The Pressures & Challenges Facing Asia's Call Centres in 2009

Mr Sidney Yuen is an Executive Committee Member and Awards Chairman for the HKCCA. He is also Head of Global Consulting Services, Asia Pacific at Convergys.

In this exclusive interview, Sidney shares his insights about the pressures and challenges facing Asia's call centres in 2009.

To watch the interview click here.

Executive Insights - April 2009

Chris Knop

Executive Committee Member

Marketing & Corporate Social Responsiblity

Healthy Staff Healthy Profits

The HKCCA is committed to keeping you, our members up to date with corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in the contact centre industry.

Let’s firstly review what the concept of CSR encompasses (for full details refer to our white paper “Answering the Call for Corporate Social Responsibility”).

CSR encourages organisations to be accountable for their social and environmental impact beyond profit or legal obligations. It suggests that organisations consider their “stakeholders” in all aspects of conducting business.

Stakeholders are all those who are influenced (directly or indirectly) by an organisation. They can generally be grouped into the categories of:

1. Employees
2. Customers
3. Suppliers (supply chain management)
4. Community (including environmental impact)
5. Shareholders (and other investors)
6. Media
7. Government and regulators

In this article we will focus on the stakeholder employees, specifically related to the area of occupational health and safety and the use of display screen equipment.

Contact centre work involves sitting in a somewhat fixed position for many hours on end. It also involves restricted movements to access and use the computer, paperwork and answering phones. All of this brings with it considerable stress on the body and mind if ergonomics are not properly addressed.

It is extremely important to have display screen equipment guidelines in place. This is so that workstation best practices can be followed which minimize risk of injury and stress on your employees.

Not only should guidelines be in place, they need to be reviewed periodically to ensure they are being followed on an ongoing basis.

Some benefits of this are:

1. Happier healthier staff
2. Reduced sick leave due to stress or injury in the workplace
3. Higher productivity
4. Increased profit resulting from higher productivity and a healthy available workforce

The Hong Kong Labour Department has an enforceable regulation as well as code of practice in place relating to Display Screen Equipment. It is an excellent reference for all types of call centres.

Click here to view the CAP 509B OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH (DISPLAY SCREEN EQUIPMENT) REGULATION

The HKCCA suggests:

1. If you already have display screen equipment guidelines in place – review them against the Labour Department’s guidelines for best practice benchmarking
2. If you don’t have formal guidelines in place – use the Labour Department’s material

There are two main documents to refer to which are available on the department’s website. Click on the following to download:

1. A Health Guide On Working with Display Screen Equipment
2. Working with Display Screen Equipment

There are practical diagrams for your reference and even a workstation risk assessment checklist.

The regulation not only covers call centre employees. Chances are that your company has many display screen equipment “users” who are affected by the regulation. Consider making sure your human resources department is aware of the regulation and actively promotes its guidelines amongst all departments.

It is possible and advisable to go on step further and have certified DSE staff in your contact centre or company. This will then provide you with a DSE “champion” who can conduct audits on all DSE users. Courses are run by the Occupational Safety & Health Council and could be found by clicking here.

So go on don’t just sit there! Make DSE guidelines an integral part of your occupational health and safety commitment to your employees – one of your most valuable stakeholders.

Executive Insights - January 2009

Effectiveness Vs Efficiency
By Chris Knop

Executive Committee Member

Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility

Effectiveness and efficiency, what’s the difference?

The difference could be costing your company money and adversely effecting your daily operation.

Being efficient in your contact centre is easy. Follow your policies and procedures, hit your KPI’s and voila, you’re efficient! Maybe so in your mind, but it’s very possible your customers are experiencing quite the opposite. Remember, most customers don’t give feedback, they just don’t come back.

To explain what I’m getting at, think about “first contact resolution.” The term is widely thrown around and espoused by many in the industry, but what are we really doing about achieving it? It’s possible to be efficient in a customer transaction yet not provide the customer with first contact resolution. This results in further contacts, disgruntled customers and staff, and adds cost to your bottom line. All this equals a lack of effectiveness.

To be effective, a transaction should ensure that we in the industry get it right the first time and the customer’s needs are fulfilled.

So at this point you’re thinking, great Chris, tell me something I don’t already know, how do I become effective?

There are many ways and these are just some:

Your staff are the best source of providing effectiveness in your operation. Take a key group of your frontline staff and brainstorm with them. Ask them where the operation is doubling up on work or where things could be done better. Don’t wait for your next team meeting, do this randomly in the next few days, you’ll be surprised what improvements can be made immediately. Make this a regular session or even consider incentivizing for such ideas, kind of an “intrepreneur award.”

