M&S recently announced that they plan to invest £480 million in their ‘Store Rotation Programme’ which would entail “180 higher quality, higher productivity full line stores…[and] opening over 100 bigger, better food sites”, generating 20 more stores overall. Whilst growing a brick-and-mortar presence may seem surprising to some, due to the general shift towards online shopping caused by the pandemic, research suggests that high street stores are bouncing back.

Analysis conducted by PwC demonstrates that current consumer preferences between online and offline shopping are polarised. 37% of consumers prefer physical stores for enjoyment or pleasure, compared to 32% for online shopping. Additionally, 56% of consumers believe that customer service is better in-store as opposed to online (19%).

Though online shopping continues to be a key part of the buying journey, physical stores will remain significant in customers’ experiences. Stuart Machin, Chief Executive of M&S, echoes this stating that “stores are a core part of M&S’s omni-channel future and serves as a competitive advantage for how customers want to shop today.”

One of the reasons for this is that the high street offers a unique shopping experience that cannot be replicated online. Physical stores offer the opportunity for consumers to see and touch products before buying, as well as receive immediate satisfaction of a purchase. Additionally, physical stores offer the opportunity for face-to-face interactions with sales associates, which can be helpful for making informed purchasing decisions. Some retailers are also experimenting with new technologies like virtual reality, interactive displays and in-store events to enhance the in-store shopping experience and drive foot traffic. More than a third of all consumers would gladly pay more for an enjoyable shopping experience, whether that be a multisensory buying journey or receiving a human touch.

Another reason for the resilience of the high street is the fact that it is a vital part of the community. The high street provides a range of services and amenities to local residents, including shops, restaurants, cafes, and other community services. As local authorities continue to invest in the regeneration of inner cities across the UK, it makes sense that developing more spaces for retail, dining and living are a key part of these plans.

Interestingly, retail brands who are opening brick and mortar stores are also witnessing what they are now coining the ‘halo effect’. That is, the positive effect physical retail can have on online channels. On average, brands see a 36% uplift in online traffic the quarter following the opening of their physical store.

As consumers demand more channels of interaction with a retail brand along their buying journey, physical and digital retail are becoming more and more blended. As a result, brands must now look to ensure channel integration is a key part of their customer service solution. This means creating an omnichannel experience, such as the ability to purchase online and pick up in-store, or the ability to return online purchases in store.

To conclude, whilst the purpose of brick-and-mortar stores may be redefining itself, they remain a crucial part of the retail landscape and thus a brand’s strategy. The high street has stood the test of time, with a post-pandemic bounce back and research suggesting that consumers understand the value of and unique experience offered by high street shopping.

However, I’ve been trying to catch up over the Christmas period. Mainly in between my leftover turkey sandwiches  and watching some questionable films I would not normally watch – but hey it’s Christmas!”

One of those recent finds was that of ChatGPT. A curious sounding name that had me intrigued instantly. I thought “what is ChatGPT?” and “what is a GPT, is this the new lingo the kids use?” Bingo, it was time to do some research! Here’s some of the more pertinent details on ChatGPT that I found:

What is ChatGPT?

Launching back in November 2022, ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses conversational AI to interact with the human user at the other end. ChatGPT uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand the user’s question(s) and responds accordingly.

The tech itself was developed by San Francisco-based OpenAI, a research company led by Sam Altman and backed by Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Khosla Ventures.

What can ChatGPT do?

In the context of Contact Centres, ChatGPT will be able to perform a number of functions. This includes, but not limited to:

How does it work?

Through the use of NLP technology, the chatbot is able to understand user input by recognising patterns in conversations and breaking them down into key components such as context, intent and entities. Once it understands what the user is asking, it can then provide an appropriate response.

ChatGPT also has the ability to learn from its conversations, meaning that it can grow and improve over time. This allows it to become more efficient and better at understanding customer needs and providing useful answers.

Will we be using ChatGPT anytime soon?

So far, the response to ChatGPT has been overwhelmingly positive, with many praising its advanced capabilities and ease of use. It remains to be seen how ChatGPT will be used in the coming years, but it’s clear that it has the potential to be a major player in the world of NLP.

