Australian organisations are squandering resources on their call centres and could be saving 20% of their costs by adopting some basic performance improvement techniques, PA Consulting Group warned today.
The last five years has seen dramatic growth in the establishment and use of call centres. PA's research shows that the call centre industry is now a $2.4 billion industry employing over 20,000 people in Australia, with significant growth assured. Major users of call centres include domestic and international banks, insurance companies, governments and public sector organisations, retailers and information services.
"A basic rationale for call centres is that they save money by delivering services cheaper than traditional distribution channels and store fronts. There is a belief that call centres are a panacea for cost reduction and service delivery. Yet our research shows their cost saving or efficiency is not being maximised," Paul Lahiff, head of financial services consulting at PA Consulting Group, said.
"Without appropriate software infrastructure, performance measures, benchmarks, training and supervision, the efficiency of call centres is reduced and money wasted.
"We believe that $500 million could be saved from the current cost in Australia by following some fairly basic practices. Yet we see these practices are not happening in many call centre operations."
PA has produced a checklist and audit of call centres which allows organisations to measure the efficiency of their call centres. Early experience from a range of call centres using the checklist show that substantial improvements in efficiency - between 25 and 50% - can be obtained.
Particular areas needing attention by call centre managers are staff issues such as training, motivation and retention; disaster recovery; measurement and control of costs and expanding the use of call centres to cover other markets and services.