Revise all of your policies and procedures. All of us have them let’s face it, those policies and procedures that have been around for years, maybe even over a decade? It’s time they’re reviewed for their effectiveness. Go through them step by step and think outside the box as to where things can be improved. Sometimes it’s better not to reinvent the wheel, just make sure the tires are at the correct pressure!

Take your customer feedback onboard. Sounds obvious? Then why aren’t you doing it? Take a look at some of your most common complaints (oops did I call them complaints and not feedback?) Change the way you do things so these complaints are alleviated. You’ll save your staff time which will improve your service levels, save your operation money and make your customers happy resulting in more business.

So, there are three things you can do to become more effective and you can do them immediately! Come on, try it, it’s a new year and time to bring in new approaches to how we do business. Let’s face it, in these trying times any edge that improves your bottom line or brings in more business is “cutting edge.”

Write to me if you have feedback on this article or if you’ve done the above and it worked. I’d really like to hear from you! chrisknop@hkcca.com

Are you running an effective contact centre?

Executive Insights - April 2008

The era of Broadband Telephony
By Albert Chan, HKCCA Exeo Member – Technology Deployment


I always have been amused by the eye-catching advertisements made by the HK Broadband, the recent one with Alexander Graham Bell (little known that he was the inventor of modern day telephone, a Canadian) clearly states that the Era of Broadband Telephony is here. TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) or the simple term Analogue Telephony has been in life for more than 80 years and while we are talking about Mega, or even Giga Bit per second transmission rate, traditional voice band communication is still the main course of telecom application. No wonder why we have such a demand and query on why we are still using that Super IT Highway to carry that the small 3K Hertz bandwidth wagon that natural human can hear or speak. It is high time we should think about the convergence of technologies, how we can make use of this broad and wide IT network to make life much easier and faster. I mean, of course, that is painful for the people that demand a slow life, but inevitably we cannot decline that the pace of Internet is growing so quickly that we are in a direction of no turning back.

The recent propaganda fight between PCCW and SmarTone has also emphasized the varieties and choices people can choose on their basic communication needs nowadays.

Telephone is not just a telephone in the modern broadband world and people are now more demanding than ever for information and instant messages. The monopoly Blackberry has been so popular 5 years ago, now it is under threat and challenge with people making use of PDA Phones Push-Mail technology to synchronize their emails, diary and contacts. It is not a surprise that nowadays, finger repetitive syndrome would be the most common sickness amongst managers.

All of the IT giants are so involved in capturing the traditional voice market with new and innovative idea and the result is encouraging but again conflicting. Voice is still the basic need, we are using different devices such as computer, laptop, mobile phones, IP phones, PDA or even a simple two-wired phone…to communicate and, in most cases, you can be reached easily by a dedicated mobile number or an email address. That’s why nowadays, people would demand their mobile number or email address to be kept as personal asset. I have been using my mobile number for over 12 years and my hotmail accounts for some 15 years; they are perhaps even more used identities than my own born and given name.

The speed of hand held devices has been boosted by the development of new electronic technology and just the right time to use up the surplus of bandwidth generated by the gigantic under-ocean fibers and the satellites. In the year 2006, over 78% of people are using broadband to access the internet ( IPSOS 2007 Web Study Report ) and are using different applications available such as VPN, VoIP, Skype, Netmeeting, MSN, QQ etc to communicate face to face with their peer partners. In HK, the choices are more eminent, in 2008, OFTA did a survey and report on WIFI AP (Access Point) and found that HK is one of the most accessible cities in the world having some 6400 public APs serving the community. Without any survey, we would know that the penetration of broadband in HK with such a dense population has made HK one of the leading cities in the world in terms of Internet usage.

With PCCW pushing the new “EYE” Phone, (as a matter of fact, the first IP Phone provider in HK is HK Broadband) we would see the battlefield is now in a multimedia world. We would expect other carriers would follow suit and in a year time, we would see that the Telephony world will no longer be the same and in order to cope with this voice only environment, 3G or even 4G mobile will be able to merge with this multimedia contact communication means. To cope with this changes, the Call Centre Industry will hence need to do a major face lift and we would expect that a lot of services would be more sophisticated with more face to face feeling, through still be a virtual touch but this would impose a lot of bandwidth, a lot of integration and a lot of more localized demand. Some of the new development is predictable like the IT equipment uplift, bandwidth etc, but what cannot be predictable is whether the service depot might need to be swift back to HK as the customer will prefer to have locals to offer service while face to face personal service would be bundled.

One thing that we can be certain is that in the new era of broadband telephony, everybody needs to be well prepared, not only the service provider but also the end-users. Don’t be left behind with all the others enjoying the speed, the convenience, and the rich and informative and personal services that you and your customers can share.

