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Posted Thu 11 December 2008 @ 3:36 p.m. by Megan

Do I dare to blog about this? How much time does a Contact Centre lose daily, weekly to the internet addiction? Am I over reacting? Has anyone done at research on this? I believe there is reason to be concerned. I bet every centre at one time or another have performance managed a staff member due to high internet use. I am always amazed to watch staff that are on the internet and on a phone call at the same time and they actually believe they can talk to the beloved customers and simultaneously...

Categories: Lifestyle | Technology

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A new way to audit your Centre?

Posted Thu 4 December 2008 @ 4:37 p.m. by Megan

Curiosity got the better of me this week, and I had to find out what this new contact centre audit tool was all about. New Zealand based business Customer Services Audit are promoting their new Snapshotz software that is specifically design for contact centres.How do you benchmark your Contact Centre and/or perform a full audit on all areas? From my perspective, I had barriers that were time, effort and price. Enter Snapshotz, what can it do? Does this software cover all areas of...

Categories: Benchmarking | Profile | Technology | Vendors

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Speech Recognition-Don't make me talk to the automated person...

Posted Thu 20 November 2008 @ 1:22 p.m. by Megan

I was out to dinner with small but successful business the other night and the conversation got on to contact centre’s that have speech recognition as part of their service option when calling. And the most disappointing thing was that there were no ‘happy’ service stories with the technology during the evening. One story was of a genuine cough during the call and the next thing this person was transferred to another area as it ‘recognisied’ a cough as a word. I know this is might be an extreme...

Categories: Benchmarking | Leadership | Lifestyle | Technology

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Learnings from the ICMI Conference

Posted Mon 22 September 2008 @ 3:58 p.m. by Sarah

On her way back from Phoenix, TUANZ Key Relationships Manager Bernice Archer has found time to reflect on the ICMI Annual Call Center Exhibition and Knowledge Exchange Conference. Here are her findings: The ICMI Annual Call Center Exhibition and Knowledge Exchange Conference was held over a few days in Phoenix Arizona last week. I was fortunate enough to attend and witness some very informative sessions. The theme throughout the conference leaned towards work relationships, and...

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Hyperconnectivity, and Gen Y

Posted Mon 28 July 2008 @ 1:15 p.m. by Ernie

Hyperconnectivity! Its a wonderful word and sums up beautifully the presentation being given at the TUANZ Contact Centre lunches this week.In one of the most thought provoking and engaging presentations for some time, Darren Leffler of Nortel in Australia told the audience at our bulging Christchurch venue today about the impact of Web 2.0 on the contact centre. The new way Generation Y customer interact in Web 2.0 is a historic inflexion point, he said.Leffler - a Gen X who got an iPod for his 40th...

Categories: Events | International | Technology | Vendors

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Do not call list - United Future wants legislation

Posted Wed 16 July 2008 @ 4:54 a.m. by Ernie

As the election approaches and parties look around for differentiating issues, United Future has called for outbound telemarketing to be legislated through a national "do not call" list. This is despite the voluntary list that has been run for several years now by the Marketing Association.While there is no doubt telemarketers can sometimes be persistent and annoying, the issue in New Zealand has reached nothing like the scale of countries such as the USA where some consumers had reported receiving...

Categories: International | Lifestyle | Technology

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TUANZ lifting the bar on contact centre activities for 2008/2009

Posted Wed 9 July 2008 @ 4:57 p.m. by Ernie

Bernice Archer, TUANZ Key Relationships Manager, reports as follows: “Following a decision in May by the TUANZ Board to allocate more resources to serving the needs of contact centres, A dynamic and buzzing TUANZ Contact Centre Committee convened a few days ago for a Strategic Planning Session for 2008 through to 2010. Committee Chair Megan Lacy (Livestock Improvement Corp), committee members Anne Withington (TelstraClear), Paul Eastwood (Coca Cola Amatil), Giles Potter (Great Outcomes),...

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We're all in sales now

Posted Mon 23 June 2008 @ 5:26 p.m. by Sarah

I’m on the plane returning from a jam-packed Contact Centre Lunch in Christchurch. Any three of the speakers chosen by host Nick Egerton from UCMS could have held the room for 40 minutes, but together under the title ‘The Importance of Customer Interaction’ they presented a comprehensive session on this broad topic.Chris Price from Permission (specialists in online marketing) talked about how to turn website leads into paying customers. That is, the casual user who is looking for a product or service...

Categories: Events | Recruitment and HR | Technology | Vendors

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Monitoring agents on the web – but where’s the trust?

