..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

  uilding, staffing and operation customer call and contact
centers is set tobecome a truly mammoth industry as the new
century  unfolds.  Thelogic  behind  this  is  simple. Customer
Relationship  Management  (CRM)  is now considered to be 
the pivotal  starting  point for survival in today's dog-eat-dog
business  environment.  And while a contact center may not 
be the only weapon in the CRM armory, effectively used, it is
one of the most potent.

      The  U.S.  continues  to pioneer  development in contact
center  CRM.  Frost  &  Sullivan  estimates  that  combined
revenues for the U.S. contact center service industry were
$19.9 billion in 1998 and these will recket to $49.45  billion by
the  year  2005.  But  if  the U.S. is presently  the number one 
player  in the  international  contact center  industry, the rest 
of the world is  catching  on  fast  to  the importance  of   this
customer  contact channel. According to Dataquest market
research,  by  2002  there  will  be  more  people  working in 
contact centers in the U.K. than there will be people working 
in the farming and teaching sectors combined. 
       


        Contact centers grew to prominenec in tandem with the
introduction of intelligent network-based freephone services
in North America in the late 1980s.

      Originally contact centers represented a relatively simple
proposition : customers  and  would-be customers dialed in
for  help  and  were  hooked  up  with  agents with access to
information  about  their  queries,  status or  potential  needs.
The   technology   providing   this  was,   and   is,   called
computer telephony integration (CTI). As the name implies,
CTI involves the  physical  or  logical  interfacing  of  voice 
communication and data access capabilities. Subsequent
refinements have significantly extended the  contact  center 
repertoier.  For example : integrated voice response (IVR), 
in  which  callers  respond  with  keystrodes  to  voice
prompts to navigate their way to an appropriate agent or
information repository, and  speech  recognition, in which
systems guide users to different destinationson the basic 
of the caller's spoden responses.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Increased Functionality
   As  the  technical  sophistication
of  contact  centers  has increased,
so has their functionality. Originally
used to provide information or take
orders, contact centers can now be
used  to  expand  an organization's
share of profitable customers, help
less profitable customers become
more  profitable,  and  cross - sell
related products.Customer retention
 and reduction of customer churn are
key contact center objectives. SLP,
a  specialist  in  the  application  of
knowledge-based technologies to
boost customer retention programs,
has some interesting statistics in this
general context. SLP calculates that
in the telecom industry, for example,
annual customer churn rates
average 30% in European markets,
40% in the U.S., and 50% in some
Asian markets. In 1998, says SLP,
the global cost of telecom customer defections was $10 billion. The cost of acquiring a 
new subscriber ranges from $400 in the U.S. to as much as $700 in Europe.If the penalties
for poor or non-existent CRM can be high, the nature of the CRM task in contact center
terms is becoming much more complex. As well as incoming and outgoing voice traffic,
contact centers now have to deal with fax calls, e-mail and, increasingly, web and Internet
calls.

        The changeover from voice-centric contact center operation to contact centers that 
mix e-mail and web traffic is a complex task. Instead of simply providing agents with the
means to talk to callers and to access and manipulate relevant customer data, contact
centers  systems  now  have  to  support  an  extended  repertoire  of  customer - facing
applications.  Among  them  are  e-mail  response,  simultaneous  voice  and  data 
interactivity, text "chatting", collaborative browsing and form sharing.
                    ZOOM

     What is a Contact Center?
     A contact center is the first point of 
    entry for the customer with a company. 
     It iscomposed of agents who manage  
     the customer relationship as defined in 
     marketting and sales strategies,using
     interconnected media : telephone, fax,
     e-mail, web, video, WAP and face-to-
     face contacts. The contact center
     evolved from the call center that was
     processing telephone calls only.

CHURN RATES

               What's more, companies must not only offer these new and emerging 
customer communication channels, but they also must integrath them to provide
a consistent level of service across all media types. For example, if a customer
sends  an  e-mail  message  on  Monday  and  follows  up with a phone call on
Wednesday, unless the agent taking the call has knowledge of the information
contained  in  the  initial  e-mail, the  customer may feel frustrated by the need to
repeat the inquiry. They may even defect to a competitor with superior customer
care.

More services
             For e-mails, the agent must respond in the same manner as when dealing
with conventional voice calls, although the response time may be somewhat less
critical.  Today's  contact  center  systems  can  either  automatically  respond  to
routine  e-mail  inquiries,  or  suggest responses to agents based on parameters
and thresholds set up in advance by contact center management.
 
