In your opinion, what has been the greatest challenge the contact center industry has faced in the last 12 months?
The challenge has been twofold.
One the one hand, there has been an extraordinary demand for high-quality contact center solutions, resulting partially in a shift of accounts and partially in the resolution of new customers to enter outsourcing.
On the other hand, existing customers have scrutinized the quality of their contact center services, searching for excellence.
Why do you believe has this been a challenge?
It always is quite a challenge to fulfil both needs at the same time: maintaining one’s high standard of service while growing substantially, without high allowances for learning curves and process design optimization.
In 2012, what do you think will be the top priorities in the contact center industry for:
a) For directors, service excellence (which definitely is beyond mere quality) remains the main issue. They also have to support their executive’s aim for innovative business.
b) For company executives, this is also true. Furthermore, they have to foster innovative approaches towards servicing their existing and future customers. This is especially true for social media services, but also for quite some other substitutive or additive services.
c) IT directors will have to look for integrated customer services – it seems that processes (and the tools that support these) have come out of focus over the last months – this will probably change. Good IT directors might especially want to look into business intelligence solutions.
d) HR directors will have to cater for the rising demand in customer services. As this will demand both telephone and it/writing skills, their focus might have to shift towards looking for ambidextrous new recruits on all levels of business.
What technology do you believe will have the biggest impact on the industry over the next 12 months?
This definitely has to be performance management. A large number of projects still have very disparate sources of intelligence. The contact center of the future will have to provide all information in the same language, preferably utilizing a single-dashboard policy.
While it may certainly be true that social media might change all customer care companies, this is even more true for a transparent service (of which social media/ digital services are a particular example).
What impact have "external events" even had on your company, and how have you adapted your business?
The impacts of the general economic development have been surprisingly mild during the last year. This might be due to buw concentrating on the upscale market in each branch we’re serving, or in the wide spread of fields of business we are able to cater for.
It also has to be noted that buw, being managed by its owners, Karsten and me, over the last years has followed a policy of sustainable growth as opposed to growth regardless of price – this now costs dearly.
Do you feel the service you personally get as a customer is better or worse than it was a year ago?
Basically, it remains the same. While there are quite some example of poor customer care service still around, there are numerous examples of a very high-quality service that exceeds expectations in many ways. Please forgive me the modesty to not specifically mention services we are delivering.
How do you intend to improve your contact center in 2012?
In general, buw’s main asset is its company culture – we aim to achieve more, and we do this together – a team that likes what it’s doing and that aspires excellence. In particular, all improvements are executed in close cooperation with our clients. The general direction that customer care improvement is taking will probably be digital services. Watch this space!
What contact center technology or other innovation excites you the most as an Executive in the contact center industry?
This has to be performance management. The time of improvements which are not incremental seems to be over (at least for the moment), therefore a splendid optimization is definitely the "thing" to look for in 2012.
What has been the most important contact center related conversation topic in 2011 and what are your views on this?
Again, this question has to be answered twofold. On the one hand, discussions regarding service excellence have definitely multiplied during the last months. Fostered by some interesting insights (just to mention the DIN norm regarding service excellence which has been published in 2011), we have had many occasions to discuss what is beyond quality.
Apart from that, of course, the digital world is rapidly widening its influence. I have discussed the relevance of social services and other web-related business ideas and models quite often over the last months.
Lastly, what do you think 2012 holds for the industry? (good or bad and where/how etc)
We will have to see if any general economic developments will impact us during the year – maybe this will be an even harder task for all companies dealing in many European languages and nations. It might be that, in hindsight, 2012 will be the year in which pan-European solutions step back behind a two-language (for example, German-English) austerity.
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