost on some.

One of the areas that have been neglected is soft skills training specifically around cross-cultural training. The obvious inference is that if you teach contact centre agents how to better relate to Australians, on a one on one basis the actual job becomes a lot more fun and consequently less stressful.

FooBooonLine.com has developed such a course. They have taken a different approach and produced an outcomes-based programme that is developed and delivered by a teacher as opposed to a trainer whose approach is fundamentally different. The Course is called FACCT (FooBoo Australian Cross Cultural Training) and was developed by Mary Lockley, a tertiary qualified education course designer.

FACCT has been designed for BPO service Providers, who provide Asian based contact centre & back office agent support services, into Australia and at the back of our minds was the notion that agents have to be productive when their initial training is completed. It addresses agents’ soft skills as a function of increasing a BPO Service Providers Net Promoter Score (NPS)

FACCT programme Director Ms. Lockley said, “The teacher has the skills and techniques that not only can impart information to the learner but that more importantly the learner will be able to retain the information.  A trainer will deliver a course but has not been trained themselves in the art of teaching and to know and understand all of the factors that contribute to a learner retaining information.”

She went on to say, “A trainer is someone who provides instruction on a skill or behaviour. For example: a trainer will provide instruction to people about how to use new software or a product range. Another trainer may train people on the correct procedure for handing a complaint. . In other words training is about modifying behaviour.”

“Moreover ‘Teaching’ goes beyond training. Teaching involves understanding the concepts behind the instruction. Teaching asks “Why?” The learner in a teaching environment should be able to make new connections with the material, make assumptions about new situations, and synthesise solutions to problems related to the course material. Someone needs to be  ’taught’ how to interact with Australians — not just trained in Australian idiomatic expressions. In other words teaching is about getting learners to think. That’s the way that adults like to learn.”

In contrast ‘rote’ learning is a memorisation technique based on repetition. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the more one repeats it. It certainly helped me enormously as a adult to know my times table, which was drilled into me as a child, so rote learning has its place, however it is a technique that is best practiced with children.

The FACCT programme is completely Australian. It is not bits of American or British CCT courses. After all Australians are different and unique. The course is a blended combination of face-to-face (Observational) and practical (Experiential) learning and online delivery via a student individualised platform. The course has 6 modules and a culture competent.

Ms. Lockley explained that the course is completely flexible, in that it can be delivered all at once or broken up and interwoven with onboarding and induction customer service and product training.

For existing agents it may be best delivered all at once in a short burst – after all it’s not good to have them off the phones for too long. For new hires it may be best delivered as a part of their induction or on-boarding program and augmented by elements of existing CCT programs – that may stretch out to two weeks of elapsed time over the course of their 7-week induction program. For ‘near’ hires that were close to employment except that they do not have business grade English a different strategy may have to be applied i.e. their course could be supplemented with a program like www.englishlink.com. 

Serco has successfully renewed its contract with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to provide contact centre services to Australian taxpayers, businesses and tax professionals on a diverse range of taxation and superannuation related issues.

Serco has been in partnership with the ATO for four years (previously operating as Excelior until Serco’s acquisition in 2011), providing trusted, quality services from three contact centres in Burnie, the Gold Coast and Box Hill. Serco employs 450 people who provide advice on a wide range of issues including tax file numbers, tax refunds, business activity statements, debt management, lodgment of returns and information in tax packs.

On average, the teams handle over a quarter of a million customer engagements each month, consistently meeting their performance targets for quality of service. In the last two months, six members of staff have been awarded ‘Gold Call’ status, the ATO’s highest accolade for this work.

The new five-year contract, effective as of 1 December 2012, has a value to Serco of approximately AUD$140 million, with two one-year extension options.

This achievement is testament to the hard work of our staff that ensures the existing services we provide on behalf of the ATO is of a very high standard. It is a strategically important business for Serco Global Services, underlining its capability in delivering key business processes in the Australian and global BPO market for customers in a wide range of fields.

