1. Emerging Market Trends
That Impact Your Call
Center Strategy
Prepared for NCOF
National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment
Disney’s Coronado Springs ResortDisney’s Coronado Springs Resort
Art Hall
VP, Sales & Customer Care Operations, NetBank, Inc.
President, Customer Relationship Management Association, Atlanta
1015 Windward Ridge Parkway
Alpharetta, Georgia 30005
Phone: 678-942-7537
Email: ahall@netbank.com

2. Agenda
• The Experience Revolution
• The Evolution of the Call Center
• Pressures Affecting Call Center Practitioners & Executives• Pressures Affecting Call Center Practitioners & Executives
• Emerging Market Trends
• What Does This All Mean to Us?
• Let’s Stay In Touch

3. The Experience Revolution
• Proliferation of e-business has led to a more knowledgeable
and educated customer
• Customers expect seamless experiences across channels
• Five criteria for customer advocacy
– Trust
– Simplicity
– Transparency
– Benevolence
– Collaboration
• Customers are most scarcest and valuable asset

4. Strategy
Technology
Phase
• Answer calls on • Handle calls• Make customers • CRM integrate front and
• PBX
• Key systems
• Central office-based
• “CRM Suites” desktop
• Integration of front and
back office systems
• Skill-base routing
• Call blending
• Speech recognition
• QA
• ACD
• Routing calls
• Work force
management
• Conditional call
routing
• IVR
• CTI
• Call logging,
reporting
Phase PBX ACD Phone Center Call Center
The Evolution of the Call Center
Strategy
Management
Issues
first-come, first-
serve basis
• Efficiency and cost
containment
efficiently, politely,
and productively
• Use IVR to
automate calls
• Increase first call
resolution
go away back office systems to
improve customer
satisfaction and provide
differentiated, cost-
effective service
• Lack of
automation and
standards for
efficient customer
service
• Need to develop
and establish
service culture,
expertise, and
best practices
• Balance
enterprise needs
for productivity
with customer
satisfaction
• Leveraging
people, process,
and technology to
reduce calls to
live agents
Source: DMG Consulting LLC and eGain White Paper titled "Customer Interaction Hubs: What, Why and How?"

5. Strategy
Technology
Phase
• Open contact center and • CEM• Displace calls with web-
• Universal queues
• IP
• ERMS
• Chat
• Reporting
• CEM
• Multi-channel
communications platform
• Real-time analytics
• Text categorization of
unstructured data
• Performance management
• Web services
• Decision support
• Advanced KM
• IM
• Advanced collaboration
• Business performance
management
• Predictive analytics
Phase Contact Center
Real-time
Contact Center
Customer Interaction
Hubs (CIH)
The Evolution of the Call Center
Strategy
Management
Issues
• Open contact center and
customer data to enterprise
decision makers
• Integration of sales,
marketing, and service
activities
• CEM
• Dynamically anticipate
and provide customer
service in real-time
• Internal/external
collaboration
• Displace calls with web-
based self-service
technology
• Use contact center to
increase revenue
• Transition call center to multi-
purpose/multi-channel support
org that is logically consolidated
but physically dispersed
• Multi-skilled, flexible, and
cost-effective agents
• Build processes and systems
to capture, analyze, and use
near-real-time data
• Optimize contact center
interactions.
• Engage customers
• Manage all interactions per
common set of rules/knowledge
• Ultimately interact with any
customer, partner, or other system
direction, and understand the
inquiry, the answer, and how to
serve it betterSource: DMG Consulting LLC and eGain White Paper titled "Customer Interaction Hubs: What, Why and How?"

6. Pressures Affecting Call Center
Practitioners and Executives
• The positioning of the call center as a “strategic weapon”
• Taming the two headed monster of revenue contribution
and cost containment
• Delivering on shareholder & customer value
• Managing the Total Customer Experience (TCE) across all
channels
• Recognizing and managing “Moments of Truth”

7. Emerging Market Trends
• The Hype About Outsourcing & Offshoring
• Migrating the Call Center from a Cost Center to a Profit
Center
• Speech Enabled IVR’s - A Money Maker or A Money Pit?
• Virtualizing Your Call Center Operations
• Employee Engagement in the Call Center