By the way, ChatGPT wrote that last paragraph. When asked by a reporter at CNBC to write a news story on ChatGPT, it came up with a very well-rounded response (including that last snippet).

Why not give it a go?

Whilst we wait for a simplified solution that can be integrated within our current contact centre technology stack, you can still give this piece of tech a whirl by visiting OpenAI’s website.

Here’s a joke that ChatGPT put together for me:

Me: Tell me a joke about Batman and Superman?

ChatGPT: Why did Batman bring a ladder to a fight with Superman? Because he knew he’d have to climb up to Superman’s level!

Oooo burn.

However, it might be that you provide services to a financial services firm at some point along its customers’ journeys, or that you are in a customer-facing part of a financial services firm that tends to be the last involved in these big programmes of work. In which case, what do you need to know?

If that is the case, it will almost certainly pay dividends to take some time to read through the FCA’s documents and guidance, which you can do here. You don’t need to be an expert in it all, but it’s good to be able to put the customer contact tasks in a wider perspective of what’s trying to be achieved, which is “delivering good outcomes for retail customers”.

The Consumer Duty is broad in its scope. It naturally has a major focus on how B2C financial services products and services are designed. As well as the changes at executive level that need to be made to recognise the Consumer Duty’s demands. But – I hope – you don’t need to worry about that, because your colleagues or clients should already have that in hand. Where they might benefit from your help is in how firms communicate with customers and support them. This is where the contact centre and customer engagement teams’ detailed understanding of customers and their needs can really help.

Customer Communications

Even if you have no direct role in the creation and distribution of automated communications (letters, texts, emails, in-app notifications, etc.) you will have ‘from the horse’s mouth’ an understanding of how they are received, understood and acted upon. Previously firms were obliged to be “clear, fair and not misleading” in their communications. Now they need to be “understandable” to a whole range of customers, in a variety of circumstances, including those considered to be vulnerable.

This is likely to require:

All of which you and your teams are perfectly placed to help with.

Training

Your teams are directly interacting with customers. To do this as well as the Consumer Duty will demand, your people will need the skills and tools to:

If you feel that this is not already the case, then you need to ensure that training, coaching tools and resources are made available to you. If all these elements are already in place, then now might be the time for you to start training the rest of your organisation on these vital skills and aptitudes!

If you’d like to discuss how you are facing up to the Consumer Duty’s customer management challenges, just drop us a line.

Yes, it’s great to see old friends face to face again, but more importantly, it’s energising to see so many great vendors, buyers and influencers interested in what they have to show and tell. Sixty years ago, in his address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, President John F. Kennedy said “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

My observation about the C&CC Expo this year was that it demonstrated the reality of what we knew was possible ten to twenty years ago in terms of the SaaS business model and the benefits of the API driven economy. The show was dominated by the Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) community and those Value-Added Resellers offering their best choice CCaaS partner, combined with an ‘on the ground’ representation of that CCaaS providers marketplace.

What was so striking to me was how much the show layout itself represented the contact centre technology landscape. With the big CCaaS vendors occupying the premium space, the palm trees in the oasis next to the waterholes, and the specialist application vendors nestled closely around them. The more relevant and important the application vendor, the closer they were to the palm trees and the waterholes. The most relevant and interesting to visit were those application vendors that could help make sense of unstructured data. The less they could, the closer they were to the desert at the back of the hall.

Gartner estimates that unstructured data now represents an astounding 80 – 90% of all new enterprise data, and it’s growing 3X faster than structured data. Remembering JFK’s quote, now take a look at this article published in 2019 Insight-driven organisation | Deloitte Insights.

From an industry veteran’s standpoint, it feels like the future has now arrived. The beauty of SaaS delivering the ‘pay as you go’ CCaaS functionality, combined with a structured array of supporting AI driven application vendors, is that they all demonstrate a slightly different way that their product delivers the same solution to the same old set of problems that we’ve struggled with for decades.

