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Egypt, Award Winners of the UK Outsourcing Destination 2008

Posted Thu 6 November 2008 @ 2:03 p.m. by Megan

Egypt was awarded the Outsourcing Destination of the Year 2008 at the UK National Outsourcing Association Award night held in London. The Award night was at the end of October and attended by over 350 executives and outsourcing professionals. It's interesting news and it takes me back to our TUANZ Contact Centre Conference where we had Andrea Midgen from Vodafone NZ talk us through the benefits and reasons behind Vodafone's decision to go offshore for their outsourcing provider. ...

Categories: International | Profile

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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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Garry Jones is new Contact Centre Committee chairman; more committee members sought

Posted Thu 18 September 2008 @ 2:01 p.m. by Ernie

TUANZ Board Chairman Chris O'Connell has confirmed Garry Jones as the new Chair of the TUANZ Contact Centre Committee, effective immediately. The position became vacant following the resignation of Megan Lacy, who moved on from her job at LIC and is now a part time contributor to this Blog.Garry has been on the Committee for three years and is a practicing Contact Centre Manager, with responsibility for iinet's 90-seat facility. He was previously contact centre manager for Ihug, then a subsidiary...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile

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TUANZ in Phoenix

Posted Wed 17 September 2008 @ 3:22 p.m. by Sarah

Bernice Archer, our Key Relationship Manager is in Phoenix this week on a fact-finding mission for next year's TUANZ Contact Centre Conference. She's promised to keep us up to date, so here's her first installment:I’m in Phoenix, Arizona, at the ICMI/ACCE Annual Call Centre Exhibition and Conference, experiencing 40 degree heat, with no fridge, food, or beverages provided in my not so cheap hotel room in the city. The closest convenience store is 1 MILE away (they have not yet discovered the...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership

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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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Outsourcing and TV3

Posted Fri 25 July 2008 @ 5:33 a.m. by Sarah

Did anyone happen to catch the Campbell Live piece about outsourcing on TV3? It was prompted by a review of the KiwiShare in which the government suggests that certain core services such as the 123 service remain in New Zealand based contact centres. Outsourcing is a contentious topic, and when it focused on the local scene, the article drew some interesting responses. EPMU secretary Andrew Little discussed the impact of losing contact centre jobs in Hamilton and Palmerston North and TUANZ Chief...

Categories: International | Profile

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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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Contact Centre – industry or profession?

Posted Fri 13 June 2008 @ 7:56 a.m. by Sarah

“New Zealand contact centres are dynamic, productive and exciting, and very well regarded in the global customer service and sales community.” That statement is on the back of the cover of the DVD 'NZ Contact Centre Industry Profile', and you will find no argument to that claim in this blog. But, I do have a query about the title of the DVD – in particular the use of the word ‘industry’. Can we really describe contact centres in this way? Isn’t an industry about a product or service – for example,...

Categories: International | Profile

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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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Marketing struggles to be heard in the boardroom too

Posted Thu 15 May 2008 @ 4:24 p.m. by Sarah

One of the issues contact centre managers struggle with is how to get the ear of their company's CEO and its board. So I couldn't help but smile when, in the latest issue of NZ Marketing Magazine, chief executive of the Marketing Association Sue McCarty mentioned boardroom buy-in was a hot topic at a recent US conference run by The Economist."There was a lot of talk about the challenge of getting marketing into the boardroom and the language and approach senior marketers need to adopt in order...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership

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80/20 – why is this the ubiquitous metric?

Posted Tue 13 May 2008 @ 8:47 a.m. by Sarah

If there is one metric that appears to be universal it’s the target 80/20 – that is 80 per cent of all calls answered within 20 seconds. I was reminded of this while reading a summary report on the Telecommunication Dispute Scheme, which mentioned the Scheme’s administrators had exceeded this telephony target. But why is 80/20 such a ubiquitous metric? Where did it come from? This was a question that came up at the Contact Centre Conference workshop on metrics and then, just last week, a very...

Categories: Benchmarking | International

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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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Dear diary...