Let us have your view on what you can deliver or demand from and for your service provider and customers over this new super information highway.

Executive Insights - March 2008

By Rayland Chan
Executive Committee Member
Training and Education
2007 Review – Professional Development and Training

As 2007 HKCCA AGM draws near, I'd like to share with you the work undertaken by the Professional Development & Training Committee over the last 12 months.

Training Services to Members

At the start of the year, we launched the training service to members whereby CCA directly run and conducted the training courses. From time to time, we receive enquiries from members and “would be” members requesting CCA to organize training programmes to cater for the training needs of their call centre staff. Their training needs range from Sales techniques to Customer Services to Complaint Handling for their front line agents; and Coaching skills, Team Management, Operation Management, Stress Management etc for their supervisors and team leaders. Most of them are from small to medium size call centers, unlike those sizable call centres, they do not have in-house trainers to deliver the training.

2 Training Series have been developed for Supervisor and Agent levels.

“Core Competence Training Series for Supervisors and Team Leaders”;
“Service Excellence Training Series for Front line Agents”

The details of respective courses in the Training Series are available from the CCA website.

Open Courses

Since the launch of the training service, 3 open courses had been organized with 16 member companies/organizations sending people to attend the training. The response and the course evaluation have been positive and encouraging. The courses organized and the participating companies/organizations are listed below:
Course
“Getting Results through Telemarketing”

Participating Companies
Autotoll Limited
CSL
Macau Telecom
Ricoh Hong Kong Limited
Teledirect HK Ltd.

Course
“Complaint Handling”

Participating Companies
Wharf T & T
Chow Sang Sang Co Ltd
Cigna Worldwide Life Insurance Co Ltd
DHL Express HK Ltd
Ricoh Hong Kong Limited
Sharp-Roxy HK Limited
Sony Corporation of HK Ltd
Teledirect HK Ltd
TNS HK Ltd

Course
“Situational Selling”

Participating Companies
Hong Kong Trade Development Council
Senior Citizen Home Safety Association
Teledirect HK Ltd
Avaya

In-house Programmes

A number of Corporate Members prefer that CCA to tailor-make in-house training programmes so as to achieve better effectiveness and results. So far, in-house programmes had been delivered for 5 organizations with several others are in the pipeline.

The below is the list of information of those in-house programmes:

Hong Kong Electric Group
- Effective ways to deliver Superior Customer Service over the phone

Essilor Hong Kong Limited
- Service Culture – You make the difference
- Quality Customer Call Handling
- Service Empathy
- Complaint Handling

Healthy Household (Guangzhou)
- Service Excellence – the Brilliant Basics
- Quality Customer Call Handling
- Effective Coaching
- Improving Agents’ performance through Monitoring
- Team Management and Motivation
- Effective Communications

Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority
- Service Excellence through Call Centre
- Quality Customer Contact Handling

1823 Citizens’ Easy Link
- Problem Solving and Decision Making

Certification Programmes

Last May, CCA organized a Training Symposium to present 2 CCA endorsed Certification Programmes to members. The Call Center Industry Advisory Council (CIAC) Certification Programmes and the London Chamber and Commerce Industry Body (LCCI) accredited programmes. Representatives from OmniTouch International and CCS International provided participants with a better understanding on how CIAC and LCCI certification work and how they could enhance call centre professionals’ leadership and management skills, as well as improving operation efficiency and productivity to a higher level. Details of these certification programmes can be accessed through the CCA website.

Call Centre Training for Inmates

Earlier last year, Efficiency Unit of HKSAR Government initiated a study to explore the feasibility of organizing a call centre vocational training programme for adult prisoners so as to help them easing back into the society with related call centre skills upon their release. CCA actively participated and helped pulling together related industry information to facilitate the study and offered to conduct the training. CCA vice chairman John Chiu and myself held meeting with the Government officials from Correctional services Department and Efficiency Unit to share with them information on the entry requirements of the call centre jobs, the training contents and the employment prospect of well trained call centre professionals.

After consideration, Correctional Services Department concluded that the initiative was not feasibility. They would have operational difficulty in managing that and recruiting sufficient inmates who meet the entry requirements to join the training. And that those who attain the standard may not have such vocational training needs.
We were disappointed with the decision and that CCA could not help further in the rehabilitation of local offenders. Elsewhere in Singapore, they not only train inmates the call handling skills, they actually established a call centre within the Changi Women’s Prison to equip them with real call centre job experience so as to achieve a higher success rate in the re-integration and rehabilitation opportunities for offenders. That call centre won the first Asia Pacific Customer Service Recognition of Excellence in the Outsource Call Centre Category 2007.

Hopefully the Correctional Services Department would re-visit the initiative in the near future and equip the “would be release” offenders with more useful vocational skills thereby helping them to ease back into the society and live a productive and meaningful life.

