Contact centres get a bad rap in Europe, with the public’s attitude summed up by the advert on the side of a London bus for an insurance product which guaranteed ‘No Clucking Call Centres’.
Negative press is just one of the many subjects under discussion at the inaugural Contact Centre Global Forum, which Paul Goode from Datacraft in New Zealand is attending with a group of local managers.
Prior to the conference the group visited the Leeds City Council. They were then supposed to check out an outsourced centre in Scotland but this didn’t occur, as Goode explains in his latest posting:
“Due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to can our Scotland contact centre visit but we did get a chance to sample a few Scottish beers (not as good as English ones, but I could be biased) and several single malts, favourite was an 18-year-old Glenlivet.
Since my last update we have been to Holland, where we had a couple of nights in Amsterdam and visited a managed service operation for financial services. A very interesting visit as they had a great service attitude. Their main issue is attrition but it was great to see they had actually solved the knowledge base problem with a product called ‘e-glue’ (virtual coach). They had also formed a really successful partnership with their vendors, Amstel.
Amsterdam was followed by our last leg to Cannes via Frankfurt (good job I don’t route calls the same way they routed our flights) with a Becks in the lounge.
We are now in Cannes, first day complete. French beer is not so good, so we're shifting towards Gin and Tonic, more refreshing in the hot sun after a walk along the promenade to the venue (life’s a beach!!!)
The first day has been really interesting; some fantastic speakers including the polar ice cap team leader. He was very motivational and insightful about leadership and managing different types of people. There have been some very interesting debates and interactive sessions which I shall update as I consolidate them.
It’s great to meet contact centre professionals from around the world (everyone asks about rugby) and to hear about their issues and concerns. The contact centre industry has a bad name up here, which was summed up by an advertisement on a bus in London which offered insurance with a guarantee of ‘no clucking call centres.’
We managed to get a fantastic session this evening with the Global and European CIS team from Dimension Data. This was an excellent opportunity to discuss strategic thinking and get an insight into current global trends.
That’s it for now. Tomorrow we have an afternoon on the benchmarking report with a discussion to follow - looking forward to another great day.