Contact Centre Expo 2009 - Day One

It's that time of the year again, when most of the UK Contact Centre industry gathers in Birmingham for the Contact Centre Expo.

I covered the Expo last year (see the posts "UK Call Centre Expo" and "UK Contact Centre Expo Day 2") and was interested in the feedback I got as both comments and as e-mails. In the feedback, there was a solid body of opinion that the 2008 Expo lacked much innovation from the vendors. This needed to be weighed against a smaller set of feedback arguing that the show did offer new and valuable ideas, but nonetheless, there was a strong view that the exhibitors needed to raise their game.

I understand where the first group are coming from, but I still find the Expo very useful just because it has so many vendors and customers gathered in the same place and I find innovation a bonus on top of that. There are interesting ideas out in the exhibitor hall (as well as a few rather tired ones) and it's worth going round the Expo to see what is genuinely new.

So the stands that worked for me in the exhibitor hall, in no particular order, were:

• Sword Ciboodle - In some ways, nothing radically new from what I used to know as Graham Technology. In other ways some interesting incremental improvements and a feeling that the market for process based CRM was probably one of the growth areas of CRM. I've felt for a while that the record-centric approach of Oracle/Siebel grown too big for many customers and too 'one size fits all', so it was interesting to see a CRM approach that was much more process-centric.
  
• 60k - Presenting themselves as 'The Alternative BPO & Contact Centre Outsourcer', I was interested to see what 60k thought distinguished themselves from the many other outsourcers in the hall. Part of the answer was "Bulgaria", but the value proposition was much more than that. I've managed outsourced contact centres in a past job (we had European customers with customer service sites split between Europe and South Africa), and my experience is that outsourcing to far off locations can have real disadvantages when you try and manage the resulting operation. Nearshoring and so locating your centre within three hours flight time, but still with cheaper labour is very interesting. The crucial advantage of Bulgaria is that it is in the EU and the EU location is a big advantage over destinations like India when you think of the challenges with outsourcing and data movement compliance with the laws on exporting data outside the EU. What also interested me was the focus of 60k on higher value business process. I've long argued that this is where outsourcing needs to go (see past posts like "Offshore - why I would go for South Africa over India") and it was good to see 60k as a European outsourcer positioning things like 'Insurance Claims Processing' and 'Product Recall Management' that add real value to customers, rather than trying to sell cheap call centre seats.
  
• Egypt - I am very interested in the Egyptian contact centre industry as it shows what growth can happen very quickly with government support. I had a good chat with Raya contact centres, who run the contact centre operations of a number of the big tech firms. I must confess a vested interest here, as I recently blogged on Cisco opening their 300 seat centre in Egypt (see "New offshore developments in the European Market") and it was very useful to hear the Egyptian perspective on this.

So all in all very useful (on top of being an exhibitor with a decent number of customer visits to our stand).

Tomorrow, things I'd like to do are:

• Catch up with Redbox Recorders to understand what they are offering.
• Have a look at the Nortel stand to understand how they are presenting things after last weeks acquisition by Avaya.
• Talk to Aspect and better understand the relationship with Microsoft that is so prominent on their stand. (I'm guessing things have moved on since I covered posted on the tie-up announcements back in March last year "VoiceCon 2008 - IBM, Microsoft & Aspect")
  

As always, do let me have any suggestions for other areas that are getting attention.....

Nortel - the misery continues

I was very sorry to see the story on the Register of "Nortel Confirms Fire Sale - and shrinking revenues" . It is a dreadful situation for the employees to be in and not much fun for their existing customers either.

I was particularly struck by the short paragraph towards the end mentioning that Nortel employees were to demonstrate outside parliament over their dissmisal without notice or redundancy payment. This has been reported on the UK contact centre sites (see for example "Ex-Nortel staff lobby Parliament" on Call Centre Focus), but I'm surprised that none of the mainstream news organisations have featured it more prominently. It seems very harsh, if reports are accurate, that staff lost their jobs with no notice while at the same time the administrators approved executive multi-million bonus payments.

