New research on call centers indicates a split between customer and vendor attitudes, as well as wide-spread security concerns, according to a survey of corporate and business call and contact center users; contact center staff and managers; and outsourcers who run centers in the U.S. and overseas.
Consumers were evenly split in their depth of interest in the location of a call center. Thirty six percent say it’s highly important to them where the center they call is located, while 32% say it’s not very important. Another 32% say that location is ‘somewhat important’. Sixty percent of consumers sometimes or always ask the agent where the center is located.
Both call center workers and their colleagues at outsourcing firms have a high opinion of how well they are doing in the eyes of their customers- outsourcers say that 65% of customers are highly satisfied. The customers themselves say they are highly satisfied only 22% of the time.
What were the chief complaints? Nearly two-thirds of the respondents reported that it is difficult to understand an agent’s accent. Also scoring highly (at least 40%) were: staff is poorly trained; agents misunderstood my accent or English; and agents were unable to resolve my problem.
Respondents also cited data security concerns. For instance:
* Three-quarters of business customers say it is somewhat or very risky to exchange data with a call center, regardless of where that center is located, while a majority reported there is a higher risk of their business data being compromised when it is handled by an offshore center.
* Most call centers have taken some concrete steps to assure data security and customer privacy, even if that is not completely communicated to their customer bases. * Customers are less likely to come away from an email, Web, or other ‘alternate’ interaction with better feelings than from a telephone call, however, customers prefer the phone to any other mode of interaction.
* Three out of four business customers contend that it is risky to exchange business data with a call center. But three out of five of these business customers also believe that their business data is at a higher risk of being compromised when it is handled by an offshore center. Another two in five say the risk is the same onshore or offshore.
* One in five business customers say that they have experienced a security or privacy concern on the phone with an offshore center.
* Only 4% of corporate call center employees responded say that their organization is ISO 17799 certified. Nearly nine in 10 of these firms have firewalls in place.
* Fewer than 40% of the corporate call center sites, both onshore and offshore, engage in practices such as auditing changes to customer records, establishing a compliance/privacy officer or conducting customer-privacy audits/assessments.
The research was conducted by CMP Media’s Managing Offshore and Call Center Magazine. The Web-based survey included more than 500 interviews conducted during June and July.
