Recession not hurting IP telephony
The international call centre market is enthusiastically adopting voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) despite other cuts in spending due to the recession, according to V3.
A survey of call centres in 36 countries found that, while some are cutting back on implementing customer relationship management systems, the uptake of VOIP is actually increasing.
Leading the way is Africa, surprisingly, where 75% of call centres use VOIP systems, while in Britain the take-up rate is 60% and in the US only half of centres use VOIP, according to the annual Dimension Data Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report.
CRM is for SMEs too
Customer relationship management (CRM), that catch-all term for solutions that automate everything from sales to marketing to customer service, used to be the domain of big enterprises only, but not anymore, reports Small Business Computing.
Darius Vaskelis, vice-president of CRM at Sakonent Partners, a consultancy that specialises in CRM says, “Now, CRM is genuinely available to any business, whatever the size.”
CRM solutions also continue to improve and better analytics and dashboards give managers and employees instant snapshots of activity in their areas.
Contact centres move to network-based model
Changes in the way that industries approach customer service, as well as a shift away from offshoring, are making network-based contact centres, using software-as-a-service, a more popular option, according to the head of CRM for BT Global Services, says Telephony Online
As a result, contact centres are often better able to maintain business continuity in the event of manmade or natural disasters, Andrew Small said.
Small sees more companies moving away from large contact centres, with hundreds of agents, to more dispersed pockets of customer service representatives, supported by cloud-based software that enables routing of calls based on time-of-day, availability or even expertise.
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