Posted Tue 17 June 2008 @ 10:52 a.m. by Sarah

Staff abusing their web privileges and wasting time on sites like Trademe and Facebook is a problem that plagues many contact centres. There is plenty of software out there that will monitor individual workstations, and I often get press releases emailed to me from companies advertising their solutions. But the one I received today for a product called Spector 360, gave me pause. Here’s their advertising pitch: With Spector 360 you will find out: Which agents are off-task instead of doing their...

Categories: Leadership | Recruitment and HR | Technology | Vendors

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Speech analytics – is this the next big thing?

Posted Thu 5 June 2008 @ 8:39 a.m. by Sarah

It appears the tech boffins are at it again – they’ve come up with a software tool that will electronically analyse what customers say, text and blog about a company. According to an article in this month’s CIO magazine, text analytics technology is able to group and categorize customer comments and then electronically produce an easy-to-read report that will pin point for senior management exactly where customer dissatisfaction lies. The article features a case study about a hotel chain in America....

Categories: International | Technology

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Clarity, Specificity, Brevity, Power of the pause – Conference 08

Posted Thu 1 May 2008 @ 9:57 a.m. by Sarah

As a delegate, the success of a conference can be measured by the number of tools that you take back to your workplace the next day. So it was rather good of keynote Kare Anderson to provide so many 'take-home' in the first session on day one of the TUANZ Contact Centre Conference 2008. Her insights into how we communicate and how those at the coalface of customer service can ensure they make a good – and lasting – impression, were extremely valuable According to Kare, there are four ways to can...

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Hanging out with the Manawatu Contact Centre Cluster

Posted Wed 19 March 2008 @ 9:07 p.m. by Sarah

The Manawatu Contact Centre Cluster held their first meeting of the year today and I was lucky enough to be invited to make a presentation to the group. About 30 managers and team leaders were present from 9 centres around the Manawatu and lower North Island. It’s such a vibrant area for contact centres and I was left wondering how much of this is down to the fact that those who work in the region are committed to getting together on a semi-regular basis (about four times a year) and sharing...

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E-govt – 6 days to answer an email!

Posted Mon 18 February 2008 @ 2:32 p.m. by Sarah

I've just received a press release from Otago University about research conducted by Associate Professor Robin Gauld from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine. Apparently his team of researchers has been studying e-government responsiveness – a flash way of saying that they’ve worked out how long it takes to get a reply from a government agency when you send them an email. Professor Gauld says the team emailed 273 government agencies in New Zealand Australia. The message asked...

Categories: Benchmarking | Technology

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Judges tips for 2008 TUANZ Contact Centre Awards

Posted Fri 15 February 2008 @ 6:49 a.m. by Sarah

Entries for the TUANZ Contact Centre Awards are now open and can be accessed on our website. This year, the entry criteria has been completely revamped by a panel of three of our most experienced judges* in order to ensure they reflect best practice in the contact centre profession in 2008. Filling out the online entry forms is the first, very crucial stage. If you can effectively express your achievements in writing, you will make it into the second round. Once you are in the finals, the...

Categories: Benchmarking | Events | Leadership | Recruitment and HR | Technology

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Conference programme at the printer

Posted Wed 13 February 2008 @ 9:30 p.m. by Sarah

Well the TUANZ Contact Centre Conference and Awards 2008 Programme is off to the printers and it's 8 pages long. No wonder I haven’t had any time to write Mouthpiece blogs! It feels like a novel (with plenty of interesting characters I assure you!). TUANZ members should receive the programme in the mail early next week. You all know about our keynote – Kare Anderson – and the theme is Leadership and we’ll be having site visits and well, I think that’s all I’m willing to divulge. Today at any rate....

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How much should you pay for 'On Hold' music?

Posted Fri 1 February 2008 @ 8:18 a.m. by Sarah

We've had an enquiry from a large contact centre wanting to know what fees they should pay for playing music on their PABX systems to customers when they are on hold. They had thought they were coverd by purchasing an annual license to APRA via the organisation On Hold Marketing. Now another organisation - Phonographic Performances NZ - has approached the contact centre and demanded they too are paid a fee or they'll take legal action. Is this a problem facing...

Categories: Technology | Vendors

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Ma'as Salaama 2007

Posted Fri 21 December 2007 @ 9:19 a.m. by Sarah

For those of you wondering, Ma’as Salaama means goodbye in the version of Arabic spoken in Egypt. Or at least according to the website I just Googled it does. I thought it would be an appropriate way to sign off on the Mouthpiece blog for 2007 because the post about Vodafone outsourcing the pre-pay section of its contact centre to Egypt was one of the top five blogs for 2007.The metric I’ve chosen to assess blog popularity is the number of comments the post received. Scanning through all 106 posts...