8. The Hype About Outsourcing &
Offshoring
• The worldwide market for customer service outsourcing is
set to grow from $8.4 billion in 2004 to $12.2 billion in
2007.
• Through 2007, 80% of organizations that outsource
customer service and support contact centers with the
• Through 2007, 80% of organizations that outsource
customer service and support contact centers with the
primary goal of reducing cost will fail.
• Up to 2008, 60% of organizations that outsource parts of
the customer-facing process will encounter customer
defections and hidden costs that outweigh any potential
savings they derive from outsourcing.
Source: Gartner

9. The Hype About Outsourcing &
Offshoring
• Offshore customer service outsourcing only represents a
tiny fraction of the market - less than 2% in 2005,
increasing to less than 5% in 2007.
• 70% of the top 15 Indian owned BPO startups that offer
customer call center services will be acquired merged or be
• 70% of the top 15 Indian owned BPO startups that offer
customer call center services will be acquired merged or be
marginalized.
• Outsourced contact centers have higher staff turnover than
in-house contact centers.
• Foreign vendors are beginning to feel the same pressures
as their North American counterparts.
• North American centers are recognizing the need to
compete with their offshore counterparts
Source: Gartner

10. The Hype About Outsourcing &
Offshoring
• Call Center outsourcing can save as much as 25% to 60%
• Agent attrition and salary demands are being felt in
offshore centers which creates upward pricing pressure
• Offshore outsourcing is complex• Offshore outsourcing is complex
• In order for North American outsourcers to remain
competitive, they have expanded their range of offerings to
include business process optimization (BPO)

11. Emerging Offshore Locations
The Caribbean
• More culturally aligned with North America
• Call center agent population has more than doubled to
25,000 over the past two years
• St. Lucia, Jamaica & Barbados are attractive options• St. Lucia, Jamaica & Barbados are attractive options
• Telecom deregulation is a major driver for North American
companies to “near shore” their activities to the Caribbean
• Jamaica has the most call centers in the Caribbean (8,000
call center agents at the end of 2004)
• Dominican Republic is second to Jamaica and has been
capitalizing on the U.S Hispanic Market

12. Emerging Offshore Locations
The Caribbean
• Downside –direct expenses (i.e. labor, telecommunications
and computer) outlays costs often tops call center costs
elsewhere
• Roughly $14 to $18 per agent compared to $9 to $11 in• Roughly $14 to $18 per agent compared to $9 to $11 in
India and $12 to $13 in Mexico or the Philippines
• Lack of big labor pools is also a problem – can’t attract the
mega call centers like India or China.
• The expected economic impact of call centers in the
Caribbean will double to $4 billion by the end of 2006

13. Emerging Offshore Locations
Botswana
• Offers a stable, democratic government
• Highly educated and content populace
• English is the official language• English is the official language
• Generous subsidies for investor companies
• High literacy rate
• 200% credit on employee training

14. Emerging Offshore Locations
Botswana
• Scalability
• High per minute telco costs ranging from $0.36 to $0.45
• HIV Infection of to a one-third of the population• HIV Infection of to a one-third of the population
• Western stereotype of sub-Saharan Africa

15. Emerging Offshore Locations
Eastern Europe
• Midrange labor costs, multilingual population and affinity
with Western Europe and North American makes Eastern
Europe very attractive
• “Pan European” countries such as Czech Republic, Poland,
Hungary and the Baltic countries are ideal locations for
• “Pan European” countries such as Czech Republic, Poland,
Hungary and the Baltic countries are ideal locations for
outsourcing
• Time differences and less cultural barriers for Western
European and North American companies makes these
outsourcing locations very compelling
• Eastern European countries are looking toward contact
center outsourcing as a way to grow their economies.
• Sustainability of current labor arbitrage is a major concern
• Experienced management is another concern

16. Best Practices for “Right Shoring” or
“Best Shoring”
• Go offshore for the right reasons
• Choose your model carefully
• Obtain organizational and employee buy-in• Obtain organizational and employee buy-in
• Be prepared to invest time and effort
• Treat your outsource/offshore suppliers as equals
• Create SPOC’s (single points of contact) for customer
management and processes

17. Migrating the Call Center from a Cost
Center to a Profit Center
• Cross-selling and up-selling in the call center presents
compelling opportunities for organizations to leverage
existing customer base to achieve organic growth
• Revenue generation produced by an organization’s call• Revenue generation produced by an organization’s call
center helps offset costs
• Cross-selling or up-selling products and services to
customer’s is a way to establish “mind-share”
• Critical to define what “selling” is in the call center as a
distinct form of selling in a more generalized direct sales
environment
• Like strategy, cross-sale success in the call center is elusive

