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Posted Tue 27 February 2007 @ 11:56 a.m. by Sarah

Getting an intelligible reply out of the IT department can be a challenging experience for many Contact Centre managers. And it’s not because they don’t have the knowledge, but rather that they provide way too much information.TelstraClear applications consultant Paul de Haan offered the following anecdote, which is bound to raise a few wry smiles:“A company that develops CTI software initially created an application for telephony control that runs on a server. Then they added support for multiple...

Categories: Technology | Vendors

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Legislate for flexible working hours?

Posted Mon 26 February 2007 @ 1:02 p.m. by Sarah

The Department of Labour is in the process of compiling a report to Parliament’s Transport and Industrial Relations Committee around the issue of making flexible working hours a requirement for employers. Public submissions on a discussion paper released late last year have now closed. The results of this consultation will form part of a report to the Committee in July, when it reconsiders the proposed Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill. So how does this effect contact...

Categories: Lifestyle | Recruitment and HR

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Au Revoir, Gagau

Posted Sun 25 February 2007 @ 11:24 a.m. by Ernie

One of the best known - and longest - names in New Zealand contact centres has hung up her headset. Gagau Annandale Stone, Contact Centre Manager at the ANZ, is leaving after 29 years with the Bank.Gagau has had close links with TUANZ. In 2005 she led her team to win the TUANZ Contact Centre of the Year Award in the 50 seats plus category, as well as personally making the finals in the Contact Centre Manager of the Year category. She has also presented on occasion at a variety of TUANZ events, featured...

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile

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The bar work of the eighties?

Posted Fri 23 February 2007 @ 5:40 p.m. by Sarah

Do tertiary students today regard contact centre work in the same way that students viewed bar tending and waiting tables 20 years ago? Not as a career - but as short term means of paying the bills? And is that a bad thing?Hudson national recruitment manager Jane Reddiex says in a tight labour market, contact centre managers need to be realistic about where they can recruit quality CSRs. And if they are willing to take on first-year students as part time workers, they might find they’ve acquired...

Categories: Recruitment and HR

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The difference between $100K and $200K a year

Posted Thu 22 February 2007 @ 11:34 a.m. by Sarah

Why do so few senior contact centre managers become chief executives? Is it that most are content to remain at middle management level, or do they lack the nous to make the leap.Julian Smith was the contact centre manager for Coca Cola and Restaurant Brands before becoming the CEO of DataSquirt in 2003 – a position he left last year. Currently he is working under contract for Vector on the executive team.“Fifty percent (of contact centre managers) want to migrate and move on, but I’d say 95 per cent...

Categories: Leadership | Recruitment and HR

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Las Vegas? Yeah Right!

Posted Wed 21 February 2007 @ 6:29 p.m. by Lucy

So we aren't going to give you the bright lights, hot sun and dancing girls of Las Vegas, like some awards, but at least we are giving you a conference in a casino! It is on the 27th and 28th June, at the SKYCITY Conference Centre (conveniently attached to the casino by a small airbridge, if you are interested). So not only are we hosting an informative two-day conference but you can also have a starring role at the award's...

Categories: Events

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Technology upgrades put pressure on contact centres

Posted Tue 20 February 2007 @ 12:28 p.m. by Sarah

Upgrades such as Vista, Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 may arrive in a blaze of hype, but for contact centres they herald another cost that has to be factored into the budget.MED contact centre manager Andrew Wagg says that because most contact centres provide web support, it’s essential they have the same operating systems as their clients. And along with the costs involved in acquiring the software upgrades, contact centre staff also require additional training. What are some of the ways contact...

Categories: Technology

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Good times never seemed so good

Posted Mon 19 February 2007 @ 12:50 p.m. by Dee

If there’s one thing that Contact Centre people know how to do, its party! And the TUANZ Contact Centre Awards are always a good reason to kick up your heels. But when it comes to the dancing at the end of the night, certain contact centre professionals should be advised that it’s better to sing the words, rather than act them out. I had the experience of dancing with a manager during Neil Diamond’s classic Sweet Caroline. Needless to say the lyric “touching me, touching you” has taken...

Categories: Events | Profile

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Contact centre as research lab

Posted Fri 16 February 2007 @ 1:45 p.m. by Sarah

Four seats in CallPlus’s 80-seat contact centre are providing valuable information to the ISP on the brink on creating a nationwide telecommunications network. CallPlus currently resells Telecom’s copper wire, but with the onset of LLU the company can put their own equipment into telephone exchanges and roadside cabinets. In the meantime it’s developing a wireless network using Wimax technology. The test area is Whangarei, where there are currently 100 customers. This week CallPlus began a telemarketing...

