The ultimate people business

Although they didn't start out that way, contact centres are maturing, finally, into their own inherent logic of existence, which is to be the ultimate people business. This means not just the people outside them, as in customers, but the people inside them, who are the only means of converting the technology, the processes, and now, legislation into desirable deliverables for customers.

Investing in a contact centre's agents is actually an investment in marketing, sales, advertising, and public relations.

Evan Jones is business development manager at Merchants.

Set up nearly three decades ago to reduce the cost and complexity of dealing with customers, contact centres still have the capacity to minimise the price organisations must pay for achieving customer satisfaction. But today, that's a rather pleasant by-product of optimising the way contact centre agents function.

The point is that if the agents are happy, well trained, and motivated, then the contact centre will automatically have an efficient operation that naturally takes the shortest route from customer interaction to positive figures on its bottom line.

Agents who have the full backing of the operation in the form of ongoing relevant training, comfortable and supportive working conditions, and appropriate business intelligence resources will inherently be motivated to deliver the ideal experience to the customer.

As a consequence, both customer satisfaction and loyalty will soar. Customers will then begin to sell the organisation, through word of mouth and referrals. So, not only will the operation retain existing customers, it will build new revenue streams. In effect, great agents help to expand an organisation's sales and marketing teams by the number of customers they satisfy. Investing in a contact centre's agents is actually an investment in marketing, sales, advertising, and public relations.

In other words, focusing on effective management of people, whether they're customers or agents, is exceptionally good business.

In today's South Africa, it is good business not just for commercial reasons, but also because it keeps the operation comfortably ahead of what could otherwise be extremely onerous legislation aimed at protecting consumers and employees.

In fact, it converts onerous legislation into a market differentiator for the contact centre. Contact centres are now obliged to consider the consumer's rights in relation to equal treatment, privacy, choice, disclosure and information, fair and responsible marketing, fair and honest dealing, fair, just, and reasonable terms and conditions, fair value, good quality, and safety, and accountability by suppliers.

That's a pretty good definition of the ideal customer experience. If a company wants its contact centre to deliver that experience, then it needs agents whose own rights have been taken care of. One way to ensure this is for contact centres to invest in ongoing training and education of agents, as well as creating career paths for them. This makes the agent's commitment to the contact centre's objectives worthwhile.

Even if there was no legislation forcing South African contact centres to care about consumers and employees in this way, there really is no reason why contact centres should resist embracing the people-based best practice that has, throughout the history of commerce and in any sector of business, distinguished great businesses from the also-rans.

There's just no logic in believing that agents working in a sweatshop environment could give any customer the ideal experience.

Which is why, internationally, the contact centre trend is towards improving the management of human capital.

Dimension Data's 2011 Benchmarking Survey shows, for instance, that 61.8% of the 217 operators interviewed globally are defining career development paths for employees, 61.6% are implementing employee engagement schemes, and 51.2% are introducing schemes to reduce attrition and improve retention. Almost 65% are celebrating and promoting best practice.

Interestingly, the survey shows the biggest moves in employment strategies are towards upskilling agents to work across multiple query types (72.8%) and across multiple channels (67.3%).

Clearly, this carries massive benefits for the contact centre operator, because it provides far greater flexibility in deploying staff, enabling cost reductions and efficiency improvements. It also enables contact centres to move towards unified communications capabilities, which will also slash costs while massively boosting delivery capabilities - and enable contact centres to secure contracts in future.

However, it does underscore the fact that none of the technology and productivity benefits that contact centres need to be able to offer their customers can be achieved without agents who are highly trained, motivated, and committed to the customer's brand and strategies.

In that context, it's worth noting that the Benchmarking Survey shows that only 32.7% of the respondents are trying to instil a pay-for-performance culture. In the ultimate people business, pay is important - but not quite as important as being superb just because you can.