The way forward

CCA is committed to continue providing our members and the call centre industry practitioners the training and development support to enhance their professional competence and status. Apart from enriching the training modules and the contents of respective courses, plans are in place to launch “Call Centre Putonghua” and to register the current Training Series for the Government’s Continuing Education Fund (CEF) so that the training can further benefit our individual members who could reimburse up to HKD 10000 after completing the courses.

Executive Insights - November 2007

Is your outbound business focused enough?

By Michael Cowell

Executive Committee Member

Marketing and Membership Development

Hong Kong businesses dodged a bullet earlier this year when the Hong Kong Legislative Council decided not to include Person to Person (P2P) telemarketing within the Unsolicited Electronic Mail Bill. The Call Centre Association worked tirelessly to lobby legislative councilors and government officials on the negative impact this would have on very legitimate, consumer friendly businesses, large and small.

The key arguments used to win the support of the legislators dealt mostly with the negative impact on SMEs, the backbone of Hong Kong’s vibrant economy. The Call Centre Association estimated that as many as 33K jobs in Hong Kong are linked to the use of P2P telemarketing as a means of developing business. That’s a substantial figure and given that Hong Kong is a service economy, where would those affected individuals or businesses go in the event their main channel of acquisition were to close – the manufacturing sector? More importantly, P2P telemarketing forms a vital role in delivering products and services at prices consumers and businesses can afford.

However, as proponents of P2P telemarketing we cannot sit idly by, we need to do more to ensure the long-term viability of this important channel. Public concern is likely to resume as early as December 2007, when the government launches the opportunity for consumers to register their mobile and fax numbers along with email addresses, in an effort to stop unsolicited SMS, MMS, e-mail and faxes being sent. Media outlets are likely to query why consumers can’t register their mobile numbers so as not to receive unsolicited voice communication as well. This may well cause some resentment and reignite calls for legislation to also include P2P telemarketing.

What can we do about it?

There are two areas that you can help influence:

1. As an industry, we need to remain ahead of the curve.

For the most part, Hong Kong outbound telemarketing operations are very responsible, however, there’s a small minority (non CCA members) that put the rest of us in jeopardy. These organisations pay little or no attention to the wishes of consumers in terms of calling times, data privacy issues or acceptable business practices.

The HK Call Centre Association recognizes the need and will organise a sub-committee on which you can participate, to review best practice or self-regulating practices developed for P2P telemarketing by other national associations. The results of which will lead to:

• *Development of a Code of Conduct that will be adhered to by members of the HK CCA.
• *Education of the government, legislators, Consumer Council and public on the measures we have taken to further protect the rights of consumers.

2. Become the data specialist within your organisation.

Though declining, you are probably familiar with examples of Hong Kong businesses still using simplistic, high volume data approaches to acquiring new customers using voice, SMS, fax and email. The one product fits all, low cost, get’em in the door approach is dead. It’s dead because, as the famous adman David Ogilvy once noted, ‘the consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.’ While the use of wife in isolation is no longer PC, it underscores a point that is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, consumers are unwilling to accept products and services that are not relevant to them, their families or businesses.

Those businesses that subscribe to this approach will have noticed that response rates are declining. Maybe this isn’t a bad thing after all, as those that continue down this unproductive path will quickly run out of patience and resources. In any event, it must stop as it’s wasting consumer time and heightening the need by consumers to complain.

As responsible call centre users we need to further improve our approach to one that provides variable solutions to consumers, delivering products and services in a timely and relevant fashion rather than the one size fits all. Using analytics to be more selective about who we communicate with, understanding their profiles and knowing when and what to communicate will have a significant and positive impact.

In a P2P call centre environment, this means:

• *Using analytics to reduce call volumes without impacting the required outcome.
• *Be demanding of management in terms of product selection and list segments.
• *Producing suites of products with variation and different price points to allow agents a more consultative approach to dealing with consumers.
• *Testing and retesting these products against different customer segments in order to pinpoint those with a high propensity to accept.
• *Respecting and advocating consumer rights both internally and externally.
  

Focusing attention on these matters will have numerous benefits including:

• *Lower cost per acquisition.
• *A workforce that moves from having little input to one where they feel empowered to provide solutions. This in turn will increase both rates of retention and job satisfaction.
• *Market differentiation, improved customer satisfaction and loyalty towards the brand will follow from this approach and significantly enhance the bottom line.

In closing, response rates and research indicate that Hong Kong consumers are receptive to the use of P2P. Let us all do our part to keep it this way by treating consumers with the respect they deserve – remember, they’re not morons, they are your wives, husbands, family and friends.

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Overview

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