/24-7PressRelease/ - SINGAPORE, August 10, 2008 - Utilisation of self service in contact centres continues its upward trend and shows little sign of abating. Primarily driven by convenience for customers and cost savings for contact centres, self service has become a firmly established channel.
According to the 2008 Datacraft / Dimension Data Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, 31% of all inbound transactions are completed on a self service channel. Highest among these is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) self service (15.5%), followed by Web self service (13.7%), with speech self service and Web co-browsing making up the balance.
Ten years ago, 90% of all inbound transactions were completed by a human agent. Today, human agent transactions only account for just over 50% of all inbound transactions.
Karina Majid, Datacraft Asia's General Manager for Customer Interactive Solutions, says: "Contact centres are under pressure to deal with far higher volumes of calls, and to execute queries faster and more effectively. What's more, increasing numbers of customers are demanding information immediately, and it must be correct. Gone are the days when customers accepted slow responses from the contact centre. Instead, they're opting to use self service."
Majid says a well-executed self service application can redirect inbound call pressure to a more suitable channel for the more routine and regular inquiries. And if organisations ensure it works well, they have a winning combination.
"It's estimated that a successful self service transaction amounts to only 15% of the cost of a human agent call. The average cost of a self service transaction is USD4 compared to USD34 per human agent transaction. Employing self service applications provides a staggering cost benefit to organisations - simultaneously freeing up agents to deal with more complex and emotive inquiries," she explains.
However, contact centres still have a way to go in order to leverage the cost benefits of self service.
Majid continues, "The cost of getting it wrong is significantly higher than the cost of getting it right. However, this requires a paradigm shift when making decisions to implement a self service application. Customer expectations, increased complexity of inquiries, and highly dynamic environments are just some of the considerations that impact a successful self service offering.
"A customer-centric approach should dictate an organisation's non-voice channel development, and the impact on the end-user should not be underestimated." she says. Majid also points out that contact centre managers would do well to remember that the ultimate goal is to increase usage and keep customers coming back for more - and to save costs.
"The contact centre industry is fast approaching the threshold when it will no longer be able to manage the volumes of demand from customers. To retain these customers and save costs, it's vital that contact centres move the simpler, routine transactions to well-designed self service channels," concludes Majid.
About the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report
First published in the UK in 1997 by Merchants, Dimension Data's specialist contact centre outsourcing and operations division, this year's edition is the tenth in a series of the industry-renowned benchmarking reports. The Report, jointly researched and published by Dimension Data, Datacraft and Merchants, has balanced global and industry representation from 300 contact centres located across 36 countries and five continents, and is an invaluable reference for all contact centre professionals. It provides managers with a set of best practice standards and benchmarks, including staffing and training, performance metrics, technology usage, budgets and development plans. For more information about the Report, please go to http://www.ccbenchmarking.com.
About Datacraft
Datacraft is the leading independent IT services and solutions company in Asia Pacific. The company helps clients plan, build, support and manage their IT infrastructures. Datacraft combines an expertise in networking, security, Microsoft solutions, storage and contact centre technologies, with advanced skills in consulting and integration, as well as training and managed services, to craft IT solutions for businesses.
A member of the Dimension Data Group, Datacraft is listed on the main board of the Singapore Exchange. Headquartered in Singapore, Datacraft operates in more than 50 major offices and has over 1,450 employees across 13 Asia Pacific markets.
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