What that means for ‘the contact centre tech’ customer’ is a huge amount of choice and a world of opportunity to refresh and upgrade operational functionality. The key point is that the tech’ on show at C&CC Expo this year gives every buyer (big and small) a chance to improve the engagement process (CX & EX) whilst at the same time, make a significant improvement in margin across the short, medium and long term.

If you need help in understanding what contact centre tech’ is the ‘best fit’ to improve your operating margins over the short, medium and long term, then get in touch. We’re here to help.

This increased customer connectivity brings its own challenges for businesses, one being able to communicate with your customers in their own language. However, there is unfortunately a sizeable gap between customer demand and capabilities when it comes to businesses serving their non-English speaking customers. According to ICMI research, 79% of contact centres acknowledge that they have customers who do not speak the primary language that they offer, but only 66% have formal customer support options in a language other than English.

So what can be done to support your multilingual requirements? Let’s take a look at some options:

In-house Support

If you want to maintain an in-house support function, then one option is to recruit your own multilingual speakers. There are many specialised recruitment agencies that can help find you the best matched candidates for your requirements, which is made easier if you offer a work-from-home model. With that said, both the recruitment and retention of multilingual speakers can be difficult and costly. A single absence may have a noticeable impact on service.

Outsourced Support

A logical route is to outsource your language requirements to a third-party call centre. Not only is this a cost-effective solution versus recruiting in-house, but you can scale up or down as and when needed with minimal to no impact on the delivery of service. One challenge is not being able to quality check the partner yourself as you don’t speak the language – you need to be sure you have selected a partner who can not only deliver your contact metrics but can also align with your values and company culture.

Technology

This space has exploded over recent years, with much more advanced technology available to service your language requirements without speaking the language in question. This includes software that can be integrated into the agent desktop, which makes it simple and straightforward for your English speaking agents to address your international customers. This is not always the most popular option, mainly due to the lack of understanding of the technology available. Make sure you take your time in studying the available technology and what benefits it will bring to your business and customer.

No matter the strategy you look to adopt, it’s important to implement it correctly. If done right, you can put yourself ahead of your competitors. However, if done badly, you can easily alienate a portion of your customer base.

Looking for support on your next multilingual project? Then get in touch.

When we think about outsourcing in Eastern Europe, thoughts may immediately turn to the likes of Albania, Poland and Romania for your outsourcing needs. However, as pointed out in my previous article on Kosovo, there are many more hidden gems within Eastern Europe, like Serbia for instance.

Serbia, over recent years, has worked extremely hard in developing its outsourcing capabilities so that it can go head to head with its local neighbours who have dominated this space for the past 10 years plus.

Fun fact – did you know that Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, is one of the oldest cities in Europe – with human settlements existing in Belgrade for over 7000 years. This history and culture have enabled the likes of Belgrade and other cities in Serbia to grow and maintain a talented workforce, with access to many Western European languages – making it another prime destination for multi-lingual contact centres.

This includes (but is not limited to):

Serbia is located in the UTC +1 Central European Timezone, 1 hour ahead of UK time. Whilst this is perfect alignment to UK/European business operating hours, it also means you can access the country in less than 3 hours flight-time from London, and less than 2 hours from Berlin. Serbia has also seen lots of interest from businesses based in the US, due to its availability of languages and competitive rates. Most of all, Serbia aligns well with the business culture of countries like the UK and the US.

As part of this insight into Serbia, I caught up with Serbia’s own Tijana Dmitrovic of Contact Service, to get her thoughts on why Serbia has become one of the go-to destinations in Eastern Europe:

“More and more organisations domestically and internationally are deciding to outsource their operations and open their offices, here in Serbia. The main reason why companies outsource is to reduce costs and outsourcing to Serbia is no exception. Serbia is a modern European country and its culture is similar to other continental cultures. Being geographically located between the West and the East of Europe has resulted in creating a diverse culture, which enables employees to easily adjust. Besides the location and language potential, I’d like to emphasise other important factors such as a high focus on education, skilled employees and a significant talent pool in three university cities allowing quick expansion of operations. The people of Serbia are passionate and highly motivated, mainly as a result of their good education and high work ethic. We understand that outsourcing in a new location is not an easy process, but once businesses outsource in Serbia, they never want to leave!”

