Growth in call centre Technology

Market researchers affectionately referred to the earliest form of telemarketing technology as CATI – Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing.  It was a breakthrough in an industry whose paper consumption had been responsible for the destruction of large forests.

Scripted questions were fed into the computer and telephone numbers magically appeared for the telephone interviewer (the term “call centre agent” had not entered our vernacular at this point).

The interviewer would type responses directly and the program would loop through the questionnaire according to those responses.  Interview length was reduced, accuracy improved and quantitative analysis was delivered to the client in record time.

In the twenty five years since, a massive industry has grown from humble telephone market research.  Hundreds of thousands of Australians are employed in call centres scattered across the country.  Customer service, sales, research and electronically oriented service provision can now be conducted over the telephone.  Technology has removed people from the field and concentrated them in call centres.

Sometimes the brilliance of the technology and cost savings for the provider do not meet the approval of the customer.  Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology has produced the phenomena of “phone rage”. 

A series of recorded messages requesting responses from the caller’s telephone key pad has removed the human element from the service or information function.  Such technology has created a barrier between the customer and the service provider which in many cases builds resentment and frustration.  Smart companies know that to be customer-friendly such services should always be back-ended with an adequately resourced human help option.

Inbound call centres have benefited enormously from industry developments.  The ‘follow the sun’ system uses time differences around the world to provide customer service and support on a 24/7 basis.  International airlines employ this system for their reservations with great success.  As one market closes, another opens and automatically becomes the destination for all callers. 

One of the large European airlines has further enhanced this technology with the creation of a “virtual call centre”.  All calls from around the world enter the virtual cloud where, from the number dialled, the call is identified in terms of customer status, location and language of the caller.  This information is then matched against the global network of call centres.  The call is dispatched to a call centre ‘in the sun’ and answered by the first available agent with the language ability and training to handle the caller’s needs.  The agent is aware of the language in which to greet the customer, the time of day and country he/she is calling from and whether he is a member of the airline’s loyalty program.  This process all occurs in a matter of seconds!

Such fine tuning of caller profiles has also required sophisticated workforce management technologies in call centres.  Historical data is analysed to produce forecasts of call volume.  Rosters are then designed around the call volume, matching the skill set of the workforce with the profile of callers.  Sick leave and annual leave, talk time, clerical work and lunch breaks are all factored in to achieve the desired level of coverage. 

Training and development also has demanding technological needs. Calls are measured for handling time, sales conversions and a host of other key performance indicators.  Supervisors have real time management tools to monitor service levels and to extract meaningful data for coaching and management purposes. 

The telephone interviewers of the 1980’s could not have envisaged the scope of the industry they helped kick-start.