Phone is still the most popular channel

The phone accounts for over 70% of inbound and outbound contact, according to a study conducted by Infinity CCS.

Their 2012 Contact Centre Campaign Survey reveals how effective contact centres are in setting up new customer campaigns or services.

The key findings of the research were:

• Phone is still the most frequently used communication channel for both ‘inbound’ and outbound’ contact (used in over 70% of both inbound and outbound projects). Other channels included email, web contact forms, post and social media.
• 62% of contact centre campaigns/projects are set up in under 3 weeks.
• The most popular type of campaign was ‘Customer Service’ (63.3%), followed by ‘Telemarketing/Sales’ (36.7%).
• When specialist campaign development software was used,  84% of organisations said that they found it ‘easier’ to launch campaigns, while 57% said it was ‘quicker’ to launch campaigns.
• 85% of campaigns/projects involved agents using a formal or informal script – with IT personnel, in-house software developers and/or external software developers involved in the IT implementation of these scripts in 63% of cases.
• 43% of organisations use specialist project development software for developing agent desktops, scripting, designing reports, etc.
• Managers and supervisors receive historical campaign reports on ‘call handling times’ in 70% of cases, ‘agent wrap times’  in 65%, and ‘callers in queue’ in 58%. The probability that agents receive these metrics is 55.9%, 44.1% and 35.3%, respectively.
• Cloud v. on-site technology: on-site technology is  still preferable, with 78% of Call Recording/Quality Management applications, 66.7% of ACD/Call Handling systems and 53.8% of Performance Management technology, respectively.  However, cloud-based apps were used for ACD/Call Handling (25.6%),  Data/Speech Analytics (23%), Call Recording/Quality Management (17.9%) and Dialler Technology (15.4%).

Carl Adkins, CEO, Infinity CCS, said, “Our 2012 survey provides a rare insight into how organisations set up, manage and report on their contact centre campaigns… It reveals just how fast contact centres have to launch new campaigns as well as the breadth of modern contact centre campaigns – from single-channel inbound or outbound campaigns with limited reporting, right through to complex multichannel inbound/outbound campaigns that use campaign development software and deliver sophisticated real-time and historic contact reports.”

“The uptake of cloud-based applications is also more conservative than might be imagined, showing that the majority of contact centre operations are still relying on premise-based technology, especially for the likes of call recording, quality management and ACD/call handling. We expect cloud market share to increase as legacy investments reach end of life and cloud vendors prove themselves to wary contact centres.”

A total of 62 organisations took part in the survey.  For each survey completed, Infinity donated £10 to The British Red Cross.

To view the complete research report – http://www.infinityccs.com/campaign-survey-results