|
|
|
|
|
            
|
DOT.COM Waiting With A New Bouquet Rising demands push call centres over the edge, and they are gradually evolving into 'contact centres'. By Rakhi Mazumdar ''Politicians are like babies. The more
you give, the more they ask for.''
The news is that the call centre market is evolving to provide end-users with the choice of multiple contact points. The new buzz word is 'contact centre'; a one-stop shop for all types of end-customer interactions a company needs. The interaction could be through various touch points-telephone, e-mail, chat, ATM, or any mobile communication device. Raman Roy, President & CEO, Spectramind, feels the potential market size of the contact centres could well be beyond the numbers being bandied about, like Nasscom's $17 billion by 2008. Infomediaries like MphasiS, 24/7 customer.com, and Spectramind are also working on solutions that offer an integrated multimedia contact handling functionality, known as customer interaction management (CIM) solutions. Companies like MphasiS integrate the customer-interaction data gathered through all these channels. There are three parts to the whole process: contact management, content management, and personalisation. The interaction creates the content, which in turn, can be mined to understand customer requirements. As K.P. Nair, Vice-President, 24/7 customer.com, points out: ''For a company, feedback from efficient customer interaction can result in more focussed campaign management, better merchandising, and more effective direct marketing initiatives.'' There's of course the sticky issue of privacy that companies need to address, but no one is speaking of that yet. Today, the majority of the clients of these Indian infomediaries is based in the US but Indian companies, financial institutions, and the local arms of MNCs are expected to jump on to the contact centre bandwagon soon. Infomediaries could also specialise along the lines of their domain expertise. For example, the domains in which MphasiS is present are financial services and retail logistics. And it operates across the value chain-right from strategic consulting to implementation. Says Atul Kumar, CEO, Equitymaster.com, an online stock trading firm that outsources its customer interaction system: ''A customer interaction system can only be as good as the thought process that goes into it. One has to understand the product, the process flow and logic associated with the product, in order to anticipate the kind of clarifications that customers may raise.'' That's a tough call for the centres. But then managing relationships is all about hard work. Beam Me Back, BT! Surfing back@Net time, to July 1996
|
|
Issue Contents Write to us Subscription Syndication INDIA TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY |
TEENS TODAY
© Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
The
honeymoon is over. Companies across the world were so thrilled at finding
the animal now identified as the Indian call centre that they spent the
first months in a daze of conjugal-like bliss. Now, post-honeymoon, it's
only natural for call centre captains to expect the customers to be a bit
more demanding, a little like Sir Humphrey's politicos.