As outlined in (fig. 1), generally the call center environment is achieving satisfactory Fig 1: Summary of findings levels of competency and performance. While call centers are meeting existing business needs, there is still considerable room for improvement over the next 12 months. This is manifest in the importance assigned by respondents to priorities such as data integration beyond the call center itself. It is also demonstrated in the confidence of customer insight and engagement shown by a minority of companies with more sophisticated call center systems. Taken into account alongside the importance associated with the call center as a hub for brand building, the future of customer call centers is represented in the following key areas:

• Improve integration of call center data with the broader organization
• Ensure online and offline customer experiences are consistent
• Increase brand building opportunities with call center customer interaction
• Generate real-time insights from customer interactions in order to enhance call center performance

The body of the research report discusses these points in further detail and provides a set of considerations for businesses seeking to create greater value in customer interactions. There is little room for criticism of call center systems and their ability to run efficiently. However, businesses now demand that this ‘frontline’ of brand representation and customer service also interacts with the broader organization to capture, utilize and refine customer insights. It is these components that will shape call center environments and, ultimately, customer value for organizations in future.

Call Center Snapshot

Call centers are a critical tool for respondents’ businesses, particularly for building brand and credibility with customers, but not all of them are making the best possible use of customer insight to build trust with customers. 23% of respondents describe their centers as “a critical tool for building company brand with our customers”, confirming that the connection between call center performance and brand credibility is not going unnoticed by call center management.

20% describe their call center as “a troubleshooting hub for customer assistance”, and 17% as “an administrative center to field customer inquiries”, both far ahead of “a wall of defense against customer complaints”. Call center contacts seem to be seen as a way to build relationships with customers by addressing any concerns they have collaboratively. It appears that very few senior managers subscribe to the idea that the customer and the brand are on different ‘sides’ in a conflict. “An experienced team that generates sales” is another common descriptor, at 16%. Sales generation is still a key aspect of the call center, but it appears that longer-term relationship building is prioritized.

The emphasis on service and brand-building is stronger among UK respondents than those in the US, but present in both markets. While 31% of UK respondents feel that the call center is a critical tool for brand-building, only 16% of US respondents feel this is the case. The idea that the call center is a “troubleshooting hub” – the most popular choice among US respondents – got similar levels of support in both markets, with 19% of US respondents and 22% of UK respondents choosing this option. The US respondents gave greater weight to customer insight than UK respondents, with 11% agreeing that their center is “a resource for getting data and improving customer understanding”, over twice as many as in the UK, where only 5% agree.

Despite the emphasis on brand-building and customer understanding, some call centers fall short of these goals in practice. While respondents rate their centers’ contact management highly overall, the general trend is that they are least happy with their ability to use insight to assist customers in real-time than they are with other aspects of customer management. Measures of success early in the relationship are highest (fig. 3). 59% of respondents rate their ability to choose the right channels for customer contact highly. 51% give high ratings for gathering data on new customers to plan the relationship.

Ratings for dealing with particular problems in customer relationships were slightly lower – 50% rated themselves highly in the chance to retain a customer on an inbound call and 42% on using technology to manage high-need or low-profit customers. 41% saw themselves as successful at re-establishing relationships with former customers. Again, these ratings suggest that call center managers are reasonably happy with how they manage these issues, but there is still room for improvement. 27% rated themselves low in managing high-need and low-profit customers, and 29% in re-establishing relationships – over a quarter of respondents need tools and/or training in these crucial areas. Areas dealing with frontline relationship management came in for the most criticism. Whilst 38% rated themselves highly skilled in “using automated tools to help frontline staff make tailored decisions for each customer”, 22% gave themselves low ratings. “Using customer insight to make relevant offers on all inbound contacts” also seemed an area of difficulty for some centers, with 37% rating themselves highly, and 27% rating themselves as low performers.

There are important regional differences in call center capacities as well. US respondents were much more enthusiastic about their automated tools than UK respondents. 49% rated themselves highly in “using automated tools to help frontline staff manage high-need or low-profit customers”, as opposed to 35% of UK respondents. 47% of US respondents gave high ratings for “using automated tools to help frontline staff make tailored decisions for each customer”, as opposed to 28% in the UK.

