Study Shows U.K. Call Centers Performing to Expectations

By Susan J. Campbell,
Contributing Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions

Customer satisfaction with their interaction with the call center is essential to overall success of the call center. The main purpose of the center is to provide customer support and if they cannot do that is a way that is satisfying to the customer, the whole organization suffers.

Commissioned by fifty of the U.K.’s leading call centers, new independent research has shown that 93 percent of customers get through to the call center on their first attempt. This study is part of The Top 50 Call Center Initiative, commissioned by Siemens (News - Alert).

The number of customers reaching the call center on first attempt rose to 98 percent in the retail sector, followed by 95 percent in the financial services and entertainment, leisure and travel sectors. The public sector returned a performance of 87 percent, lagging behind the telecoms and utilities at 90 percent.

Surprisingly, a staggering 96 percent of customer inquiries were resolved by the initial call. The retail sector proved to perform the best in this area, achieving a 98 percent first call resolution rate. Financial services and telecoms and utilities returned a 97 percent. For the Public Sector, this number fell to 92 percent.

The survey found that it takes on average just 1.3 minutes for customers of the Top 50 Call Centers to get through to speak to an actual person. This figure accounts for time waiting to get through, as well as time spend selecting IVR or touchtone options, before getting through to a customer service representative.

This study also found that 58 percent of callers got through to a Customer Service Representative in less than one minute. The retail sector performed even better as 74 percent of callers reached the company within 60 seconds. The telecoms and utilities sector was the lowest performing, at 52 percent, just ahead of the entertainment, leisure and travel and public sectors, both at 53 percent.

Apologies tend to be lacking in these call centers, according to this study. For those callers that had to wait more than one minute to get through, only 27 percent received an apology for the delay. Again retail performed the best at 35 percent, and entertainment, leisure and travel returned a 20 percent.

Claudia Hathway, Editor of Call Centre Focus commented in a company statement: “It is great to see so many of the U.K.’s leading call centers get together to find out how they are performing, by asking their customers. That has to be the ultimate test for any call centre. Speed of response has long been the bugbear of U.K. consumers, but this research proves categorically that, in this area, many of the U.K.’s leading call centers are getting it right.”

Contact Centers Realize Benefits in Solutions when Needs are Understood

Contact center managers rely greatly on the performance of their agents to drive the overall performance of the contact center. While disparate solutions have traditionally been in place to drive performance, it wasn’t until contact center performance management (CCPM) solutions became available that these managers were able to measure a difference.

Speech analytics have also gotten a great deal of attention as of late as such solutions can offer significant benefits to the contact center, management, staff and even customers. And, while speech analytics and CCPM deliver measurable benefits, it is challenging for many contact center managers to evaluate the solutions and discern one from the other.

Rob Berry, with Enkata, shared his opinions recently that while it is true that speech analytics and CCPM offer many of the same benefits, they each solve different business problems. Plus, there is a difference in the degree and source of the benefits they deliver and the deployment risks of each are significantly different.

Gartner (News - Alert) Research, an industry analyst firm for the contact center market, has found that CCPM solutions are used most often when contact center management is seeking to automate the supervision and coaching of an agent, and to improve the overall performance of the organization.

According to a Gartner January 2008 report, “These solutions integrate an organization’s established contact center technologies, CRM systems, and other data sources to provide a transparent picture of performance through role-specific dashboards and reports, and they drive actions through embedded alerting and workflow capabilities.”

For speech analytics tools, they are primary used by quality management (QM) analysts and, even some contact center supervisors. Such solutions can search for examples of calls that meet specific criteria, including dead time, mention of a competitor or an antagonistic or frustrated tone.

While recording calls can deliver significant benefits within the contact center, few organizations actually record every call. Some industries report that they record as much as 30 percent of their calls, but even that is a generous number.

At the same time, these calls are purged regularly and such activity minimizes the usefulness of speech analytics. Therefore, to be effective, speech analytics must be properly designed to fit the practices of the contact center.

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