Go BackAntiquated practices cost UK contact centres £1billion a year - CosmoCom
The UK contact centre industry could be losing £916 million a year because it uses antiquated working practices, according to virtualisation software provider, CosmoCom. That equates to the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the Central African Republic, and is more that the GDP of many Caribbean economies, such as Grenada and St. Lucia.
CosmoCom estimates that of the 960,000 UK agents in nearly 6,000 contact centres, just eight per cent work in 'hosted' environments - contact centres which run over an operator's network and provide all the necessary hardware and software.
Using the company's own return on investment (RoI) calculator, which evaluates set up costs, per seat overheads and IT support and equipment costs, CosmoCom estimates that using hosted, 'on demand' contact centre environments dramatically reduce the operation expense of running an on-premise site to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. They also provide other business benefits, CosmoCom argues.
"Hosted contact centre environments provide savings and operation efficiency improvements in a number of areas," said Mike Adolphy, UK managing director of CosmoCom. "With IT managers stretched, having contact centre technology hosted reliably and securely by experts provides piece of mind, improves customer service and frees up the IT manager to focus on other mission critical operations. It is truly mind-boggling the amount of savings that the UK contact centre industry is missing out on by continuing with cumbersome on-premise systems."
CosmoCom's estimates are purely IT and staff-based. Adolphy added that at a time of rising fuel prices, reducing real estate and power requirements could also provide extra savings on the bottom line.
Mona Sultan of analyst group Datamonitor said that contact centre managers would increasingly have to look at hosted communications environments to further improve customer service and reduce overheads.
"The contact centre is often seen as a cost centre, when in fact consolidating technology onto one platform that can enable staff to operate from any location while operating as if in one single site could help firms make significant cost savings," she said.
Date - 12/06/2008