Call Center Challenges

Despite general satisfaction with their management processes, call centers still see a variety of challenges in winning and maintaining customers’ trust. In general, call center management sees technology as enabling the positive aspects of their business (78% see technology as all or mostly supportive), but a minority see a negative impact (30% see it at least partially encouraging negative qualities).

Answers to open-ended questions (fig. 4) about earning customer trust showed several distinct themes which shed light on how call centers use their tools. Accuracy, consistency, and access to information were important to many respondents. Clearly, getting a complete, relevant customer record to frontline staff is a challenge in some centers, with answers showing that some frontline staff are unable to access the information they need. Internal challenges affect some call centers, making it difficult for managers to get buy-in for improvements, while others feel challenged by new expectations stemming from online services or new compliance rules. In light of this, it is not surprising that respondents have a wide range of priorities for the next twelve months – despite general satisfaction with the tools they have, center managers still see barriers to adopting best practice.

Integration is a priority for surprisingly high numbers of respondents, despite high levels of pre-existing integration reported elsewhere in the survey. “Better integrating call center data with data from other parts of the organization” is a priority for 60% of respondents, and better integrating call center operations with online service is a priority for 54% (fig. 5). “Using data from across the business to better predict actual customer needs” is also a priority for 54%. It seems that the integrated use of information to help customers is a priority even in some places where actual databases are already integrated completely. Representing the brand is another key area where call center managers see room for improvement. 48% place a priority on “helping frontline staff apply key brand values on calls,” and the same percentage prioritizes “aligning customer interactions with the organization’s customer relations strategy”. Branding, trust and consistency go hand in hand, and it appears that improving these are priorities for the majority of center managers.

Regional differences in priorities do not affect the general trends. UK respondents have a wider range of priorities for the next 12 months, and are much more likely than their US counterparts to prioritize improving the connection between brand and service. 58% prioritize aligning customer interaction with overall brand strategy (as opposed to 31% of US respondents), and 62% prioritize aligning customer interactions with overall customer service strategy (36% in the US). UK respondents were also much more likely to prioritize moving customer interactions toward online self-service (57% versus 33%).

Existing and Future Integration Needs

With online services now a fundamental part of a brand’s relationship with its customers, there are increasing challenges in integrating the more established call center with newer tools and processes introduced by the online experience. Call centers are increasingly generating huge volumes of data, and there are clear signs that the proper management of this data and integration with data from other areas of the business (such as sales) is crucial to the future effectiveness of the business.

80% of those surveyed have either online customer contact points, or online purchasing (e-commerce) solutions. This figure is even higher in the UK (86%) than the US (75%). While both create interactions and feed into other systems, it is significant that far more (73%) have online customer contact points than have online purchasing. As a neardefault option for businesses in 2010, online customer service is clearly having a huge impact on the way consumers interact with brands. 67% of respondents agree that the availability of online customer service has “changed customer expectations of the call center”. Among those with online customer contact points, 74% (fig. 6) state that their online customer service is either ‘well integrated’ or ‘very tightly integrated’ to the call center. While this seems at first glance to be a positive statement, there is undoubtedly a feeling that there is some room for improvement. Only 39% agree that the level of integration is ‘very tight’ (interestingly, higher in the US – 46%, than the UK – 32%), and 52% (59% UK, 46% US) state that better integrating call center and online customer service is a strategic priority for the next 12 months.

While online integration is ranked highly among strategic priorities for the next year, the highest priority overall is integrating call center information with data from other parts of the organization. 60% of all respondents list this as a priority, with slightly more doing so in the UK (65%) than the US (56%). Prioritizing future integration makes good sense in the context of current levels reported. Only 54% (57% UK, 51% US, fig. 7) describe the systems that hold data from customer interactions as “fully integrated”. While a further 32% report some degree of integration, there are again signs that there is some distance to go before the ultimate target of total integration is met.

Breaking down the respondents by those with fully integrated data systems, and those without, we start to see clear benefits. As well as obvious benefits, such as a consistent customer experience (71% for those with full integration, 52% for those without); there are also greater business benefits: those with full integration are more likely (64%) than those without (42%) to say they are “good at identifying customers who can be persuaded to consider a new offer”. Add to this improved customer perceptions of the call center as “efficient” (62% vs. 32%) and “insightful” (38% vs. 23%) and the benefits of integrated systems become clear.

