The Contact Center & The FMCG Sector

A lot of people are completely surprised when I say that one of our success stories as a complete Contact Center solution is an FMCG company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. People in the FMCG business, mostly sales people, are completely thrown back by the idea that clients are at an educated level of making a call to a company’s toll free number, place an order, receive their order, and pay for it (cash, check , credit) without an interference of a salesman or an agent. More amazing than that, are some clients who prefer to contact the company by either sending a fax or sending an e-mail. During times of high volume of calls, IVR comes very handy to take some of the load. Customers can get all information on their order or their shipments via the IVR without having to talk to someone. Also, customers receive reminder calls if they are 90 days late on their payment.
Yes, we are a nation that likes to deal with our providers face to face, but we can certainly adapt if we recognize our interest.
One might ask what happened to all the sales crew we had? I am glad to report that they discovered that the Contact Center served them more than any personnel in the company. Now, sales people have more time to acquire more business and they are not bogged-down by the daily issues of clients.
For our success story to be where it is now (there is always room for improvement), all elements of success had to be present. There are of course many elements that had to available to us to end up calling our experience a success, but I would like to concentrate on the most important ones. These elements are as follows:

• Clear objectives
  
• Strong and reliable technology
  
• Training 
  
• Management commitment to change old ways of doing business 
  

Let's examine the first two elements in more details.

Clear Objectives

Today’s best practice demands that contact centers are able to act in a fully integrated manner, assessing key information on the customer to make sure that they are dealt with relevance and – where possible – in a way that recognizes their value to the company. With this in mind, the objectives of establishing the Contact Center were to accomplish the following in an orderly manner:

1. Delighting customers by delivering memorable customer service
   
2. Increasing revenue by helping customer representatives identify sales lead to “up-sell”products, or contacting customer for collection purposes
   
3. Controlling cost or minimizing operating costs by establishing KPI’s
   
4. Business Insight by knowing reasons for customer defection or getting fresh information on competitors
   

Clear objectives help implement the four different Contact Center orientations: service oriented, sales oriented, market oriented, and cost oriented.

Strong and Reliable Technology

An integral part of the whole operation is the right Contact Center Technology. And the right technology is basically strong, reliable, scalable, and robust technology that is easy to use, not only at the administrator level but also at the agent level who is communicating to clients through different medium of communications. As important as it is to find the Contact Center technology, it is very imperative to find a company that would provide the “know-how” to translate the objective into reality. Otherwise, we could end up owning hardware and software that would be sitting idle in the office without the expertise in the Contact Center business. We were fortunate enough to locate ILS (www.ils.com.sa), Jeddah based company, that is capable of providing and supporting the technology, and the Contact Center operation “know-how” to achieve our goals. 

We acquired a technology that has moved from the traditional Call Center to The Contact Center. A technology that has evolved to support a larger range of communication than just telephone. Let me list some of the features of our technology:

• Supports both inbound and outbound on different channels (telephone, fax, e-mail, Internet chat, web-callback, SMS, MMS, IVR)
• Every medium is routed like a phone call to the appropriate agent thus optimizing handling time and costs
• Central server driven through a web interface
• There is no need to install software on individual workstations
• Users can log on from anywhere in the world, simply with a PC with and Internet connection
  
•  Voice over IP and / or classical phone system
  
• Automatic Call Distributor (skill based routing and profile based routing)
  
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
  
• Multi-mode dialer (Predictive, progressive, preview, manual call, automatic callback, automated IVR)
  
• Based on latest technologies (dotnet standard MS)
  
• Remote agent platform
  
• Multi-tenant application
  
• Integration Programming Interface (communication with CRM and databases such as Oracle, SQL)
  
• Reporting and supervision capabilities 
  
• Recording capabilities
  
• Real time performance metrics
  
• Integration capabilities to any existing PBX
  

I would hate to stop at this point because there is a lot more to the technology from the integration to CRM or ERP applications, and also from the technology architecture, but I do not want to bore you with that. Please go to ILS (www.ils.com.sa), to get more detailed information, or you may schedule an appointment with one of their consultants and get a free consultation on any Contact Center technology and /or solution. 

