13th March 2008 | Contact the Editor | Register here to receive your own FREE copy of contact news

LATEST NEWS				Transform Your Telecom Data In Your Call Centre The white paper "Analytics as Decision Support" explores the link between valid call centre performance data and meaningful business intelligence. This report explains how to use higher-order analytics tools to deliver customer centric business intelligence that will guide the advancement of agent work skills and support decisions related to the financial performance of an enterprise. Download the complementary white paper Book Store Don’t Get Hung Up! How To Sell Products And Services By Phone - by Jenny Cartwright Road to People Excellence - by Khong Bee, Great Eastern The Right St@ff - by Ted Sandeman, ACM Diagnostics The Sales Bound Team Leader - by Mark Manolas with Renee Moore  ASIA NEWS Register to receive FREE Asia News
UK hosted CRM provider opens Australian office
Really Simple Systems, one of Britain’s largest hosted CRM providers, has opened its first overseas office in Sydney. Really Simple Systems Australia director Simon Hubbard said Australia was a natural choice for its office. "Web-based CRM is taking off worldwide and we see major demand in Australia for a CRM system that focuses on ease of use as a differentiator," he said. Really Simple Systems says it targets the SME market and has already signed its first Australian customer, Sydney-based Agility Consulting. Agility said it needed a CRM system to consolidate all of its data held in spreadsheets, automate its sales forecasting process and use all the sales data for marketing campaigns.
Housing New South Wales implements e-learning for customer service staff
The Learning Group has announced the development and deployment of an e-learning program for Housing New South Wales’ service staff.  The program will be used to train 1,000 housing services staff over the next three months and is expected to deliver savings in excess of $150,000 by removing costs that would otherwise have been incurred by face-to-face training. Housing NSW is responsible for providing public and community housing within the state.   The Learning Group has developed e-learning for Housing New South Wales’ staff in support of raising awareness of client record sensitivities. “Previously we would have conducted the records awareness training face-to-face, something that is not only expensive but which would have required a dedicated trainer traveling for up to three months,” said Housing NSW’s Donna Seagrave, “By creating the material online we’re not only reducing our carbon footprint, but we can now offer staff a new level of course accessibility and reduce the time it takes to train staff. It also means that training can be held whenever a new staff member joins.”
TelstraClear implements new quality monitoring
New Zealand telco TelstraClear has contracted US it company Tektronix Communications to supply it with a customer service diagnostic solution. TelstraClear will use Tektronix’s DirectQuality(R) solution to test and monitor the quality of their IP-based services as perceived by its customers. The DirectQuality system will enable TelstraClear to understand its small, medium and large enterprise subscribers' quality of experience. "We are pleased to help TelstraClear provide the highest quality of service through identifying, localizing and quantifying service and network issues at all points of their network," said Tektronix VP Doug Dickerson. DirectQuality simplifies business-level decisions by providing complete service level test automation from test call generation to IP QoS troubleshooting.
Philippine HR still a concern, callcentres.net research shows
While Philippine agents are staying longer with their employers, the country’s contact centre HR is still concern, according to new research from callcentres.net. According to Sydney-based callcentres.net’s newly released 2008 Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report, the Philippine agent attrition rate has dropped down from 18% to 15% in the last year. "We are seeing some improvement with agent tenure in the Philippines increasing steadily, with the average time an agent remains working in a centre now around 22 months, up from 18 months," said callcentres.net president Dr Catriona Wallace. The study also projected the industry to increase by 23 percent in capacity, or around 129,000 seats this year. But Wallace said the local contact centre industry must continue to address its HR challenges, including attrition. “HR remains a critical challenge ... where is the industry recruiting and where it will find the right skills?" she said. The research, sponsored by Autonomy etalk and Genesys, involved interviewing 539 contact centre executives representing 2,488 contact centres and 259,699 contact centre seats across Asia, including 87 in the Philippines.

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