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July 11, 2007
Study Shows Contact Centers Falling Short in Accommodating Disabled Employees
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Most organizations in the United States have provisions and facilities that accommodate those employees with disabilities. The benefit of living in the U.S. is that the Americans with Disabilities Act dictates certain rights and protections for these individuals, requiring that companies provide adequate working environments for those with special needs.
The contact center industry should be no different, especially those that operate in the U.S. However, it is no secret that many of the contact centers that American consumers deal with everyday are located on foreign soil, even if the company it represents in located domestically. However, if the ADA doesn’t apply, how do consumers ensure that they are dealing with a company that enforces those policies anyway?
In this day and age, the continued progression and awareness of equality in the workplace, aside from current laws, has dictated that staff with any form of disability, whether it is speech, hearing, sight, etc., should have the same rights, opportunities and facilities as able bodied staff. In other words, discrimination should be a thing of the past.
However, findings from an International Contact Center Benchmarking Study have shown that just over half, or 59.7 percent of contact centers have designed their center to accommodate staff with disabilities. Another 28.3 percent of centers did not include this aspect in their design and 12 percent of centers weren’t even sure if their center was designed to accommodate a person with disabilities or not.
As consumers, we likely don’t take into consideration a contact center’s approach to disabled persons, unless we have a disability ourselves. We are consumed instead with whether or not the agent can speak and understand basic English and how quickly our problem or issue is resolved. But, this should be a concern for the center, especially if they are catering to disabled customers.
Over the past few years, contact centers have been moving from traditional phone-based call centers to multi-channel communication portals. As a result, those with sight or hearing disabilities have more options when contacting a company. Catering to this demographic can greatly improve customer perception and help to protect the base.
The same care should be taken when addressing those with disabilities internally. Does the center have facilities that provide the same uses and benefits for those with disabilities as it does for those able bodied employees? Accommodating such individuals does not have to cost the company more money, but failure to do so can cost plenty in fines for violation of the ADA, not to mention the bad publicity.
As the contact center industry continues to expand and offer additional employment opportunities for individuals across the country, one of the most effective strategies for accommodating disabled employees is the home-based agent strategy. While such a strategy should not be implemented simply to attract disabled individuals, instead, it can be used as a tool to attract the best qualified candidates, able-bodied or not.
Want to learn more about contact centers? Then be sure to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. The papers are authored by industry leaders, who, in turn, receive qualified sales leads from interested parties. Check here for the latest in CRM information.
Internet Protocol (IP) | X | | IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
(source: http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/Analysis/articles/8414-study-shows-contact-centers-falling-short-accommodating-disabled.htm)
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