Research Findings

(Compiled from various secondary sources)

• The total call centre outsourcing market in the US in 1998 was $17 billion. (Source: IDC, 1999)

• The call centre outsourcing market in Europe will double from $7 billion in 1999 to $15.1 billion in 2003.

•  The total number of agent positions in European outsourced call centres will reach 1,27,000 in 2003, from about 74,000 in 1999.

• Germany will replace UK as the biggest oustourced call centre market.

• Telecommunications emerged as the biggest vertical market for call centre outsourcing in Europe by accounting for 24 percent of the total market in 1999. Financial services accounting for 20 percent, distribution/consumer products 16 percent, and technology industry accounting for 13 percent were the other big markets.

• Inbound customer services emerged as the top application replacing outbound telemarketing. Inbound calls accounted for 41 percent of total outsourcing calls. Inbound helpdesk accounted for 15 percent, while outbound sales lead generation accounted for 20 percent of calls.

(Source: Opportunities in European Call Centre Outsourcing, Datamonitor, December 1999)

• Use of the Internet to contact small call centres will increase by more than 185 percent by 2001.

•  By 2001, predictive dialling technology is expected to have achieved 21 percent penetration in the European small call centre market with slower uptake due to relatively small gains in productivity through this technology.

•  By 2001, the penetration of IVRs in small call centres/helpdesks is expected to be 49 percent.

(Source: Opportunities for European Small Call Centres, Datamonitor, November 1999)

l US e-commerce service providers lost about $6.1 billion due to abandoned online transactions. They are likely to lose a cumulative more than $173 billion in potentially salvageable sales over the next five years. This is due to poor online customer service.

 The average company could have improved its online sales figures by almost 35 percent last year if it had provided better online customer service for potential customers.

(Source: The US Market for Internet-based Customer Service, Datamonitor, July 2000)

l 56 percent of the firms’ studies in a research on the effectiveness at serving customers and prospective customers online at the top North American financial institutions revealed that they either did not accept Web-based queries or did not respond to e-inquiries placed online by potential customers.

(Source: Onyx Software, June 2000)

• Only 36 percent of online buyers are satisfied with their experiences.

• Only 12 percent of online customers receive an acknowledgement of their queries within an hour and only 42 percent receive one within 24 hours.

• One-fourth of all companies are pushing outgoing e-mails to customers with suggestions and promotions. Only one-third of e-customers indicate a high interest in receiving such e-mails.

(Source: International Customer Service Association (ICSA) and e-Satisfy.com, March 2000)

• Nearly two-third of Web users are unwilling to purchase products without human interaction.

(Source: Yankelovich Partners)

• Users must decide whether they are Web-enabling their call centres or call centre enabling their web sites. The end result may appear the same, but the two are different. The differences are in what rules the call centre applies to initiating interactions, how the business case is constructed, and how "success" is
  
  measured. When user organizations Web-enable their call centres, they are typically either using the Web as a "front door" to the call centre or are using the Web to enhance the effectiveness of call centre interactions. Businesses that take this approach are usually highly committed to tele-business to the extent that it provides their bread and butter. Their web sites are not primarily used as a customer interaction point and they may choose to carry out interactions via the Web that are not cost-effective in the call centre. When user organizations call
  
  centre-enable the Web, they are typically either increasing the success rate of Web transactions or providing a back-up for problems that can not be resolved via the Web. Businesses that take this approach are usually committed e-commerce players that want to supplement the effectiveness of their e-commerce operations. If they have repeat customers doing low-value transactions, a common objective is to use the call centre to "train" the customer in self-service.

(Source: Next Generation Call Centres: CTI, Voice and the Web, Ovum, April 1999)

• By 2002, only 20 percent of call centres will have integrated live Web contacts or E-mail Response Management Systems (ERMS) with their telephone-based agents (0.8 probability).

• By 2002, companies that have integrated live Web contacts or e-mail with their telephone-based agents will experience in excess of 25 percent performance improvements (for example, in sales, operations, etc.) in targeted interactions (0.7 probability).

• By 2005, 70 percent of call centres in geographic areas with high Internet adoption rates, such as North America and parts of Europe will support integrated, live Web contacts and ERMS for their telephone-based agents (0.8 probability).

(Source: Gartner Group, June 2000)

• l The share of telephone traffic to customer contact centres will drop from 84 percent in 1999 to 72 percent in 2003. E-mail traffic share will go up from 5 percent in 1999 to 18 percent in 2003.

• l The use of "call-me" buttons will remain relatively low at 2 percent.

• l Volume-wise, e-mail traffic will increase by over 1,000 percent from 1999 to 2003.

(Source: The Emerging Contact Technology Survey, Datamonitor, April 2000)

• Call centre budgets have increased in each of the past four years. In 1998-99, the increase was 18.5 percent. The average amount allocated to human resources is down 8 percent in that period to 56.1 percent of the total cost.

Human Resource

• The average hourly wage of top-paid full-time agents ranged from $6.90 to $40 (median $15) in 1999.

(Source: Incoming Call Management Institute, June 2000)

• Inbound centres have an average annual turnover of 26 percent for full-time reps, and 33 percent for part-timers.

(Source: 1999 Call Centre Benchmark Report, Purdue University Centre for Customer Driven Quality)

• Nearly 74.5 percent of respondents in a survey of 200 call centres listed "measuring agent performance" as a "very important" objective of their monitoring programme; 68.6 percent said that "identifying additional training needs for individual agents" was also a "very important" objective. Other "important" objectives included "identifying customer needs/expectations (40.2 percent) and "evaluating level of customer satisfaction (39.7 percent)

• Most call centres (73 percent) use a combination of methods for monitoring agents: 69.6 percent use real-time remote monitoring; 63.2 percent use side-by-side monitoring sessions; 50.5 percent use call-taping; and 22.5 percent use "Mystery Shopper" calls (where a supervisor poses as a customer to evaluate performance).

• When asked who conducts monitoring sessions, a variety of individuals were identified. The majority of call centres identified supervisors (71.1 percent) followed by managers (46.1 percent) and dedicated trainer/internal quality assurance specialists (40.7 percent). Only 15.2 percent of call centre respondents use fellow agents (peer monitoring), and only 4.4 percent use external quality assurance companies.

• While 55.9 percent of respondents said their agents "do not mind" the monitoring programme and "see it as a necessary aspect of call centre management, 11.3 percent of respondents said their agents "do not like it and see it as unnecessary and sometimes stressful."

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