I appreciate that the troubles at Nortel are no surprise, and even this blog had problems at Nortel as one of its predictions for 2009 (see "First of my contact centre predictions for 2009 happens - Nortel"), but there's no satisfaction in seeing the what's happening.

I think this story will run and run, as while at the moment we're looking at the 229 staff who are demonstrating over the administrators actions, the pension fund will be the story soon. There's not been much since January when the size of the pension fund deficit was revealed (apart from this story in March in the Guardian "Nortel pension fund deficit rocks state lifeboat"), but the pensions will affect perhaps 43,000 people or more. If the administrators Ernest and Young think that there are problems now, it could be nothing compared to what happens if there are any issues with the pension fund.

First of my contact centre predictions for 2009 happens - Nortel

I'm more than slightly surprised by how quickly one of the predictions I posted last week for 2009 has come to pass (see: "My Contact Centre Top 5 Predictions for 2009 ").

Nortel's troubles have been well documented, but it was still a surprise to see the article that Nortel was filing for Bankruptcy in the Toronto Globe & Mail on Wednesday. In many ways it is very sad to see a great company that once led its industry in such trouble. Of course bankruptcy doesn't mean the immediate end of Nortel, but it is hard to see how the company could regain it's once dominant position from where it is now.

The Globe and Mail also has a good article on whether Nortel could have been turned around. I tend to agree with it's view that they probably had the right CEO in Mike Zafivorski, but they needed him earlier than 2005. The blog has looked previously at internal management excellence (see the post: "Does lack of management experience cause most contact centre problems? The perspecitve of the "Puritan Gift"") and it's telling that one of the things damaged Nortel so badly was when it ripped up its internal people development processes in 2000.

There's no pleasure in seeing a great company and once inovative get into so much trouble and my sympathy is with the staff at Nortel.

My Contact Centre Top 5 Predictions for 2009

This year I thought I'd do something different to welcome the new year and stick my neck out by making some predictions. I'm often asked what I think the contact centre trends will be in 2009, and so I'll put forward what I think is going to happen.


Making predictions is always a risky business and 2009 looks so turbulent that the risks will increase. I'll have a go, but I am fully prepared that I begin 2010 with a blog post on how I got it wrong!


1. IP Contact Centres will continue to grow rapidly.
I'll start off with a relatively uncontroversial prediction. This is backed by most of the market analysts I've seen, but if 2009 proved anything, then it was that uncontroversial, analyst backed predictions could be totally wrong! The most up to date research I've seen was yesterday on Network World (see: "IP call centers will do well despite VoIP slowdown") where Infonetics' newest report had some interesting statistics. Infonetics predict the market for IP Contact Centre as growing 38% in 2008 and continued growth in 2009. The growth in 2009 could be as low as 5%, but that's still pretty rapid for a relatively mature market segment in recession. Forrester and Gartner have higher figures for growth, but I suspect they will revise them downwards as they reassess them in light of the global economic situation. Still, there is steady momentum towards Voice over IP (VoIP) in all aspects of telephony and I expect contact centre to follow the trend.


2. Fixing customer processes will be a major focus in 2009.
To a certain extent all contact centres (whether using TDM or VoIP for the voice traffic) can now do all the basic things needed, namely answer the phone and provide the agent with some information on the caller. These historically have been what technology spend has been focused on, answering the call (which is all the spend on telephony) and getting usable information to the agent (all the spend on CRM).

The problem is that telephony plus CRM has not not fixed most of the issues customers experience. What matters to customers when they call is (1) did I get my problem fixed? and (2) was it a pleasant experience. I've been interested in 2008 to see the big system integrators start to focus on process (see posts like: "System Integrators write interesting things about contact centre for the downturn!" or "Contact Centres, Process and Six Sigma") and much more focus on the customer experience (see posts like: "HSBC creates 250 UK call centre jobs & offshore in decline").


3. A major contact centre technology provider to fail/ be bought from administrators.
I'm not confident enough to predict who, but the press and blogs are providing quite a selection of possibilities. Nortel has had some rough press (see: "Nortel Drops After WSJ Says It’s Exploring Bankruptcy" and "Juniper: the big winner if Nortel goes under?") to pick just two recent articles and their financial situation is not good. There are still Nortel supporters, and I admire the optimism of the article "Don’t write off Nortel yet", but I can't say I share it. I do agree with the point the article makes that Nortel is underestimated and is still a very technically capable company and is likely to have fewer self-generated problems going forward.

