±±¾©Èü³µpk10

When Suffolk-based call centre Prolog needed to replenish its quota of agents this year, it eschewed the normal route of hiring via a recruitment agency. Instead it used the help of Nottingham Council to retrain unemployed people from the mining and textile industry to work in the company's call centres.

Similar solutions to the challenges of running call centres will be on display next month at the Call Centre Expo, to be held in Birmingham's NEC on 16 and 17 September. Bearing in mind that there are over 6,100 call centres in the UK (source: Datamonitor), it's no surprise that this show has attracted 250 exhibitors, and expects 6,000 attendees. It all makes for a highly significant event.

"Call Centre Expo is the one event left that tightly targets our market," says Mark Hennessy, marketing director of Convergys Customer Management, an outsourced contact centre services supplier.

One might be tempted to file Call Centre Expo in the drawer marked 'N' for niche, but the pleasant surprise about this show is the richness of its content. Whether you're looking to outsource or go in-house, buy the latest IVR (interactive voice technology) system or overhaul your call centre agent management processes, your path should lead to Call Centre Expo.

The show is split according to the four main uses of call centres: contact centres, customer services, telemarketing and outsourcing. Beneath these are three sub-themes: people and workplace, business process and strategy, and call and contact centre technology. A substantial conference runs in parallel to the exhibition, offering masterclasses and two days full of hour-long sessions, or 'tracks' (see panel, page 59).

One theme set to dominate this year's show is the debate raging over the pros and cons of buying offshore call centre services. The number of client companies taking up this option has grown faster than a forest fire in summer, with American Express, British Airways and GE Capital all locating call centre operations in the Indian sub-continent. According to Mark Hennessy of Convergys, most enquiries his company now receives have an offshore element.

Offshore advice

Convergys, which specialises in in-bound customer care, has centres in the UK, India and the Philippines. "A key driver for us in expanding to the sub-continent was the quality of labour available at, let's be frank, a significantly lower cost than elsewhere," Hennessy says. At the show, Convergys staff will advise delegates to do their due diligence carefully when considering offshore.

Further advice on the subject will be available from CM Insight, the outsourcing consultancy. "Going offshore is a very big decision," says Paul McKenzie, CM Insight's programme director. "For most people the attraction seems to be its cheapness and the quality of staff, but, as with most apparently wonderful offers, there's more to it."

McKenzie says the decision should also be based on the complexity of the client's work, its back-end system integration and the degree to which it can disclose information about its client base to a call centre supplier.

It's the third time CM Insight has exhibited at Call Centre Expo and the company has learned that it needs to have its best experts on the stand. "You get a lot of people asking a lot of difficult questions at this show," says McKenzie.

On the technology front, web-enabled products are likely to dominate the show. The internet has facilitated the rise of a recent phenomenon: the home-based call centre agent. Danny Singer, managing director of call centre software manufacturer Noetica, says this trend has led clients to ask for a remote version of the company's Synthesys call centre scripting software.

Hence Noetica will use Call Centre Expo to exhibit the browser-based version of Synthesys, called Sythesys.net.

"You can use Synthesys in multi-location environments, including homes, run off a single server," says Singer. "The world is going that way. All you need to have is an internet connection and it's as if you're sitting in a call centre."

Similarly, Exact Abacus, a maker of accounting software, order management and processing systems for mail-order companies, is unveiling a new web-based module of its flagship 3Ex product. Built on Microsoft .NET technology, the web-enabled module allows a call centre to distribute calls to homes in an intuitive manner. "You can run it via a browser, so it's a big departure from our client server technology," says Dave Gregson, managing director of Exact Abacus. Also new for this module are the agent performance statistics that pop up on screens for agents and management alike to see.

Performance management

In fact, performance measurement is likely to be another major theme of Call Centre Expo 2003. It is one of the fastest growing areas in call centre technology, according to a recent Gartner report. The technology analysts predict that 70 per cent of call centres will have installed performance management technology as standard by 2007.

US company Performix Technologies is introducing a seventh module, Development Manager, to its Emvolve Performance Manager suite of products in time for Call Centre Expo.

Rosemary Turley, VP of marketing at Performix Technologies, points out that an average call centre will hire one team leader for 30 agents, to provide each agent with one hour's training per week. "But it's a black hole in that there's been no proof of how that coaching is changing an agent's performance on an ongoing basis," she says.

The Development Manager software takes actual data on agent performance, including sales conversions, call rate and level of service, calculates a performance metric and crafts a development plan.

Data products abound in the direct mail sector, but attendees can see for themselves how call centres too are becoming clever in their use of data to profile and segment callers, both incoming and outbound. Dataforce, for instance, will present its Artemis product, which analyses historical outbound calling data and helps prioritise future calls in terms of whom to call, when to call them, and what the style of that call should be.

On the suppression front, UK Data IT will exhibit SilentcallGard, a new opt-out file for consumers to register their preference against receiving calls from predictive diallers.

Such is the scale of Call Centre Expo that it should prove a good barometer for the state of call centre business - itself a good monitor of general economic activity. "Call centres work horizontally across all business sectors, and so right now the industry is going through a bit of a slowdown," says Noetica's Singer.

All the more reason, then, to stimulate client interest with the products and services on show at Call Centre Expo.

SHOW FACTS
Show: Call Centre Expo 2003
Date: 16-17 September 2003
Venue: NEC, Birmingham, Hall 9

What's there: Call Centre Expo will feature more than 250 exhibitors, a parallel conference programme, free daily keynote session and in-depth masterclasses on all aspects of call centre business. Exhibitors range from call centre training to offshore outsourced centre providers.

Website www.callcentre-expo.com

How to get there By car, Birmingham has direct links with the M6, M5, M1, M42 and M40. A regular shuttle service operates between the car park and the main entrance to the show.

CALL CENTRE EXPO: SPEAKER PREVIEW
Who: Philippa Buttle, Vocalis
When & where: Wed 17 Sept, 9.30am, Room 3, Hall 9, NEC
What: 'IVR - the power of voice'

"This case study of how Powergen introduced voice services, including IVR (interactive voice response) will bring out the practicalities of such an implementation," Buttle says. "The outlay can be quite sizeable, but we look to be able to deliver a return within nine to 12 months. IVR in particular allows agents to focus on more complicated calls."

Who: Robin Goad, Datamonitor
When & where: Tues 16 Sept, 11am, Room 3, Hall 9, NEC
What: 'Re-assessing IP call centres'

"Voice over IP (IP being the data network protocol) is a major trend in telephony," Goad explains. "Instead of two separate networks for voice and data traffic, you can run voice over data on a single CTI (computer telephony integration) network. The benefits are cost savings and the fact that it's easier to identify callers if the calls are running over just one network."

Who: Ben Dreyer, Boden
When & where: Tues 16 Sept, 2pm, Room 2, Hall 9, NEC
What: 'CRM and e-CRM'

"As operations director, I'm responsible for Boden's in-house call centre and warehouse facilities," says Dreyer. "My talk will focus on maintaining customer service in a growing company and how we manage peaks and troughs.

Also, in 1999 we launched a web site, which now handles 25 per cent of our orders. I'll explain why you need a good integrated system to handle this, so that your customer agents always have the complete picture."