How Do We Better Recruit Resource Planners
29 October 2015Customer Service Delivered to Your Door?
25 November 2015Last week TeamDJ headed to the British Library for the UK National Contact Centre Conference from the CCMA.
The CCMA promoted the event as:
No waffle, no sales pitches, just straight talking industry experts!….they kept to their promise.
The event was packed full of content with no less than 10 speakers taking to the stage.
To quote Steve Desson from AXA PPP healthcare on Twitter:
‘If the ccma conference gives you food for thought – I’m stuffed! @ccmatalk #ukccc15’
What was really interesting was the sometimes contradictory nature of the speakers – the ‘futurologists’, as we might refer to them, were very much predicting the end to traditional contact centre metrics, and the rise of the avatar! In contrast, the operational leaders, although in theoretical agreement, were still very much focussed on today and what their customers require now, with measurements and traditional call centre metrics still a major consideration of the modern day contact centre.
Here are some of our key takeaways and highlights:
Trust was a central theme, without trust, an engaged and performance focussed team is just not possible.
Agile business/brands, also featured – without contemplating what the future will look like, how can we plan for it? When going through a change programme, we need to understand that the wider world will also be changing, particularly from a technological viewpoint. Will the goals we set out to achieve remain relevant at the end of the plan?
- Should we be more worried about our people becoming robots and being too controlled/constrained than robots becoming human? – ‘Ann-Marie Stagg – CCMA UK’
- Change is the only constant! 99% of telemarketer activities will be automated in 20 years. By 2020 54% of all Contact Centre Interaction will be complex problem solving issues, whilst 85% of customer contact will be via digital channels – ‘David Smith CEO of Global Futures and Foresight’
- 73% of 18-25 year olds prefer to express emotions in pictures rather than words. ‘Martin Hill-Wilson – Brainfood Consulting’ Martin presented ‘Change or die….but can you handle it?’
- The ‘wearable’s’ market is now worth a staggering £18 billion, as much as the entire airline industry. ‘Dr Giles McLelland UCLAN’ Giles also talked about how a digital world has changed the lives and freedom/visibility of our lives as he presented ‘Engaging the workforce in a new digital era through job enrichment’
- People are always saying ‘just do it, do this, do that’ – I would like to do Brad Pitt but I can’t do that – the unforgettable and humorous ‘Dawn Redman, Hermes’ who in addition to her interest in Brad shared her thoughts on ‘Personalising the customer experience
in a self-serve world’
- Helen Wilson from Ipsos Mori seemed to get the most twitter traffic with a funny and engaging pitch, Helen really bought data to life with ‘how consumer behaviours can impact your organisation’. Helen had to complete her presentation even with a fire alarm interruption, which bought the conference to a temporary halt, however, it wasn’t long before we were Back to the Future of the Contact Centre!
- ‘What gets measured get’s done’ – For anyone who says Contact Centres don’t offer career opportunities, take a look at ‘Harj Johal’, who has progressed from Advisor to Director of Customer Operations at Direct Line Group and is responsible for 4,000 FTE. Harj gave a down to earth and powerful presentation on ‘Using the Voice of the Customer to Drive Action’.
This was a really great, informative conference, with lots of inspiring content to digest and think about. Thank you to all the team at the CCMA and all the speakers.
We will let Maria Whelan from the Guinness Partnership tweet sum up the conference for us:
@mariawhelanmba: @CCMATALK #ukccc15 – If Carlsberg produced conferences…Undoubtedly the best conference I’ve attended. Excellent speakers
Were you at the conference last week, what were your highlights? Please do let us know by commenting here.
