ICMI’s Global Service Index Report revealed the results of a survey developed and executed by OmniTouch International. This survey looked at contact centers throughout the global industry to determine accessibility, service quality, engagement and more. While the U.S. contact centers scored well in certain areas, other countries had surprising results.


Service quality is studied in order to capture how well the call center and individual agents overall are managed and how they perform. Agents throughout the global industry possess different skills and different levels of engagement with clients that impact the overall customer experience – either for better or for worse.

U.S. contact centers actually ranked the highest in overall performance with 64 percent in the telecommunications sector. Across-the-board however, call centers throughout the world turned in weak performances, indicating that there is much room for improvement.

Consistent quality of service delivery was found among providers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Such performances indicated that these providers have an opportunity to significantly differentiate themselves in this category. In Singapore and China, certain telecom providers performed significantly better than others, although all showed areas where improvement would enhance performance.

Those centers located in India and Indonesia showed marked diversity in service delivery, ranging from an overall low of 32 percent to a high of 71 percent in India and 40 to 72 percent in Indonesia.

Courtesy while on the call is important to ensure quality customer service. Call centers in Indonesia performed the best in overall courtesy at 84 percent. U.S. call centers ranked second in courtesy measurements at 61 percent, a significant margin when compared to Indonesia.

U.S. call centers proved to have strong scores for greetings. These greetings often included advertising, an approach that is unique to the U.S. and indicates a revenue generation culture in a competitive market. At the same time, these centers performed poorly with inquiry reconfirmation at 28 percent.

The U.K. performed poorly in customer courtesy at 27 percent. In fact, it was the poorest performing country in all courtesy attributes, except greeting where it placed fourth at 80 percent. While agents tended to be friendly and thanked customers for their call, they often failed to offer additional assistance or state their company’s name in the closing.

While these findings indicate that call centers throughout the global industry are doing a lot of things right, there is still room for improvement, especially for those centers hoping to gain a competitive advantage.

There is still more to explore in this study. Check back tomorrow as we continue to discuss these findings and their impact on the global contact center industry.