Aspect may also have trouble, despite their alliance with Microsoft (see: "VoiceCon 2008 - IBM, Microsoft & Aspect"), but they haven't had the focus that Nortel has. They have a strong (and lucrative) product in Aspect Workforce Management but their core call centre offerings have seemed to struggle in recent years.

There is always the chance that Microsoft will buy one of these vendors (or perhaps private equity as with Siemens) but I'm not sure I see other obvious candidates. It's possible that SAP or Oracle might move in, as both have bought small IP contact centre companies in the past (SAP bought Wicom and Oracle bought Telephony@work) but that seems less likely.

4. Offshoring to decline further for front line customer service.I think it's hard to see further offshoring as going to be well received by consumers. Offshoring of call centres was perhaps already in decline for reasons of brand reputation and cost (see posts like: "HSBC creates 250 UK call centre jobs & offshore in decline ") and I think consumers will be very hostile to brands that are seen to be destroying jobs. In the banking industry this will be a particular issue, as with the banks potentially dependent on government, the views of politicians may suddenly be very important.

I think offshore for non-customer facing activities, like IT, may well go offshore more rapidly. The signs are there (see "Lloyds TSB offshores IT, not call centre ") and Barclays has been doing this for a while and I think this is an area where offshore may prosper.

5. Predictions will be wrong!
OK, this is a bit of a cheap one, but there is a serious point. In very turbulent times, the range of possible outcomes for a given set of events increases substantially.

The predictions I've made look the most probable, but I'm prepared to apologise profoundly if against my expectation, 2009 turns out to be the year of TDM offshore contact centres!

VoiceCon 2008 - IBM, Microsoft & Aspect

I was interested to hear a number of the announcements at Voice Con 2008. I'm not in Orlando this year but a number of friends were at the announcement and I was interested to compare their comments with the press announcements.

The Microsoft and Aspect alliance announced yesterday is on, CCF magazine: "Microsoft Corp. and Aspect Software Inc. have announced a multi-year strategic alliance to help deliver unified communications to contact centres globally".

Of the press coverage, the most positive I've seen was nojitter.com, who described it as "Microsoft's One-two punch" and complimented Aspect on their marketing strategy. More typical was infoworld with "Microsoft buys its way into Call Centres".

In my view is that this is an announcement similar to the Microsoft and Nortel alliance. Anything that two major players do has to be of interest, but new entrants to a market don't mean that they are necessarily breaking new ground. My suspicion is that this is good for Microsoft as it gives them access to the Aspect install base and moderately good for Aspect as it lets them defend their install base with a strong partner. In terms of reaching contact centre functionality further into the enterprise, I'm not sure it delivers as much as Avaya, Cisco, Genesys and Nortel can already offer with the various forms of 'expert advisor'.

More interesting to me were the announcements from IBM. The first was the alliance announcements with ShoreTel, VBrick Systems, NEC and Ericsson. This completes IBM's alliances, as IBM Sametime already integrates with Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and Siemens and Sametime has long looked at Voice over IP capabilities. Compared to Microsoft, this makes IBM are much more open environment for Unified Communications than Microsoft. This was reinforced by the (expected) announcement of Sametime Unified Telephony, as a type of middleware for the Unified Communications telephone environment.

In short, I think Jan Dawson writing on his blog, twinloops , summed it up nicely:

"The IBM keynote was very dry, shorn of the visionary stuff from the Avaya and Microsoft keynotes from yesterday. It focused largely on new features and capabilities IBM is adding to its Sametime portfolio. And if anything, the key message was a slightly resentful, “we’ve been doing all this for 10 years, guys - how about giving us some credit?” The lack of vision stuff was probably helpful in reinforcing the perception that IBM is perhaps the most serious about UC, and just boring enough to pull it all off."

It will be very interesting to Microsoft and IBM once again competing head to head.