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| Contact Centres Starting to Recognise the Value of 'Going Green' Businesses across all sectors are beginning to understand the benefits of adopting green strategies within the contact centre and, as a result, plan to put in place strategies to improve their environmental performance. So finds an 'On the Conference Floor' survey of senior managers and executives attending this year's CCA Annual Convention, conducted on behalf of leading customer management consultancy and solutions provider, Softlab. "Yet 'going green' for green's sake is not a current business goal", says Softlab senior consultant, Lisa Olafsdottir. "With productivity and revenue gains seen as the most important drivers for implementing a green policy – by 26% and 24% of respondents respectively - companies do want to be seen to be taking steps to reduce their impact on the environment, but only if it makes commercial and financial business sense. Key survey findings include: • 53% of respondents already have a green policy in place, though many, unprompted, expressed concerns regarding the quality of the current policy. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly one quarter (22%) don't know; • Similarly, only 41% have a specific employee in place responsible for 'green' issues, with no such champion in 26% of respondent organisations. Again, 33% were uncertain as to the existence of such a role within the business; • The most commonly used contact centre applications include workforce optimisation tools (adopted by 72% of respondents), followed by Voice over IP (VoIP) (71%) and multi-channel solutions (62%). Other technologies such as speech-activation, self-service and instant messaging are in place in less than 50% of organisations; • However, the picture changes looking forward. There is a significant increase in anticipated adoption of workforce optimisation tools (up to 84%), VoIP (up to 82%) and instant messaging (up to 75%). Only speech-activation technologies lags behind in terms of planned adoption, at 51%. "Much of this investment will remain driven by cost and efficiency issues, " says Olafsdottir, "but the results reflect a growing awareness of their value in improving environmental performance. • The language of internal efficiencies within the call centre is reinforced in considering the benefits of 'going green' within the call centre. In contrast to the higher level of importance attached to greater effectiveness (15%) and measurable RoI (14%), for example, only 8% of respondents cited other benefits such as improved customer service and retention and reduced carbon footprint, with just 5% citing staff motivation. Overall, the Softlab survey indicates that green issues are increasingly likely to impact on purchasing decisions looking ahead, with 44% planning to 'go green' in their contact centre within the next 12 months and a further 20% in the next three years. "In achieving this however, respondents evidenced limited awareness of the full value of technology in delivering environmental gains", believes Olafsdottir, "with 79% rating IT as 'important to the delivery of a green policy' with only 14% recognising it as 'essential' and 7% as 'not important'. "The good news, however, is that latest advances in call centre technology not only provide immediate RoI and operational benefits in streamlining the business, but also have a dramatic effect on the organisation's carbon footprint." Softlab believes that essential first steps should include the appointment a green 'champion' to actively promote environmental activity and the formulation of a plan to enhance the processes within the contact centre. "At the same time automation technologies can support successfully meeting such objectives", she adds. "For example, workforce management and convergent technologies such as intelligent routing and presence management can help facilitate home working and cut staff travel to and form meetings. Similarly, speech-activation solutions can have a dramatic impact on cutting paper trails and self-service options will minimise the business's computer footprint. "In short", Olafsdottir concludes, "saving money and improved environmental performance are no longer mutually exclusive. By contrast, in today's world of hard-headed, RoI-based business decisions, being green makes real commercial sense." write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Networking News :: home page |