Serco Asia Pacific Chief Executive David Campbell welcomed the news and said ‘I am delighted that the ATO has chosen to continue to work with Serco to provide a high-quality, value for money service to Australian taxpayers’.

‘In our work to date, we have demonstrated what we can do through effective management, customer focus and the efforts of our staff.’

Serco Global Services – AMEAA Chief Executive, Bhupender Singh, congratulated staff on the contract extension.

‘This latest success is further proof of Serco’s growing strength in the business process outsourcing market, both in Australia and globally. It shows the confidence governments in Australia and around the world have in the quality of Serco’s work and its people’.

Small business view also sought for customer contact strategy

(This could be a great opportunity for the BPO sector to supply virtual agents – Editor)

The Australian customer service industry will discuss the mooted changes to social media governance at the Customer Voice Leadership Forum in Sydney later this month.

More than 150 delegates are expected to attend the session, which will be used to help develop industry recommendations for dealing with increasing customer interaction via platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

The Customer Voice Leadership Forum is the largest annual customer service gathering in Australia. The event attracts representatives from some of the largest companies in the world and this year is being held at Darling Harbour on September 26.

The push for industry discussion comes following the Advertising Standards Bureau’s determination that advertisers were responsible for comments posted on company Facebook pages. Companies will now have to remove derogatory, misleading or otherwise offensive posts within a 24-hour-period or risk penalties.

Forum delegate Brett Feldon, Chief Technology Officer – Speech Solutions, Salmat, said the determination meant companies would need to rethink their current approach.

“We’re at a very important juncture right now. As an industry we need to shift business thinking on social media from great opportunity to significant business responsibility,” Mr. Feldon said.

“Social media is a critical part of the marketing and customer service mix – as an industry we need to come up with strategies that are able to make the most of this medium for Australian businesses. The Forum will play an important role in shaping that discussion.”

The Customer Voice Leadership Forum will also include delegates from small-to-medium businesses for the first time this year.

Mr. Feldon said the industry was keen to involve SMEs in strategy discussions, as issues with social media regulation were particularly difficult for emerging businesses.

“Unlike larger organisations smaller businesses may not have the resources to constantly monitor and update social media channels. This presents us with another layer of complexity and its critical that these businesses have a seat in developing an overarching strategic response,” said Mr. Feldon. (Does this present the BPO service sector with a great opportunity? Editor)

“At the other end of the spectrum, larger businesses are going to have to consider how they amalgamate what up-until-now has been a marketing function, into a customer contact. There are a lot of questions that need to be considered right now.”

Speakers at the Forum sessions include Todd Sampson – CEO, Leo Burnett; Michael Bowman – Director Consumer Operations & CCR, Telstra; Grant Harrod – CEO, Salmat; Matthew Liebmann -Chief Commercial & Development Officer, Hoyts; Jonathan Barouch – Founder & CEO, Roamz; Tim Gentry – Managing Director Australia & New Zealand, Avaya; Brett Feldon – CTO, Speech Solutions, Salmat; and, David Olsen – Head of Social Media, Winning Group.

Other sessions at the CVLF include:

• The Future of Customer Experience
• Rolling out Omni-Channel Communications
• Managing Customer Contact through the Cloud

The Customer Voice Leadership Forum is being held at Doltone House, Darling Harbour, Sydney, on September 26 2012. For more information or to register, visit http://www.cvlf.com.au

About the Customer Voice Leadership Forum

The Customer Voice Leadership Forum (CVLF) was shaped from the Voice Leadership Forum (VLF). Launched in 2005, the original Voice Leadership Forum was formed as an association of members consisting of top industry professionals examining the use of speech recognition and voice biometric solutions within their organisations to address business challenges, drive thought leadership, create industry best practice standards and optimise engagement with their customers.

The rise in domestic demand for third-party services has firmly entrenched the Asia Pacific in the global contact center outsourcing market. In 2011, 60.9 percent of the total revenue was from domestic markets, largely because of the upswing in the telecommunications and banking and financial services (BFS) sectors.

