The market for contact centre services in the UK continues to grow steadily, as total agent positions expands to 618,000 by 2013. The number of 10 to 250 agent contact centres is set to increase by a further 1,129 locations by 2013 and 95% of UK contact centres include fewer than 250 agents. So what are some of the issues and possible ways to improve performance?

Contact Centres Struggling to Keep Up

• Capital intensive hardware, software and network components  are often required, and capital can be limited.
• Globalisation with disparate systems and limited intelligence across enterprise
• First contact resolution, speed-to-answer, customer satisfaction metrics declining
• Low agent utilization, high agent attrition

Seeking Ways to Boost Performance

• Reducing capital expenditure and maintenance costs through consolidating infrastructure
• Virtualizing multiple contact centres into one
• Implementing remote agents (e.g. homeworkers, knowledge workers)
• Implementing multi-channels (e.g. email, chat, co-browse)
• Implementing IP telephony in contact centres
• Reducing agent costs via self service (e.g. IVR)