Looking to outsource in Eastern Europe or set up a contact centre in this area? Get in touch, we’ll be able to help.

Thought so. In which case how do you fancy tackling the low pay and high inflation conundrum (as no one else seems to know what to do about it) of contact centre salaries?

It is not an attractive prospect, is it? However, you or your team are probably already doing just that, in small ways. I recently spoke to an operational leader who has agreed that a handful of their most vulnerable employees can get ‘first dibs’ at the weekly food donations gathered across the centre for a local food bank. People’s financial circumstances are highly variable and not always linked to the macroeconomic situation. However, right now a lot of people working in contact centres will be feeling more financially exposed than they have in years, or possibly ever.

The backdrop to all this is two-fold:

The bosses are getting richer

In the US the pay gap between CEOs’ and median workers’ earnings in 300 major firms has now stretched to 670:1. In the UK things are a bit fairer, but Reuters has reported that, based on company results published in 2022 up to early summer, CEOs were paid 63 times as much as their median employee’s salary. Bear in mind that’s the median (“mid-way”) salary point, not the lowest. In most companies traditionally low-paid jobs like cleaning, catering and security will have been outsourced long ago. So, in many organisations, the largest group of relatively low-paid employees are likely to be found in your contact centre – whether that’s in your corporate offices, at home or a bit of both. Of course, some or all of the customer management and contact centre operations may have been outsourced, too, but low-paid and financially struggling outsourced representatives of your brand are still your problem!

Contact centre salaries remain low

Despite the nature of the roles getting progressively more complex and challenging, contact centre salaries, in-house or outsourced, have remained stubbornly relatively low for over two decades (as ContactBabel’s long-term research results demonstrate), certainly before the ‘Great Resignation’.

So, what on earth can you do about it? Unless you have an especially well-funded and guilt-ridden executive team and shareholders it will be a variation on the old theme. That is, how to maximise the value generated by your operation and the customer interactions it is responsible for.

More than ever, the insight you hold into what are the broken processes and failed communications that drive unnecessary contacts is truly valuable. Make a nuisance of yourself and use a time of change and uncertainty to champion what your organisation needs to do for its customers. Only then can you either allow your people to focus more on value generation and be in a better position to argue for pay and rewards that can help them avoid the worse effects of the cost of living crunch.

If you’d like to discuss your current employment challenges or how to help drive and demonstrate more value from your contact centre operation, just drop us a line.

I have a belief that most things in life or business are what I would call “situational”. Your view and approach will depend on the situation that you are in, there is no single answer for a question, the right one will be based on the situation in each moment.

I’ve been in outsourcing situations where TUPE has been seen as:

a) Risky: to be taken if a contract moves a group of people with their roles and terms, which impacts the pricing of an opportunity for a client

b) A defensive advantage: as an incumbent if the contract places the liability on the other bidders

c) An opportunity: bringing the people who want to transfer across and reducing speed to competence

d) A challenge: if we win it and bring in the people, we will need a new site… how are we going to manage that and what is it going to cost?

I’m not an HR specialist and whenever I was in discussions regarding TUPE, I was always minded of what those conversations would mean to individuals, with worlds being turned upside down when an announcement of work moving was made. I can still recall as a younger manager in operations, when we had to announce the closure of a unit and one of the agents cried throughout the briefing. Moments like that stay with you. Outsourcing is tough, we know that, and changes impact our people hard.

So back to the question – is TUPE being turned on its head post-pandemic, as we face challenges in the recruitment and retention of quality people? Has remote working changed the impact of TUPE in the contact centre industry if agents are working from home? Does it matter where you are transferring them from?

Onboarding agents remotely, we can say is tough and in an ideal world, I would always prefer induction to be on site, creating the opportunity to form relationships that will ensure agents can support each other with challenging customers. If you TUPE a whole team into your organisation, relationships as a group have already been built and established. Remote working makes that sort of collective transfer a lot easier. However, integrating these individuals into your organisation as an outsourcer can be a challenge when you have to contend with different cultures and working styles.

