Telecom has signaled to investors that it intends to continue with outsourcing its contact centres. In an article on stuff.co.nz, chief executive Paul Reynolds is reported to have announced that the company plans to push its policy of outsourcing.
Is this good news for the contact centre profession? I guess it depends on whether the business is moved to an outsourced centre in NZ or Manila. Of course telcos aren’t averse to outsourcing offshore, with Vodafone’s highly publicized move to Egypt provoking plenty of comment in the industry. (This is my cue to remind everyone that Vodafone’s director for customer service, Andrea Midgen, is speaking about the move at the TUANZ Contact Centre Conference later this month.)
Also of interest is the move by Telecom to ramp up its online sales and service. Reynolds has told investors that the long term strategic goal is for 60 per cent of customer transactions to take place online.
Again, is this a threat or an opportunity for the contact centre industry? It will be interesting to see what Air New Zealand manager for global online sales Kim Walbridge has to say at the Conference.
Air New Zealand is a leader in the field of online sales in this country. I was reading in the CIO magazine yesterday that in five years the company’s annual online revenue has increased from $150 million to over a $1 billion.
Chief executive Rob Fyfe is quoted: “It has cannibalised both the telephone channel and it has cannibalised people going into travel agents as well.”