GMT Survey Shows Reducing Operating Costs and Customer Retention are..

Key Strategic Priorities for UK Contact Centres in 2007

Survey respondents highlight resource optimisation and analytics as essential tools to achieve these goals

A new survey conducted by GMT Corp. has revealed that planning is increasingly becoming a strategic activity in UK contact centres, helping to drive such business initiatives as reducing operating costs and churn, and introducing more intelligent deployment of resources across the enterprise. The survey conducted last month across a host of industries, focused on what contact centre management aims to achieve in 2007. Results revealed several key objectives around improving service, optimising resources and using analytics to gain greater intelligence around contact centre performance and customer satisfaction.

The survey supports recent findings by Gartner¹, which predicts that an improved customer experience will not be realised until IT becomes fully integrated with customer service. This would enable greater consistency and efficiency across the front and back office functions and a better experience for customers all round. Almost half of respondents to the survey aim to apply the principles of intelligent deployment of resources across their organisation in 2007. For over 70% of respondents, the use of analytics to gain greater intelligence into contact centre performance was a key priority.

The results also revealed that workforce optimisation is key in making contact centres more efficient, and is a higher priority than cost cutting. Nearly 70% of respondents felt that optimising their workforces, meaning ensuring the right resources were available at the right time to meet demand more accurately was important to their business. Making the most of existing processes and staff – in terms of working smarter, rather than harder, cheaper, longer – was felt to be of particular importance. This objective was reflected in the 62% of respondents who perceived the reduction of churn in their operation to be highly important.

Results showed that managing and tracking staff is critical, not only for compliance and governance requirements, but also to ensure excellent customer service and manage costs. Over 50% of respondents revealed that agent empowerment is a priority for 2007, which reflects the trend for improving productivity, agent satisfaction and customer service – all of which ultimately impact positively on the bottom-line. With most organisations listing staff as their most expensive asset, any benefits offered by an effective resource optimisation solution will improve retention rates.  

Commenting on the survey’s findings, GMT CEO Simon Angove said, “These results show that workforce optimisation is seen as a strategic enterprise activity encompassing on the contact centre, the back office, the bank branch, customer order fulfilment and beyond. GMT’s resource optimisation products provide measurable business value to those enterprises seeking to achieve the goals reflected in this survey.”

GMT is the developer of GMT Planet, the industry’s only workforce optimisation solution designed to address the needs of the entire enterprise, from back-office and logistics needs to contact centre and branch banking operations. GMT Planet’s precise forecasting, dynamic scheduling and robust analytics put the right people in the right place at the right time to perform the right tasks, enabling frontline managers to focus on improving the customer experience and reducing operating costs.

Related Pages

Free White Paper: Reducing costs by integrating staff scheduling and time management

  

Liked this article? Why not get our latest articles delivered to you by email every week.