Is The Future Bright For Call Centres?
8 October 2014Will The New Banks Transform Customer Service in the Banking Industry?
2 December 2014Did you enjoy this year’s UK National Contact Centre Conference from the Call Centre Management Association (CCMA)?
Here is my round-up of the event…..
Our hostess throughout the event was the CCMA’s Chief Executive, the honourable Ann-Marie Stagg. Ann-Marie has seen 20 years of growth at the CCMA, and was passionate about the cause, as ever.
Ann-Marie Stagg, CEO of the CCMA at the UK National Contact Centre Conference.
Early morning speakers included Ben Page, CEO of Ipsos-MORI, and Martin Hill-Wilson, MD at Brainfood Consulting. Ben delivered a very witty presentation surrounding the impact of customer behaviour and how this may shape the future, and Martin delivered some thought provoking material regarding breaking down silo’d working to create a united customer centric workforce.
Martin Hill-Wilson at the UK National Contact Centre Forum 2014
Late morning, Mats Rennstam, MD at Bright, gave us some commercials behind poor agent performance, and some real proof behind a happy customer providing actual long-term cost benefits. Jo Thomson, MD at Procter, and customer experience specialist, talked us through what is important to the customer in this digital age, and the types of service that is expected from our industry in today’s age.
Jo Thomson from Procter at the #ukccc2014
A wonderful buffet lunch was provided for us, and a great networking opportunity. It was really good to meet up with the people that I did! Thank you to all for spending time with me.
After lunch, managing the notoriously difficult ‘graveyard’ session, was Leon Stafford from Interactive Intelligence. Technology can be difficult to understand sometimes, and Leon made Cloud based technology much simpler! Chris Cole from Openmarket gave us some surprising insight into our ‘Mobile First’ world, did you know that there were more smartphones activated last year than there were babies born!
Next up, the vibrant Charmaine Vallance-Poole, Head of Customer Experience at Neopost, showed us around the Neopost contact centre via video footage – a really impressive culture change and subsequently great customer statistics to boast here. Our last speaker of the day was Michelle Clarke, Contact Centre Manager, at Enterprise rent-a-car, who discussed the benefits and initial challenges of having a home based workforce. Is this the future of our telephony based agent population?
A very interesting debate concluded the event with a panel of six industry Leaders. How can we better plan for the future of our contact centres?
The National Contact Centre Conference Debate – How can we better plan for the Future of Our Contact Centres
This seemed to be heavily based around gaining more investment into our centres, and changing the internal mind sets and opinions of stakeholders in regards to the value that our contact centres provide. Lets’ start at the front and work backwards…Why do our agents get paid less than an unskilled cleaner?
My brain was certainly very active all day, from the depths of knowledge that the event provided, and the thought provoking material that was given to us too… A great event that was thoroughly enjoyed by all I am sure and certainly by myself.
Were you at the UK National Contact Centre Conference, what were your highlights and key takeaways, we would love to hear from you.
Hannah-Louise Cox, is a Senior Consultant at Douglas Jackson, Multi-Channel Customer Experience Specialist and Judge at the Digital Experience Awards.