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CSRs working from home – whatever happened to that idea?

Posted Fri 19 October 2007 @ 9:15 a.m. by Sarah

Stay-at-home agents have become a kind of holy grail in the contact centre sector. The idea that CSRs can be scattered around the country, taking and making phone calls via sophisticated VoIP connections that ensure they meet their KPIs is just, well, not happening. We all know what the benefits of a remote agent are – lifestyle gains for the employee, a committed and plentiful staff for the employer, and less traffic commuting on clogged motorways will benefit the environment (just think...

Categories: International | Recruitment and HR | Technology

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Blog moderation

Posted Thu 4 October 2007 @ 12:37 p.m. by Sarah

Due to some potentially defamatory comments being posted on the TUANZ blogs we have had to reinstate the moderation facility. This means that before a comment can be published it will be read by a member of the TUANZ staff. Any readers wishing to post comments under a pseudonym are most welcome to do so. But please understand that if you choose a name that is an obvious reference to a high-profile member of the telecommunications sector - and which can’t be substantiated - it won’t be published....

Categories: Technology

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Calm Professionalism at Massey Contact Centre

Posted Tue 18 September 2007 @ 7:45 a.m. by Ernie

Sometimes you walk into a work environment and get an instant sense that all is well and it's functioning like a well-oiled machine. That was my impression a few days ago when I visited the contact centre at Massey University on the outskirts of Palmerston North to catch up with Contact centre Manager Tina Hilliam, a well known identity in contact centre circles and a regular at TUANZ events.As the focal point for students from three campuses - Albany, Palmerston Nth and Wellington - to connect with...

Categories: Leadership | Profile | Recruitment and HR | Technology | Vendors

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Can you legally tape your customers?

Posted Fri 31 August 2007 @ 9:47 a.m. by Sarah

Taping an agent’s phone calls is probably taken for granted in most contact centres. Customers are usually notified this will occur in the recorded message at the beginning of the call or the agent themselves will tell them at the start of the conversation. The reason for the recording is often given as “training purposes”. But is it legal? That’s the question TUANZ received from a company in the freight sector this week. They want to tape the CSR’s interaction with customers but they don’t want...

Categories: Recruitment and HR | Technology

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Driving the web experience

Posted Wed 22 August 2007 @ 4:24 p.m. by Sarah

Internet channels such as web-chat are yet to be embraced by Contact Centres in New Zealand and Australia, according to a study by Genesys 'Contact Centre Realities Volume 9'. Based on a survey of 236 contact centre managers in 19 industries across Asia Pacific, it shows only 4% of respondents from this part of the world support web-chat, compared to 22% in South Korea. The benefits of proactive web-chat are, according to the report, threefold: reduce abandonment rates, increase customer...

Categories: Technology

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First line of defence for ISP contact centre staff

Posted Wed 15 August 2007 @ 12:24 p.m. by Sarah

Cheap modems can be a constant bugbear for ISP contact centre agents because they can have a “catastrophic effect on a customer’s broadband service,” and it’s hard to determine whether it’s the client’s connection or the ISP's network that’s at fault. That’s according to Mike Cranna, managing director of Epitiro. He's circulated an email among the industry seeking interest on to whether it’s viable for his company to establish a modem and router testing service. “First of all, it requires the cooperation...

Categories: Technology

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Attend an Anti-Spam seminar, avoid a $500,000 fine

Posted Mon 13 August 2007 @ 3:59 p.m. by Sarah

Anti-Spam legislation – the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 - comes into effect on September 5. Businesses found in breach of the new law will face maximum penalties of $500,000. The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has created a website specifically about the new law and is holding a series of free two-hour 'anti-spam' seminars around the country next week. Contact Centres will need to be conversant in anti-spam legislation as it covers email, instant messaging, SMS, and MMS...

Categories: Events | Technology

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Only 50% of technology used effectively

Posted Mon 30 July 2007 @ 1:48 p.m. by Sarah

When Datacraft representative Paul Goode moved to New Zealand he was initially impressed with the high level of technology adopted by contact centres. His first thoughts were that the local scene was equal to Scandinavian countries in being the most technically advanced in the world. Then he discovered that while New Zealand contact centres might have the gear, they aren’t using it effectively. He estimates that only 50% of technology in contact centres is actually utilised. Goode has 15...

Categories: Benchmarking | Technology | Vendors

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