Teledirect: Media Clippings

IT COMPANIES are one of the earliest industries to use contact centres as a delivery service method - most famously to provide tech help to customers - but as the ICT race shows no sign of slowing down, these organisations are discovering that contact centres can do so much more for the business. The most significant development of the contact centre story is that what was once considered a cost centre is now being used to drive profits, a concept coined "sales acceleration" by one of the region's largest outsource contact centre companies. Coupled with other newly-emerging roles, the contact centre is beginning to feature more heavily in ICT organisations' plans to boost sales and performance.

Firstly, IT companies are realising that one of the most streamlined ways of running a contact centre is to outsource. The service provider has a stronger impetus than, say, a bank running an in-house contact centre, to explore cost-saving ICT technologies and workforce management tools. They are also more likely to take advantage of emerging trends such as IP and convergence.

Furthermore, an outsourced contact centre has the physical flexibility an in-house outfit does not. Without a physical set-up, no capital costs are incurred. Rather, the organisation's cost of running a well-managed contact centre with fully-trained staff and the appropriate technology is merely the price of a contract.

Statistics also paint a positive upward trend in the industry. According to a new Everest Research Institute study, outsourcing contact centre work is in a rapid growth phase, especially in selected key Asian and European locations, with annual growth rates of more than 30 per cent.

The study, titled Trends in Off-Shore Contact Centre Services Market, also reports that the global contact centre outsourcing market has grown to a US$55 billion opportunity today.

Sales acceleration is one reason why. More than the mere answering of inbound inquiries, IT organisations are contracting contact centres to help sell products and services to the customers most likely to purchase.

Take, for instance, this actual case study. A leading IT manufacturer with a multi-tiered distribution model serving tens of thousands of resellers wished to communicate its channel programmes in a more timely and effective manner, besides increasing product sales. They recognised that a regional telesales account management team was necessary and contracted a top out-outsource contact centre provider to facilitate this.

A team was set up to manage the complete channel business process across 20 countries in the region. Reseller contacts and profiles were gathered and stored in a centralised database system. The service provider also designed a new customer relations management (CRM) tool and a web-based system that allowed resellers to enter issues or sales leads. This system also gave the client up-to-date market information on all sales leads across the region.

As a result, the client increased its channel relationship by 900 per cent while sales contribution increased by 30 per cent in the first quarter of operations.

In another example, an outsource provider to a leading IT manufacturer set up a team to handle the client's online store inquiries. The service provider also designed and implemented a new CRM tool which records the particulars of each caller. This data is then used to help identify other products available at the online store which the customer, based on the information gathered earlier, would potentially be interested in. These targeted sales pitches are more likely to turn into actual sales compared to cold calls.

At the same time, the team handled end-to-end customer transactions including payment processing and entry of orders to the online store. As a result, the online store increased sales by 30 per cent in the first month of operations and had a ROI of over 20 times.

A more optimised performance is another benefit of this approach. Equipped with the relevant tolls, experience and training with costs buoyed by economies of scale, an outsourced contact centre is able to provide greater efficiency and better results for IT companies.

For example, an established regional service provider executed a revamp exercise for a global company in the data communications industry by centralising the administration team and developing a customised CRM system. The agent utilisation rate increased from 50 per cent to 80 per cent while response time to channel feedback improved from five working days to two working days. Cost per transaction was reduced by 26 per cent. IT organisations are also streamlining their operations by using these experts to review and manage their contact centres to smooth out problematic work processes.

A leading technology solutions provided needed to establish communications with thousands of clients but were hampered by a lack of tools to de-duplicate records. Using superior software, the outsourcer established a de-duplication rate of 16.3 per cent which translated into savings of 24 per cent from not having to make repeat calls.

As IT organisations seek to develop the next big thing in tech, they are also looking for ways to boost performance from within, especially sales figures. They are recognising that an outsourced contact centre, with high-end technology and a focus on sales acceleration techniques, can bring them benefits beyond excellent service delivery.