18. Migrating the Call Center from a Cost
Center to a Profit Center
Top Concerns or Challenges to Driving Revenue from Contact Center Operations
Customer Service not responsible for Revenue
Agents not Properly Trained
Balancing Staffing with Service Requests
Contact Center Technology Infrastructrure
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Contact Center Technology Infrastructrure
Contact Center Managed as Cost Center
Customers Don't Appreciate Selling during
Agents not Capable of Selling
Agent Incentives
Management Incentives
Customer Privacy Concerns
Do-Not-Call Legislation
Industry Legislation
CAN-SPAM Legislation
Source: Aberdeen Group December 2004

19. Migrating the Call Center from a Cost
Center to a Profit Center
Perception Versus Reality (insert
excel spreadsheet; hide last
two columns)
Traditional Performance Metrics
Agent Monthly Sales Monthly Average Call
Integrated
Performance
Metrics
Revenue RevenueAgent Monthly
Revenue
($ thousand)
Sales
Calls Per
Month
Monthly
Commissions
Average Call
Handling
(minutes)
Agent A 121 894 $1,478 7.7
Agent B 116 786 $1,040 8.7
Agent C 82 430 $ 158 11.1
Agent D 50 556 $ 0 6.6
Average 53 433 $ 255 13.5
Revenue
per Call
Revenue
per Call;
Index:
avg=100
$136 111
$147 120
$190 155
$ 90 73
$123 100
Source: McKinsey Quarterly

20. Migrating the Call Center to a Cost
Center to a Profit Center
Recommendations & Thought Leadership
• Establish a “selling” mission statement that will start to
behaviorally align the call center operations towards its newbehaviorally align the call center operations towards its new
strategic objective
• Heed the lessons of early CRM implementations
• Focus on “indirect” sales contributions just as much as you
would “direct” sales contributions
• Recruit, hire and establish performance management plans
towards service and sales orientation
• “Professionalize” the call center agent position

21. Speech Enabled IVR’s
A Money Maker or A Money Pit?
• 61% of speech users were highly satisfied with their most
recent speech interactions
• 56% of users indicated that they would definitely or
probably use the systemprobably use the system
• 7% stated they wouldn’t use speech recognition again
• Cost reduction is the driver for speech recognition
technologies but we are seeing a shift towards increased
customer satisfaction
• Speech Enabled IVR’s can reinforce your company’s brand

22. Speech Enabled IVR’s
A Money Maker or A Money Pit?
Vendors Competing for Speech Recognition Market Dominance
• Speech Specialists: Scansoft/Nuance, Telisma (France)• Speech Specialists: Scansoft/Nuance, Telisma (France)
Loquendo (Italy)
• Speech Middleware Providers: IBM & Microsoft
• Speech Package Application Providers: TuVox, Fluency,
Appetra
• Speech BPO Providers: Convergys, West, VoiceGenie,
TellMe

23. Speech Enabled IVR’s
A Money Maker or A Money Pit?
Speech Enabled IVR Challenges
• Application not customer-centrically designed
• Fear of low acceptance and success rates due to prior• Fear of low acceptance and success rates due to prior
experiences
• Speech applications are developed as “operational
stovepipes” instead of integrated as part of an overall
customer management process
• Not mapping speech enabled IVR’s to call drivers pose a
significant threat to ROI
• Like failed CRM implementations, speech enabled IVR’s not
designed and implemented correctly dilute earnings and
drive customers away

24. Speech Enabled IVR’s
A Money Maker or A Money Pit?
Critical Success Factors for Speech Enabled IVR
Implementation
• Use ROI to drive requirements• Use ROI to drive requirements
• Design application for real world usage
• Conduct customer focus groups and usability studies
• Use Voice XML or SALT standards
• Integrate speech enabled IVR’s as part of an overall CRM
strategy
• Integrate speech enabled IVR’s with the contact center to
reduce AHT and offload “non-value add” contacts

25. Speech Enabled IVR’s
A Money Maker or A Money Pit?
Critical Success Factors for Speech Enabled IVR
Implementation
• Continue to test the system
• Don’t miss critical project steps in the design of speech• Don’t miss critical project steps in the design of speech
enabled IVR application
• Current IVR requirements and design methodologies will
not scale to speech applications
• Migrate from the business organization over to the IT
organization
• Integrate into the fold of the Web self-service organization
• Establish an application architecture for the voice
applications and then choose the application development
tools

