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Lorem Contact Centre Services

Contact Centres in many organisations are the major point of contact between a company and its customers and as such are the face of the company to the outside world. However in many cases when established as call centres they “just grew’ without regard for their place within the enterprise or customer relationship process.

Now the Contact Centre has become a significant business division – the strategic face of the company as well as the major point of contact between a company and its customers.  And it has not stopped there.  The latest challenge is to find the most appropriate strategy to handle the new multi media access modes required by new e-business initiatives.  Mismanagement of this immature channel can cost a company heavily through waste of financial and human resources as well as eroded customer loyalty.

Lorem’s consultants have grown and learnt with the industry in this regard and  specialise in all facets of Customer Service Centre solutions.  We recognise that Contact Centres are an important channel in any company, whether it is a large organisation or a small enterprise.  Lorem consultants have applied their knowledge and skill to companies of all sizes throughout the world to develop the most appropriate call centre operations for their individual requirements.

Our highly professional team of consultants are regarded as some of the best in the industry based on many years of experience gained in some of the world’s leading contact centres.

The Lorem team can assist in every aspect of your contact centre including:

  • Strategic Studies
  • Return on investment analysis
  • Growth and migration planning
  • Organisation structure and communications
  • Human resources planning and management
  • Workflow design and reviews
  • Process redesign
  • Technology design and implementation
  • Technology and services procurement
  • Project management
  • Performance surveys
  • Benchmarking
  • Facilities design and implementation
  • Call Centre consolidation
  • Relocation services
  • Disaster recovery plans

 
The Human Factor

People play an important role in any company. In Customer Service operations the people element of Contact Centres becomes critical as typically it represents 60% plus of the centres costs.

Many companies today are either refining and / or expanding their Contact Centre operations through adoption of Contact Centre World’s Best Practices (BIC) in the areas of strategy, people, process and technology.  Telephony and people are the two major costs in any Contact Centre and greatly influence its operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Therefore BIC HR Contact Centre practices must be established that will enable the recruitment and retention of the most competent personnel within each operation, to deliver the specified sales and service objectives.

Contact Centres need to maximise the utilisation of human capital, whilst at the same time reducing and refining the HR process and human wastage which is a straight, bottom line cost.

The following are the key parameters needed to provide consistency across Contact Centres in the specific Human Resource areas of:

  1. Role Purpose - the requirements of roles
  2. Job Descriptions - what people are expected to do on the job (role tasks and activities)
  3. Role Competencies - what people need to have and how they need to behave to achieve business results (KPI’s); with success & failure points defined
  4. Recruitment Methodology- how the best people are acquired from the available labour pool (including the identification and targeting of that labour pool)
  5. Remuneration & Reward - how people might be rewarded and incentivised to reflect organisational objectives
  6. Induction & Structured Training - what training people might need to achieve appropriate competence

 There are only a few critical points that any organisation needs to influence in order to maximise the capability of its people.  Simply, if these points are well managed, at the point of greatest impact, a Contact Centre can save an enormous amount of money and more importantly can utilise both the time and money saved to invest in making more money, in a far more rewarding manner.

While Contact Centres will ultimately always control the success of their staff, there are a range of clearly influencable entrance points. If managed uniformly, these can significantly reduce costs, provide consistency and knowledge sharing, boost retention & IP and create a common language across all Contact Centres, irrespective of location.

Annualised, the bottom lineinvestment in controlled standardisation and up front management of critical points of influence (hiring, training, performance management & remuneration) will at the very least be in excess of 30 times the investment required to develop both the environmental understanding and the tools to manage disparate workforces.  The top line return with more appropriate utilisation of staff however would achieve more than 200 times the initial investment.

Lorem can develop a complete Human Resource for companies Contact Centre operations that will ensure the best staff efficiency and effectiveness.

 
Balanced Financial management

Within the Customer Management environment Financial Management is critical to provide the right level of service to the customer at the appropriate cost to the company. It is regularly assumed that the cost of Customer Management should be delivered with the least possible expenditure. This often creates a lack of business integration and alignment, not to mention average/poor service delivery.

This combined with a failure to understand the primary importance of Customer Management services has resulted in a limited view of their value. Cost minimalisation in this environment often results in services that limit a businesses ability to maximise the benefits that can be leveraged from outstanding Customer Management.

This does not negate the need for effective control of costs. However, such cost controls need to be tempered by the value of services delivered and their contribution to the business overall. Lorem’s approach is to view Customer Management as an opportunity for profit rather than a burden of cost.

Customer Management and its costs must be gauged in terms of outcomes and financial contributions. Financial contributions can be well defined and measured. With in business management circles such measurements are often overlooked. While financial measurements can be complex they are imperative to quantifying and justifying services and their values.

It has always been vital that financial management is sound. Lorem recognises that the contribution of Customer Management through sales and service is directly related to business profitability. The value of this and what it means for businesses should not be understated. Through Customer Management businesses have an avenue to speak to and deal with their customers.

