An August 2009 survey conducted across the U.K. shows that technology does not provide sufficient and timely information in customer service situations.

 

The findings are based on a joint survey of 2,127 consumers by YouGov in combination with 90 contact center managers by Corizon. These findings show that contact center staff faces challenges from the increasing number of applications they must switch between when responding to customer queries.

 

Thirty seven percent of call center managers said they have problem with too many applications and 30 percent agreed that it had worsened over the past year. Around 75 percent of managers also said that their agents used three to five different software applications to handle customer service queries during a typical working day while 40 percent of managers said their agents used 5 or more applications for customer service.

 

Despite an increase in investment in new applications, contact centers are failing to maximize ROI. The consumers are also dissatisfied by the services with 83 percent saying they were frustrated by long waiting times. Around 69 percent of the respondents said they were unhappy to repeat information when passed to another agent. Corizon (News - Alert) points out that all these problems are due to the number of disparate applications that agents are forced to use.

 

Thirty two percent of contact center managers surveyed believe their agents’ desktops were becoming more unstable. The cases of applications crashing have become very common and one in ten managers felt that ending customer calls due to application instability was their most common problem.

 

“This survey shows that the amount of software installed in the typical call centre is a disservice to customers and agents alike. Adding another application may seem like a good way to increase agent knowledge and efficiency, but all too often it has the opposite effect,” said Eric Guilloteau CEO for Corizon.

 

Corizon said their unique enterprise mashup approach to creating and managing business applications can solve these problems. Their solution combines the useful bits of applications to give people the right information at the right time to do their jobs better.

 

Its enterprise mashup software allows multiple applications to be seamlessly integrated into one, easy-to-use composite application containing all the data and functionality.