26. Virtualizing Your Call Center Operations
• Two compelling customer service location based business
model strategies:
– Centralization or “Composition”
– Decentralization or “Decomposition”– Decentralization or “Decomposition”
• Emergence of Internet Protocol (IP) technology offers a
third strategic business model
– Virtualization
• IDC predicts home-based agents will triple from 112,000 in
2005 to 300,000 by 2010
• Providers that are influencing the market for home based
agents include Willow, West, Working Solutions & LiveOPS
• Technology enhancements, increasing oil prices and
increased cost of living are the macroeconomic drivers

27. Virtualizing Your Call Center Operations
Benefits & Advantages
• Can save the equivalent of one to three full-time
equivalents (FTEs) at each decentralized location
• Optimize the customer experience through the best use of
self-service, local office or call center resourcesself-service, local office or call center resources
• Improve the leverage and focus of remaining decentralized
resources
• Enables customer service representatives to act as one
virtual labor pool through the emergence of converged IP
contact center technology
• Allows distributed businesses to take advantage of call
center resource utilization, process standardization and
control over costs

28. Virtualizing Your Call Center Operations
Benefits & Advantages
• Allows decentralized agents to interact with customers via
the existing computer network backbone instead of via a
traditional telephony backbone
• Improved work/life balance is a significant driver for• Improved work/life balance is a significant driver for
increased employee satisfaction
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

29. Virtualizing Your Call Center Operations
Disadvantages
• Protecting and maintaining the security risks over consumer
information is HUGE!
• Data Security & Customer Privacy are critical drivers of
customer loyaltycustomer loyalty
• FTC has increased focus on data security breaches and the
protection of consumer’s private information
• Requires different management strategies for home-based
agents
• Lack of focus on the job

30. Virtualizing Your Call Center Operations
Best Practices
• Select candidates based on consistent performance and
track record
• Create a virtual community to keep agents connected and
provide for knowledge sharing updatesprovide for knowledge sharing updates
• Start with a small core team to action ideas and processes
• Develop strong relationships and meet regularly with key
vendors
• Implement a comprehensive security system designed to
safeguard consumer information
• Invest heaving in quality monitoring to ensure both
compliance and customer experience

31. Employee Engagement in the Call Center
• Agent attrition is a pain point for all of us in a
management/executive capacity
• Employee Engagement captures the extent of an employee
connected to an organizationconnected to an organization
• Causal linkages can be made between employee
engagement, customer satisfaction & loyalty and financial
performance
• Engaged employees are fully present, physically committed
and emotionally energized
• Call Centers with engaged employees have more growth,
productivity and less likely to exhibit “withdrawal”

32. Employee Engagement in the Call Center
The Challenges
• Research from Aon Consulting suggests:
– 25% of employees in any given organization are engaged– 25% of employees in any given organization are engaged
– Approximately 50% of employees are engaged but would like
to be contributing more
– The remaining 25% of employees are disengaged and have no
desire to be engaged
• Call Center associates fail to go “above and beyond” the
minimum requirements
• Struggling to find the “silver bullet” in recruiting and
selecting the right person for the right job at the right time

33. Employee Engagement in the Call Center
Best Practices for Creating an Engaged Workforce
• Develop a candidate sourcing strategy
• Institute pre-hiring behavioral & simulation assessments
– Qwiz’s Qwiz Reveal
– FurstPurson’s FurstHire Hiring System Version 3.1
– Aon’s REPeValuatorTM
– SIVOX RealCall

34. Employee Engagement in the Call Center
Best Practices for Creating an Engaged Workforce
• Assess the following dimensions:
– Can Do– Can Do
– Will Do
– Like To
– Know How
• Design an effective and iterative performance management
systems
• Communicate the value of the call center employees to the
organization
• Create a supportive and winning culture

35. What Does All This Mean To Us?
• The consumer landscape will change and expand
significantly
• Call Centers are poised to be strategic weapons for
organizations that employ and position them correctlyorganizations that employ and position them correctly
• Maturation of call center technology will continue to enable
real time decision making and management of customer
interactions across channels per a common set of business
rules
• We must evolve and invest in improving the role and
performance of the call center agent position
• The next 5-15 years of the call center market will be the
most exciting yet!

36. Let’s Stay In Touch
Art Hall
VP, Sales & Customer Care Operations, NetBank, Inc.
President, CRM Association (CRMA), Atlanta Chapter
1015 Windward Ridge Parkway1015 Windward Ridge Parkway
Alpharetta, Georgia 30005
Phone: (678) 942-7537
Email: ahall@netbank.com