Service based on a sound financial approach is a way to maximise existing customer value and to acquire additional customers.

Financial management is not simply based on the cost of services and their control. Defining Customer Management in profit rather than cost terms has changed the landscape irrevocably.

Financial contributions through Customer Management need to be measured and assessed in a variety of ways. Lorem’s approach to Financial Management ensures contributions can be identified, achieved and sustained. Below is a summary of areas whose management can be refined to minimise cost and improve service outcomes:

  • Refine existing operations to reduce current costs. This can be done in a variety of ways e.g. improved productivity, streamlined management
  • Improvement of retention and associated training/recruitment costs
  • Reduction of operating costs (through the use of technology/process etc.)
  • Minimisation of technology and telephony costs
  • Quantification of improvements in acquisitions as they pertain to customer value and contribution to profits
  • The quantification of sales improvements through customer retention (in terms of improved business revenues)
  • Streamlining of reporting and analysis to direct changes and improvements

Lorem’s approach is based on a business modelling template under the framework of our PFHOT methodology that ensures all the elements of Customer management are considered.

 
The New Customer Service Technology Landscape

Customer Service practitioners are experiencing a pivotal change in the landscape of service delivery. For those who can rapidly recognise and harness these new developments it will provide the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage for their business.

This tipping point is precipitated by the voice technology that is undergoing its greatest change since the invention of the telephone in 1889. The new IP based systems dramatically reduce the complexity and effort required to design, implement and manage these voice systems as compared to previous generations. It opens up enormous potential, and all this with, believe it or not, a reduced cost of ownership.

Some leading companies have already taken advantage of this and are starting to reap benefits that were previously impossible to gain at a realistic cost and risk. These companies are reallocating the resources that were once required to implement and manage the systems to the design and deployment of systems based applications that deliver real business value.

The quality of the services delivered has now been unshackled from the technology systems. The days of labouring over the business case to cost justify the purchase and ongoing management of systems and contain the risk of implementation are now in the past.

The two key factors that drive these changes are:

  • the IP architecture voice now rides the same network as the data
  • the centralisation element of the systems in the Virtualisation architecture dramatically simplifies design implementation and management,

Thus eliminating, or dramatically reducing the hurdles of the old generation architectures.

Now the question is not what system to use, but how to use it and where the resources should be utilised. The mantra of making all information available on any device from anywhere and at anytime in a personalised fashion is now a genuine reality.

Companies can now realistically and practically provide effective services with the added prospect that their customers will get pleasure from using them.

The signature of this new architecture is simplicity and flexibility. This agility allows a previously unattainable speed in implementing new functions to adjust to changes that occur in the marketplace.

Members of the Lorem team have been involved with Customer Management technologies since their inception in the early 1980’s. Contact us and we will provide you with an understanding of how our experts can assist you in making the best use of technology to provide the most appropriate service to your customers at the the most cost effective level.

 
Customer Management Transformation Program

The Customer Management Transformation Program is an internally developed best practice process providing the frame work that underpins all of Lorem’s Transformation projects. Many stories abound of horrific project failures and to avoid such outcomes, the Lorem process has been developed with all the appropriate embedded checks and balances to afford clients the confidence, that as we evolve the customer elements of your business, we will achieve relative superiority to your competitors in the most effective and efficient way.

Originating in the early 1990’s, the Lorem Customer Management Transformation Program is a constantly evolving process incorporating experiences learned over time and through multiple projects.

Synergetic with the Lorem philosophy, the processes major design criteria include:

  • Practicality and realism in all outputs
  • The flexibility to be customized for individual businesses specific needs
  • Maximum interaction and involvement of the client’s representatives

The Lorem Customer Management Transformation Program kicks off with the ‘Discovery’ phase, typically over a period of two months. During this time, Lorem’s expert team who have in-depth expertise across the ‘five pillars’ will work intensively with your representatives to review and research all components of your Customer related operations.

We will map out in detail your current environment, and employing world’s best practise models as a benchmark, compare this with where you wish to be and your industry peers practices and develop plans to reach the agreed goals. From these exercises we as a team will produce:

  • Roadmaps for all major projects within the agreed goals with a focus on quick wins
  • High level business plans suitable for executive management presentation for each major project
  • High level budgets

The second phase of the Customer Management Program that is dependant on the desired outcome as agreed in the ‘Discovery’ is the execution phase. The duration of this phase is relative to the complexity and quantity of projects agreed to have been undertaken, and the delivery desired. However, our experience has shown, with a fast track approach, this period is generally between nine and eighteen months. The first focus is to develop detailed business plans for each agreed project and aggressively target the quick wins. Achieving these quick wins in as wide a range of areas as possible consolidates the various stakeholders commitment to the overall project objectives.

Lorem have undertaken numerous strategic engagements over many years across a wide range of industry segments, in order to produce definable results. If you wish to be rated alongside the best in your business for Customer Service, then contact us to see first hand the benefits the Lorem Customer Transformation Program can bring to your company.
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