DiData reveals emerging trends in contact centres

Due for release in May, the 2008 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report will identify the major issues affecting contact centre management.

Andrew Briggs, Dimension Data global managing director of converged communications, discussed several of the key findings at a press briefing earlier today.

According to the report, contact centre managers continue to be primarily concerned with increasing efficiency and improving levels of service. Optimising processes, deployment of self-service channels and increasing regulation were identified as the three main market trends affecting contact centres. Briggs stated that disparate global legislation will continue to increase standards compliance pressure regarding data protection, storage and security.

He added that increasing centralisation of business process management will lead to the emergence of a second wave of customer relationship management designed to expand the operational scope of contact centres to integrate new functions.

“The contact centre is a more managed environment rather than some of the more backoffice parts of an organisation or enterprise which tend to be more disparate in its management,” he said.

IP telephony has been flagged by the report as the technology set to dominate voice communications in the contact centre space.

“No one is disputing the adoption of IP. It’s pretty much past the tipping point now: IP contact centres are the default,” he said.

Rob Allman, Dimension Data Australia’s general manager of customer interactive solutions, agreed: “Australia has been one of the slower adopters of IP ... [However] in the last year it’s become absolutely de facto,” he said.

Another trend highlighted in the report is the replacement of the traditional binary approach of in-house versus outsourcing service provision. According to Briggs, this model is being replaced by a new approach of ‘multi-sourcing’ as companies engage numerous providers to serve their needs.

“There’s no longer homogenous large outsourcing contracts offered. Organisations are breaking down into multiple outsourcing contracts, looking for specific towers of expertise in the market,” he said.

Dimension Data Australia will be launching the full report during its second annual Customer Interact forum in May.