Bringing people into your business with existing terms and conditions will mean that differences in rates between outsource providers will narrow. However, with living wage and inflation considerations, the hourly rate offers less opportunity to create the cost savings today than it did 20 years ago. Having people on varying contracts will create headaches for your HR team for sure, but could these be lesser than those that recruitment and training are facing with churn of staff currently?

In summary, TUPE provides much more of an opportunity today, than it did for organisations at the start of 2020. Yet, TUPE needs robust processes to ensure that people are properly onboarded and integrated within a business, especially if as an outsourcer you have made commitments to deliver improvements and efficiencies through your culture and methodologies. For organisations outsourcing activity for the first time, there is an increased potential that you could retain more of your existing in-house team through TUPE than you would have 2 years ago, if this looks probable then keep in mind our previous article on insourcing.

It’s perhaps an understatement to say that we live in changing times. Adjusting to a post-Covid work and consumer environment, as well as being mindful of increased costs and the changes that brings to how we prioritise our decision making. Whether at work or home, the decisions we make over these summer months are going to significantly influence how we cope as nights draw in and the cold sets in.

One of the most significant benefits of my role in Contact Centre Panel is lifting the bonnet on so many contact centre tech’ organisations, allowing me to engage with both gifted engineers and committed business leaders. That insight gives me hope and a huge amount of reassurance that whatever efficiency or cost challenges we face, there is a team of people out there with a technology solution that we can build a business case around. As a result, I think that the problem we should be trying to solve is one of faith and belief that in the context of work, there is a technology solution out there that will make our lives easier, more efficient, more rewarding and more profitable.

The limiting factor of course is always time and reshuffling our priorities to find that time. That’s hard when our roles require us to support people, tasks and stakeholders. It’s often the case that when we are most stressed, we find it hard to reach out for help, to take the time to take a breath and consider the alternative. When I think of my own experiences as a full-time sportsman (many, many years ago) I was exposed to specialists, scientists mostly, that helped my decision making, especially under stress. Whilst my stresses today may not be entirely sports related (although I do my best to try), the lessons learnt from those times were always about narrowing the focus and trusting our own decision making.

That said, there was always one caveat. Be strong enough to know that help was there and trust that no one would think badly of us if we ask for help.

Walking in the streets of Pristina, you may be greeted by one of the locals saying “Më vjen mirë që u takuam” – which is “pleased to meet you” in Albanian. If you didn’t know, Albanian is the national language of Kosovo, this is due to 1.8 million Albanians speakers living in Kosovo currently (92.93% of the entire population). However, since the war ended in June 1999, Kosovo has seen the return of many citizens who had fled the country. In turn this has seen the introduction of many Western European languages now spoken in the country, making Kosovo a prime destination for multi-lingual contact centres.

This includes (but is not limited to):

What also makes Kosovo an attractive outsourcing destination is the age of the population, with more than 50% of the population below the age of 25. The improved education system within Kosovo produces thousands of graduates each year, thus providing an adequate resource to power the outsourcing industry. Furthermore, the young population are hungry for employment, with contact centres seen as a stable and prosperous career path.
As we look at our watches, Kosovo is located in the UTC +1 Central European Time Zone, 1 hour ahead of UK time. Whilst this is perfect alignment to UK/European business operating hours, it also means you can access the country in less than 3 hours flight time from London, and less than 2 hours from Berlin. It’s not only the time zone that complements UK/European businesses, but the cultural alignment is clear to see which helps businesses reduce some of the problems from working with companies with different cultural backgrounds.

Final point, attractive pricing. Eastern Europe has become popular not only for its ability to deliver the same quality of service but for half the price in most cases – and this is the same (sometimes better) with Kosovo. As mentioned earlier, this is not cost over quality, due to the availability of a highly educated workforce.

We think you will be hearing more about Kosovo over the next couple of years, with the country looking to rival its neighbours such as Albania and Romania in providing high quality but cost-effective multi-lingual outsourcing solutions – Kosovo might be the next destination for you.

Looking to outsource in Eastern Europe? Get in touch with Contact Centre Panel, we can help you source your next partner free of charge!