Categories: Profile | Technology

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Ihug boost contact centre numbers

Posted Thu 15 February 2007 @ 8:37 a.m. by Sarah

The number of seats in the ihug contact centre was boosted by 20 seats to 80 in January, following a difficult two months last year in which the company was widely criticized for poor customer relations. Vodafone executive Russell Stephens has been drafted in as the general manager for Customer Care at ihug and his duties include managing the contact centre. “I came across the first week of November, and November for a lot of people in the industry was a pretty horrendous month with spam and everything...

Categories: Benchmarking | Profile

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Hoax Calls From Kids - Are They an Issue?

Posted Wed 14 February 2007 @ 8:38 a.m. by Ernie

Does your contact centre get hounded by hoax calls from little brats with too much time on their hands?For some it's a huge issue. In the case of one contact centre whose manager I spoke with today, as many as 10% of inbound calls are hoax calls from children.What do you do about them? What can you do, legally, to dampen the calls or retailliate? Are there steps you can take to deal with this problem within the law? Should there be (infanticide excepted)? Just how big a problem is it?Lets get...

Categories: Technology | Vendors

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Another thing to get addicted to

Posted Tue 13 February 2007 @ 9:58 a.m. by Sarah

We’re putting together a promotional card about the blogs for the After 5s circuit which begins next week (and which contact centre people are heartily invited to) and I had to write something about RSS feeds.For those that don’t know, RSS feeders are free applications that you can download from the internet. There’s a heap of them out there, but I subscribe to bloglines.com. Every time I discover a blog that I think is relevant I copy the link at the top of the page into the reader (so easy – it...

Categories: Technology

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Why customers hate us and what we can do about it!

Posted Mon 12 February 2007 @ 11:26 a.m. by Sarah

Do contact centres have an image problem? Obviously they do, or why else would I have lifted headline of this blog from the title of a panel debate at the Contact Centre Global Forum (CCGF).Just because most of us aren’t able to convince the boss that a trip to the south of France for the conference is a good investment (although really super nice ones like Ernie might consider it…), it doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from asking the question here. My opening salvo is:Customers hate contact centres...

Categories: International

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Outsource to the islands

Posted Fri 9 February 2007 @ 3:27 p.m. by Sarah

So a population of less than 60,000 doesn’t exactly make American Samoa a player in the outsourced contact centre industry. But news from the Associated Press that a contact centre employing up to 1000 workers will be established in the territory once it connects to the Southern Cross Cable, is an interesting development.The US government, which has signaled it’ll spend $US 3 million on the connection, is apparently keen to develop American Samoa’s economy. And hooking up to the underground fibre...

Categories: International

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iinet cuts the cord

Posted Thu 8 February 2007 @ 9:25 a.m. by Sarah

iinet contact centre employees packed up and left their former ihug colleagues two weeks ago, moving into new digs in City Rd, Auckland next door to the elegant Number 5 Restaurant. Contact Centre manager Garry Jones says they packed up their gear in a weekend, leaving behind their desks, chairs and other office paraphernalia and moved into their specially fitted-out building. With a custom built kitchen, a barbecue on the balcony and fresh fruit supplied free to staff twice a week, the iinet CSRs...

Categories: Profile | Recruitment and HR

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Do you love talking on the phone?

Posted Mon 5 February 2007 @ 3:00 p.m. by Sarah

When school returns this week after the long summer break a jolly great sigh of relief will be heard up and down the country. But for many mums and dads the realisation will strike that pushing the bills to the end of the bench as they grab the car keys and take the kids to the beach is no longer an option. Those hours between 9am and 3pm must now be filled with gainful employment. So what is the contact centre profession doing to attract the willing workers in an ever decreasing labour market?...

Categories: Recruitment and HR

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Speak up, be heard

Posted Mon 5 February 2007 @ 2:00 p.m. by Sarah

Living in a small country makes diplomats of us all. The person you slag off today could very well be the one you face across the desk at that crucial job interview tomorrow. And while a general population of four million by definition equates to a contact centre profession that is tiny compared to its counterparts in other countries, that doesn’t mean we can’t all benefit from frank and forthright discussion. Which is just my long-winded way of saying welcome to Mouthpiece – the TUANZ contact centre...

Categories: Benchmarking | Leadership

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