Outsource Magazine Issue 27 - (Page 34)

Call Britannia It’s a crucial part of the UK economy – but like that economy, the country’s customer contact space is facing an array of challenges. However, there are also some huge opportunities to consolidate its place at the upper end of the value chain… s the ancient Chinese curse supposedly has it, “May you live in interesting times” – but for good or ill, few would deny that these are interesting times indeed for the contact centre space globally, with huge social and technological shifts driving rapid evolution in the industry and creating both opportunities and challenges for customer service professionals, buyer organisations and providers alike. The shifts at play on a global scale are if anything being magnified in the United Kingdom, against a backdrop of ongoing economic troubles combined with the policies of an increasingly radical government; as unemployment grows and the relationships between employer and employee, citizen and government and consumer and producer are all being A placed under the spotlight (and in some cases transformed fundamentally) the country’s society and economy are going through a period of deep transition. This is in turn having an impact across the customer contact arena: how organisations operate and value customer contact, how they source and retain staff, how they approach outsourcing and offshoring and how they view their role in their communities of influence are all being reassessed. Customer contact is a major employer in the UK: analyses vary but it seems that around a million Britons (around three per cent of the working population) currently work in or support contact centres in the country at any one time. A Datamonitor market forecast estimated the number of centres operating in the UK by the end of 2012 would be 7,145. Clearly, this space is “You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.” – Jerry Fritz 34 ● ● www.outsourcemagazine.co.uk http://www.outsourcemagazine.co.uk

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Outsource Magazine Issue 27

NEWS
PLANET ITO
NORM JUDAH MICROSOFT’S
IN THE KNOW
CALL BRITANNIA
DAVID EVELEIGH
CHAIN GAIN
CAN EVERYTHING BE OUTSOURCED?
NOA ROUND-UP
QUICK CHANGE?
TRANSFORMING FINANCE
CAROLINE STOCKMANN
GOOD REVIEWS
OUTSOURCING IS NOT MAKE VERSUS BUY: IT IS A CONTINUUM
PAYING ATTENTION
POWERING UP YOUR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ENGINE
BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS
HEAD-TO-HEAD
TOP TEN
THE LEGAL VIEW
HFS RESEARCH
HEADLINES...
ONLINE ROUND-UP
INSIDE SOURCE
THE LAST WORD

Outsource Magazine Issue 27

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