Posted Wed 16 April 2008 @ 9:53 p.m. by Sarah

OK, so the prizes for the networking and exhibitor competitions are in, the speakers presentations are mostly here, we’ve confirmed the meeting with the Awards MC for next week, our keynote has emailed to say she’s excited about coming over, the committee are all …. Yes, yes, less than a week to go before kick-off and heaps of stuff still to do, but mostly we’re just really excited about the Conference and the Awards. Fielding questions and making sure all our delegates are well informed about...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership

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The cheques are on their way – delivering great customer service

Posted Thu 10 April 2008 @ 5:18 p.m. by Sarah

Customer service is simple. A dollop of product knowledge, a dash of niceness and a sprinkling of common sense and you have the tried and true recipe for customer service delivery. Simple right? Actually no, it’s not. I’d even go so far to say it’s the opposite of simple. Good customer service is complex because human beings are complex. Every time a customer phones a contact centre to ask about a product or service, the agent who answers must not only deal with the enquiry, they must contend...

Categories: International | Recruitment and HR

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Telecom to continue outsourcing

Posted Thu 10 April 2008 @ 5:15 p.m. by Sarah

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...

Categories: Events | International | Recruitment and HR

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You can leave your suitcase

Posted Thu 3 April 2008 @ 9:19 a.m. by Sarah

Registrations for the Contact Centre Conference and Awards are rolling in but this year we’ve had a bit of feedback about the fact the Awards ceremony is the day before Anzac Day. Some of you, especially those from out of town, are a little concerned about having to travel the next day. One manager told me he had an 8am flight the next day, and while that hadn’t stopped him booking a corporate table for the Awards (good man!); he was wondering a little about how he’d cope. So I rather cavalierly...

Categories: Events | International

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Outsourcing - on the way out?

Posted Tue 4 March 2008 @ 6:02 a.m. by Ernie

Has outsourcing had its day? Yes, according to a speaker I listened to a few days ago in London at the annual conference of TUANZ's sister group, the Communications Management Association.Bruce Everest, Emerging Technologies Director of Avaya, told his audience that businesses had come to recognise Customer Service representatives as "the eyes and ears of the business." He saw a real trend to move away from outsourcing and bring the contact centre back inside. "Gone are the days of outsourcing to...

Categories: Events | International

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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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Migrants vital to filling skills gap in contact centres - TUANZ

Posted Thu 17 January 2008 @ 8:17 a.m. by Sarah

Should prospective migrants to New Zealand be considered favourably if they intend to seek employment in contact centres that operate in the ICT sector? TUANZ believes they should. CEO Ernie Newman has sent the following letter to the Immigration Department after a representative wrote to him asking for information about the need for migrant workers in helpdesk support roles: “I circulated your inquiry widely among employers in this specialist field. There has been a range of opinions expressed....

Categories: International | Recruitment and HR

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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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Keynote speaker for the TUANZ Contact Centre Conference 2008

Posted Thu 13 December 2007 @ 3:17 p.m. by Leah

We here at TUANZ are absolutely rapt that Kare Anderson, an Emmy-winning Wall Street Journalist turned author and speaker will be joining us down here in New Zealand in April next year. Excitement built throughout negotiations as we learnt the calibre of her clients, I mean how much bigger can you get than Google?Kare's the publisher of the international “Say It Better" E-Zine. She's the author of several books, including “Getting What You Want” (in 19 languages), “Resolving Conflict...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership

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Wanted – one world-class, kick-*@#! speaker

Posted Wed 14 November 2007 @ 12:11 p.m. by Sarah

The theme for next year’s Contact Centre Conference on April 23 and 24 is Leadership – in the workplace and in the profession. How do you inspire loyalty, create the right culture, and be a mentor to your agents? We’re compiling a draft list of speakers and we’re on the look out for an international keynote. At TUANZ we’ve built the reputation of this conference on the world-class speakers we fly to New Zealand especially for the event. Speakers such as of Brad Cleveland from the US, author of...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership

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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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India, the Philippines and now Eygpt

Posted Wed 10 October 2007 @ 9:53 a.m. by Sarah

Vodafone is the latest telco to outsource part of its contact centre operation overseas. According to the NZ Herald, 200,000 calls from New Zealand prepay customers will soon be answered in Cairo. The tight labour market has apparently made it difficult for Vodafone NZ to recruit local staff to cope with a 35% increase in call volumes. Staff shortages are a problem throughout the sector, which is why we are holding the TUANZ ICT Skills Shortage Conference in November. This conference is specifically...

Categories: International | Leadership | Recruitment and HR

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