Don’t let the old ways of doing business stop you from taking your company to a different level. Take real steps in opening a two way communication channel with your client or customer.

Contact Center Technology - A Cultural Change in the Middle East

Increasing competition is forcing businesses to pay much more attention to satisfying customers, including providing memorable customer service.
Time and again studies have shown that customer service plays an important role in customer’s loyalty. While many businesses in this part of the world don’t believe the notion that customers are willing to trade- in few pennies to get better service, the reality is that consumer are expressing in many different dialects that they would love to reach their providers for solutions. Studies have also proved that consumers could be easily lost because of poor customer care or the lack of it.
In a recent study conducted by Genesys (http://www.genesyslab.com/ ), over 4,200 consumers in the Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States were surveyed in order to better understand consumer attitudes toward contact centers and customer service. Some of the survey‘s findings were as follows:


- 38% of consumers say that customer service has the biggest impact on their loyalty to a company

- 75% say they would do business with a company based on a great contact center experience

- 15% would do so even if prices were higher than average

- 50% say the last time they stopped doing business with a company was partly or wholly due to poor customer service


In the Middle East, mobile phone operators are to be credited for the introduction of customer service, but also are to be blamed for the bad habits in the customer care industry. The increased numbers of mobile operators and the increased demand for mobile phones have started some sort of culture change in the customer care business. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia alone there are three operators. To give you an idea of the amount of business these operators are doing, Mobily – largest mobile phone operator in the Kingdom- made 778 million riyals ($207.5 million) in the three months leading to December 31st 2008, which is 51 percent higher than the 514.4 million riyals ($137.2 million) it made a year-earlier according to Business .com (http://www.arabianbusiness.com/544331-saudis-mobilys-q4-profits-up-51-beats-estimates) . Zain Saudi Arabia, an affiliate of Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co (Zain), started operating a third mobile phone network in the third quarter of 2008 which will change the whole formula for other operators. When competition starts companies start searching for their niche in the market to compete. With this impressive numbers of profits, the idea of trying to talk to a customer service representative in less than half an hour is dream yet to come true for many consumers. For a consumer to reach a customer service representative within a reasonable period of time has proven to be an impossible task. Mind you also that a customer has only has one shot a day to speak to a representative and then banned or his/her number is blacklisted for that day until the next day. This policy is justified by heavy traffic of calls at all times (this is to tell you how efficient the contact center system is and how much effort is put into training customer service representatives) and the moralstand point of love for others what you love for thyself. Not that a customer can not call his/her provider twice a day, but the second will be an adventure in an endless IVR journey set up by an IT guru who has no basic knowledge of customer service. In general, amongst the bright minds of GMs and Marketing Directors in our part of the world none have realized that strong customer care can be a company’s niche in the market. Unfortunately there is more focus on branding out of strong belif that a solid product will cover the rest. The idea has always been and remains to be that a solid product in the market will always guarantee customer retension.

However, with all the deficiencies of customer care in the GSM world, they are credited for the least which is initiating some sort of customer service. The issue becomes more serious with companies that totally lack any kind of connection to their customers. For many companies, about the only connection they have to their customers is through the company’s PBX system. I am talking about Multimillion dollars companies such as car rental companies, major FMCG companies, technology companies , banks, Insurance companies and most of all marketing companies that should know better. The only little information customers can get on these companies is by walking to these companies, through word of mouth, or through advertisement.

In an era where everything is mobile, GMs still lack the vision to understand that customers have choices, and most importantly customers are making more educated decision than they used to in a monopoly world. No doubt, there are still technological limitations, but the biggest challenge is the human mind. In the 21st Century companies worldwide are striving to exceed customer expectation by making customer service a memorable experience to acquire and retain customers. In our world educating company’s decision makers is at its early stages. I am hopeful that we will eventually get there, because competition will set the rules just like technology forces itself on people and societies.