The telecommunications boom in India adds more than a million customers annually, making a robust case for outsourcing contact center operations. Similarly, in China, the mushrooming of banks and multinational companies has popularized the outsourcing of customer relationship management (CRM) services.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.contactcenter.frost.com), Asia-Pacific Contact Center Outsourcing – Domestic and Offshore Markets, finds that the market earned revenues of US$17.18 billion in 2011 and estimates this to reach US$29.72 billion in 2017.

Domestic growth, along with solid infrastructure, geographical and cultural proximity to western countries, and the presence of well-qualified, college-educated, and low-cost labor that can serve clients in multiple languages has made Asia Pacific the destination of choice for outsourcing.

This substantial market potential does not preclude concerns regarding quality of services and security features, due to which, many companies prefer to maintain contact center services in-house (Captive). Outsourcers are also hampered by issues of high churn, market saturation in various countries, increasing costs, anti-offshoring stance by many western countries, and a growing requirement for self-servicing in CRM.

“While certain companies do not wish to outsource, some are willing to outsource, provided the operations are on-shore or near-shore to locations with similar language, diction, and culture,” said Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Sathya Subramanian. “This bias can be attributed to apprehensions regarding a drop in both service quality and data security.”

Outsourcers are looking to win back customers’ confidence by implementing several new technologies and strategies that will help them improve the quality of services and offer better data security features. With the right kind of innovation and strategies, supported by the various governments in the region, outsourcers can maintain a healthy compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6 percent from 2011 to 2017.

“Entities throughout the Asia Pacific region are exploring various hosted contact centers and Internet protocol-based technologies to provide superior services in the most cost-effective manner,” noted Subramanian. “Service providers are also slowly expanding their portfolio to other non-voice, back-office operations such as knowledge process outsourcing, financial and accounting outsourcing, and human resources outsourcing to provide end-to-end support.”

If you are interested in more information on this research, please send an email to Donna Jeremiah, Corporate Communications, at djeremiah@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company email address, company Web site, city, state and country.

Asia-Pacific Contact Center Outsourcing – Domestic and Offshore Markets is part of the Contact Centers Growth Partnership Services program, which also includes research in the following markets: APAC Outsourcing Outlook, APAC Hosted Contact Center Market, APAC Contact Center Applications Market, and Assessment of APAC Contact Center Market. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.

By Mia A. Aznar

THOUGH the Philippines is still considered a major destination for voice operations, the growth of its business process outsourcing industry is from the non-voice sector, an industry stakeholder said.

BPAP director Raymond Lacdao said that although the country mostly caters to voice operations (82%), it is only natural for the industry to move to the non-voice sector, considered a more high-value sector in the industry. Non-voice operations include finance, accounting, human resource processes and engineering tasks.

The association expects the industry to earn $25 billion in 2016 and employ 1.3 million employees. If the target is reached, Lacdao said this would result in 3.2 million indirect employees and a nine percent growth in GDP.

Cebu, Lacdao said, has what Manila cannot offer–it is both a business and pleasure destination. Having the second biggest presence of information technology and BPO employees in the country, he said there is an interest from other companies to expand in this part of the country.

He said Cebu’s output has a significant contribution to the growth of the industry and that there is a strong talent for both voice and non-voice operations here.

To further improve the industry here, Lacdao said there is room to grow the talent base in Cebu and aggressively promote the emerging services in IT and BPO by heralding the success stories from those working in the industry.

For the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), executive director Jojo Uligan said they make up two thirds of the industry in Cebu. The sector grew at 21 percent in 2011.

He said the Philippine contact centers currently serve 18 languages. He urged players to offer the same services they are offering the United States to other countries such as Australia, New Zealand and European countries. This way, he said companies can maximize resources and there can be more shifts available with the different time zones and companies will not be limited to US hours.