Real-Time Benefits

While a fully integrated data system is becoming a necessary characteristic of a successful call center, advanced technology used to support agents in making customer recommendations can be seen to deliver even greater benefits. As seen earlier in the report, technology is generally seen to support the positive aspects of a call center’s service. 54% of respondents state that “using data from all areas of the business to better predict customer needs” as a strategic priority for the next 12 months. For call centers looking for a competitive edge, advanced real-time decisioning solutions offering analytically derived propensity scores should form a key part of fulfilling this strategic aim. At the present moment, usage of this level of technology is relatively low, with only 27% stating they have access to this kind of functionality (fig. 8). A further 17% have a less sophisticated real-time decisioning engine (based solely upon data from customer interaction history), but in 30% of businesses surveyed, call center agents receive no prompts at all.

Current approaches to real-time decisioning technology vary slightly by country (fig. 9). While those in the UK are more likely (29% vs. 24% in the US) to have one of the more sophisticated decisioning options, and US agents are more likely (36% vs. 23% in the UK) to receive no prompts at all, there is a degree of polarization in the US responses. 20% of US respondents have the most sophisticated level of decisioning support (“analytically derived propensity scores as well as current interaction context”) against only 11% in the UK. There is also a notable divide between small (50-150 seat) and large (150+ seat) call centers. The larger centers are predominantly using ‘mid-level’ systems, which offer some level of prompts but no derived propensity scores (56% of large centers are in this category, against only 21% of small centers).

The incentive to move to these more insightful, real-time systems is made evident by comparing different groups in the sample. Respondents were divided into three key segments: those with Advanced RTD Engines (those with analytically derived propensity scores), those with Interaction-Based Only systems (those with capacity only to rely on customer interaction data, whether real-time or not), and those whose agents received No Prompts At All. Clear differences in perceived success of the call center emerge between the three groups.

Advanced tools are giving call center operatives more information, which leads to a greater ability to service customer needs. 58% (fig. 10) of those with Advanced RTD Engines rate their performance in “gathering data on new customers to plan their relationship” as high, against 56% of those with Interaction-Based systems and only 38% of those where agents receive No Prompts At All. They also rate their performance in “using customer insight to make relevant offers on all inbound contacts” more highly: 47% agree, against only 33% (Interaction Only) and 32% (No Prompts).

Even more significantly, the tools are clearly providing benefits to businesses’ ability to use call center interactions to both gain and retain customers. Respondents with Advanced RTD Engines are more likely to describe themselves as “good at identifying customers who can be persuaded to consider a new offer” (75%, against 60% for Interaction Only and 35% for No Prompts), and “able to make use of customer insight to retain customers we might otherwise lose” (83%, against 60% for Interaction Only and 55% for No Prompts). Furthermore, the added insight brought to the table by advanced systems even increases an organization’s ability to revive lost accounts: 61% of those with advanced systems rate their performance in “re-establishing profitable relationships with former customers” highly, against 42% (Interaction Only) and 25% (No Prompts).

Conclusion and Recommendations

Organizations are beginning to recognize that traditional, outbound selling, particularly via the telephone, offers diminishing returns for the business. While a minority of sales environments depend on such approaches, the future of the customer relationship resides in sustained, informed and tailored customer service. As such, all customer interactions become an opportunity to build value in the relationship and generate revenues. This turns a customer call center into a real-time customer relationship builder. However, the opportunity presented by this transition is only as good as the timeliness and quality of the customer information available to the business. Findings from the survey show that the majority of organizations either fall short of customer insight ‘best practice’ or acknowledge a need for improvement in data integration and real-time data availability. The following recommendations are based upon the findings from the Customer Insight Research 2010 for consideration in future call center strategy development:

• Integration: The integration of the call center into other business areas is a key challenge for 2011. Call centers need to connect to other customer databases, online environments and wider departmental functions to increase operational efficiency
• Insights: Better customer insight on the frontline is shown to lead to sales and customer service efficiency. However, most call center environments show a need for improvement in how customer insights are created and used. With the right systems and processes in place, any customer interaction can generate revenue building opportunities
• Brand: The call center is identified as a key brand advocate. Better data within the call center improves the ability of call center professionals to represent the business, establish trust and build brand in a ‘live’ situation