"Increasing customer expectations against a background of static or falling corporate income has been a challenge. Customers and consumers have less money to spend, are more careful where and when they spend it and need to be reassured that they have made the best possible choice. The organizations that have resisted the challenge to reduce budgets across the board and invested in the areas that are important to the customer are the ones that have prospered in a difficult economic environment."

"To Improve Productivity and To change the vision of robotic agent services Has been a challenge. Because now more than ever we have a commitment in call center costs and because for many years the call center sector has being criticized for having robots instead of human beings as agents."

"In the call center industry I think the greatest challenge was increasing customer satisfaction with multichannel approach, and also building intensive relationship with customers trough loyalty programs. Customers are asking more & more every day. We still are in a learning phase on how to create innovative offers, offers you cannot say no too!"

"To protect customer’s information through agent loyalty has been a challenge. Because it´s harder than ever to create a real loyalty among your staff, that´s why it´s very important for all of us to have an Information Security process"

"Call centers continue to search for ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Providers turn to COPC for process excellence, or do other activities to show that they are better than any competitor. However, none have yet been completely successful. Barriers to entry in the industry are relatively low, especially in the face of infrastructure and software platforms being available in an on-demand configuration. While there are large service providers, they still compete primarily on price."

"Leaking economy worldwide has been the challenge of the year. It has hit directly on the business front"

"Economy and competition have been challenging. Being in a sales driven environment, customers just had no interest on paying to place ads in our magazines and websites when they could advertise for free (online) with our competitors"

"The Economic Downturn has been the obvious challenge - Many Industries, particularly in the financial sector, have been looking at ways to cut costs, and whilst customer service may reduce, moving contact centers offshore is an obvious solution."

"Like most markets, the contact center industry has been focused on reducing operational costs without sacrificing the center’s call quality and reliability. This relentless cost cutting has helped the bottom line, but does nothing to drive new revenue. At some point, it becomes a battle of diminishing returns. Furthermore, there are real concerns about reducing the quality of customer interactions and running the risk of reduced customer satisfaction. Can customers get answers when they need them? Are customer representatives reaching the right customers with the right messages in the way they want to communicate? Research suggests that less than a third of marketers even know their customer and prospect contact preferences, which can negatively affect the success of their marketing campaigns."

"An increase of customer needs and high competition between services have offered a challenge. It has forced us to reduce costs due to the enormous growth and the last economic crisis."

"The greatest challenge faced by the contact center industry in the last 12 months has been managing the balancing act of controlling and even cutting costs while maintaining a high level of service and minimizing customer churn. Companies in nearly all industries, including healthcare, communications services, retail and banking, are more aware than ever of the high cost of acquiring new customers vs. keeping existing ones, and the contact center, as the "front line" with customers, is under pressure to support that goal."

"Budget cuts have been the challenge - you cannot provide higher quality with less resources"

"Increasing the level of customer satisfaction while having a decrease in operating and capital budgets. Expectations have continued to rise but funding and labor resources have dwindled."

"The reputation of Contact Centers in the face of incresed dropped dialer calls, off shoring companies not heeding TPS rules and poorly trained staff alienating customers. Consumers, beleaguered by ad hoc sales calls from unknown companies become more resistant to calls from genuine relationship building customer service calls."

"The challenge for us has been to improve service with shrinking budgets. Customers keep on demanding a higher service standard. They are fed up with the non-personal, cost driven off-shore solutions and want to be listened to. Most contact centers had a hard time because of the economic crisis and budget cuts. This means that they had to improve their service in order to service their customers to lower costs"

"Doing more with less. With shrinking contact center budgets and the need to continue to differentiate through excellent customer service the challenge has been to find ways to increase efficiencies in all areas and improve customer service. It has been a challenge mainly due to not having the right integrated technology within the contact center. To truly be effective a contact center must have an integrated AVD/IVR, WFM, eLearning, QM, Customer Support portal or self-service to be able to leverage their agents."

"In the last year I have been involved with Debt Collections Contact Centers. The economic meltdown has affected one and all. There is nobody who is not impacted – individuals or corporate. There are serious cash flow issues in most companies. Big players are struggling to maintain deliverables/ standards they are committed to. Their reputation is at stake. Small players are at an even worse disadvantage as they find themselves low in the debtors priority list. This has been the main challenge this year and also the biggest opportunity in Contact Centers. Many contact centers have used the right technology to fast adapt to this changing scenario and have significantly grown their operations in terms of size and profitability. More people aren't paying up. On average, much less money is being collected per contact. The number of delinquent accounts sent to collection agencies hasn't changed much over the last year but what has changed, and changed dramatically, Is the ability to pay. Loss of one or two incomes followed by unemployment running out, has forced people to pay what is essential to them first - heat, lights, rent, mortgage payments, gas, etc. On average, a US agency is getting paid on only 2 of every 10 accounts listed with them. They start accepting reduced payments from what was previously agreed upon, and also suspend payments until their financial condition improves. This is a change from in the past as debt collectors understand the challenges many people face."

"Having the confidence to carry on despite the earlier prophets of doom predicting the end to everything. The general level of morale amongst those working and those recently put out of work was such at the start of the year that providing a smiley voice for excellent customer service was really difficult."

"Maintaining the ROIs of past years on our marketing initiatives as well as keeping our conversion rate at a respectable level has been challenging. In our industry (travel) there has always been a tendency for clients to shop around. The economic downturn made it even more of a tendency as people were looking for the best possible deal."

"The greatest challenge contact centers are facing is the socialization of service, forcing businesses to shift from an inbound-only model to that of outbound + inbound. The entire workflow for contact management as been disrupted. The model focused on inbound activity as well as rapid response. Now not only do we need to create a new organization that focuses on outward activity, but also scale it in a way that doesn't bankrupt service budgets."

"Attrition - Its tough to control and companies vie for each other to get the best employees available. However it depends on the relationship between a manager and his team that will reduce attrition."

"Cost-cutting has been challenging. Customers always expect a better experience."