Some of the challenges of the industry are the lack of talent, retaining them, the business environment and labor cost. He noted that many of those who apply are not qualified for the positions because they do not have the right skills. When they do hire the qualified persons, they do not stay long because they hop from one company to another.

Uligan also stressed the need for a consistent and favorable regulatory and incentive environment. He added that the Philippines is not the cheapest in terms of labor, which he hopes will remain at a level that allows the country to maintain its competitive advantage.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on July 13, 2012.

See more about why the Philippines is so popular as a BPO destination –  Click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af7vvBnsWMI&list=UUZamN8wIGYmDLu_kAUF6lRw&index=2&feature=plcp

By Martin Conboy

I have just come back from a speaking tour of the Philippines. Every time I go there I am always amazed at how quickly their BPO sector has grown. The rise of BPO in the Philippines has been nothing short of amazing. The very first calls were taken in 1997, and by the year 2000 they had about 25,000 people earning a living from BPO. That’s when I first heard about their BPO sector. We were doing call centre research and we had to double check the statistics to confirm the sudden surge in the size of their call centres. Today, the Philippines’ BPO sector employs about 640,000 people and enjoys revenues of $11 billion, about 5% of the country’s GDP. Add to this the multiplier effect and there is a greater community getting a taste of the riches that BPO is bringing to the country.

17,000 and growing of those people service Australia.

The Philippines (population 101m) is unlikely ever to surpass India (1.2 billion) across the entire range of outsourcing offerings, which also include all kinds of information-technology services. However, never say never. The Philippines built its sector on front office voice work and they are starting to understand that the future is visual.

One of the talks that I gave was at the PSIA (Philippine Software Industry Association) and they are totally wired into the future of the BPO sector. As the sector shifts gears, they are delighted that they are about to have their day in the sun. The PSIA is getting behind a brilliant new concept called Project KLIK – Basically a reality TV/ Video concept that showcases Filipino culture. It’s going to be very big and a lot of major international brands have lent their weight to it. If you are a Filipino anywhere in the world and you are reading this and you want to know more, then drop a line to executivedirector@psia.org.ph This is exactly where the BPO industry is headed and the Philippines is going to lead the way with this very clever and innovative way to showcase their visual talents.

I also spoke at an ICT – BPO event in Cebu which was attended by over 400 people, so they are starting to come along nicely as the next major BPO destination with Clark/Subic. They might be small in comparison to Manila but they lack none of the enthusiasm and are pulling the business community along with them. So for companies looking for alternatives to Manila you might like to consider Cebu and Clark/Subic. Once again if you need to know who to talk to, let us know and we will connect you to the right people.

The main reason for the success of the Philippine call centres is that workers speak English with a relatively neutral (US) accent and are familiar with American idioms—which is exactly what their American customers want. Of these, many have taken to complaining bitterly about Indian accents (which no amount of “voice neutralisation” coaching seems to have overcome).

The challenge for the Philippines’ BPO industry is that it is overly committed to the USA and then over-represented in voice. As I like to call it, flying around on one wing. Having empty facilities during the day that are crying out to be utilized is a big issue for the operators in the Philippines.

It became apparent to me during my visit that the missing link to be successful in handling voice related work for Australia at least is ‘Culture Training’, which goes beyond simple voice and accent assimilation. FooBoo is in the process of developing a program that addresses this gap. If you want to know more or have some ideas about what should be involved in such a program, then drop me a line. (mconboy@FooBooOnLine.com)

What helps is that the country has a large pool of well-educated workforce. The government has really got behind the sector by offering an incentive for companies to train the near hires. (People who would have been hired if their English skills were just a bit better)

The other interesting thing that I noticed was the reverse brain drain. There are lots of Filipinos repatriating home and really adding to the intellectual horsepower of the community.

The big question is whether the Philippine BPO industry, having conquered the contact centre market, can now move up the value chain. To keep growing rapidly—and profitably—it needs to capture some of the more sophisticated higher value back-office jobs. Somehow I have a feeling that like good wine they will just get better with age.