         In the case of Internet-related calls, the idea is that a customer or would-be customer could 
      be browsing a corporate web site. When the person requires more information on a particular 
      product or service, s/he simply clicks on an icon rather than calling up an agent in the
      conventional way.

            There are a number of service permutations in this case. The voice conversation with the
      agent  could  be  counducted  as  a  voice  over IP (VoIP)  session  using the existing Internet 
      connection to the corporate  web  site. Both  the  caller and the agent can then exchange and 
      browse the web pages they can see in their respective browser windows. For callers without
      VoIP access but with access to lines - say in the case of an ISDN subscriber - one line can be 
      used   for  voice,  the  other  for the  data  traffic. Where  callers  have only one line, automatic                    When a customer or would - be
      call-back from the appropriate contact center agent can be set up at a time convenient to the              customer requires more information
      caller.                                                                                                                                                                                      s/he simply clicks on an icon rather
                                                                                                                                                                                                        than calling up an agent in the
      ........................................................................................                                                                                                          conventional way.

zoom
             What is a Virtual
             Contact Center?
      The virtual contact center, with some
   or all agents handing calls from anywhere
   on the network; including their homes,
   facilitates agent productivity, the retention
   ofskilled staff, the recruitment of personnal
   over extended geographic area, and even
   the transfer of work to other time zones.
   this helps the global electronic marketplace
   where business is conducted regardless of
   local trading hours and physical regardless
   of local trading hours and physical location
   become a reality

      Text  chatting -  the exchange of  text  in real time between the caller and the agent - 
may also be requirement,  parrticularly where the quality of VoIP is not acceptable or
where  there  is  a  need to  be precise  about  numbers or name spellings and so on.

Increased Business
      Customers may also require  assistance with form filling and, again, screens may 
need to be exchanged so that both parties see the same document and changes as
they are made.

        It  could  be  argued  that  the  emergence  of  the  web  as a self-service medium 
actually  narrows  the  window  of  opportunity  for  contact  centers. Not so, according 
to  an  Ovum  study.  In  a  1999  report  entitled  Next  Generation  Call  Centers :  CTI,
Voice   and   the   Web,  Ovum  agrued :  " Call  centers  are  where  businesses  talk 
directly  to  their  customers,  discovering  their  requirements,  persuading them to do
business,  and  ensuring  their  demands  are  satisfied.  Call  centers  also  have  a 
crucial  advantage over self - service media - they allow businesses to be proactive 
in ways that would be rejected or ignored if self-service media were used,"


        However, Ovum warns user organizations that
   they  must  be  clear on their business strategies. 
  "users must decide whether they are webenabling
   their  call  centers  of call centerenabling their web
   sites. The  end  result  may appear the same, but 
   the two are  different. The difference  is apparent 
   when  used  organizations  decide what it is they 
   want to achieve and then measure what it is they   
   have achieved."
       Ovum points out that when user organizations 
   web - enable  their  contact  centers,  they  are
   typically  either  using  the web as a "front door" 
   to  the  contact  center  or  are  using the web to
   enhance  the  effectiveness  of  contact  center  
   interactions. When  user  organizations  contact
   center-enable the web,they are  typically  either
   increasing the success rate of web transactions
   or providing a back-up for problems that cannot
   be resolved via the web.


       COMBINED REVENUES           CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

           Either way, though, the combination of the contact center and the web acts as a powerful catalyst tor e-commerce, offering
   intraction  possibilities  above  and  beyond  the  information  available  on  a  website.  Currently,  many  web-only e-commerce
   transactions  are  abandoned  before  completion  and  there  is  strong  evidence  that  interaction  with  a  human  agent can be 
   instrumental in turning web window shoppers into buyers.

           For the future, industry  experts  see  the contact  center industry developing in a number of new directions.The type of traffic 
   handled  will  expand  to  include  video,  and  customers  using cell phones will become a bigger consideration in contact center 
   operations. Web-enabled  cell  phone  use  also  is  expected  to  rise, opening  yet  another  channel  for  customer  care  and 
   e-commerece  transactions.  The  part  played  by  outsourced  contact  center  services  will  increase. Ultimately,some contact 
   centers will become "virtual" with agents handling calls from anywhere rather than from one physical location.



...........................................................................................................................................................



                                                                                       

                                      More information, please contact   E-mail : chatchai@ckmit.com