Support. Educate. Engage. These three words represent the core focus of the recently formed Contact Centre Institute of New Zealand (CCiNZ), New Zealand's newest association aimed at advancing the positive progress of the Industry through events, educational activities and support while providing the platform for members to meet, engage and share their ideas and experiences.
CCiNZ was established after a series of countrywide consultation meetings revealed an opportunity for a central body providing support on a national basis – something we believe is currently lacking for the approximately 340 organisations that represent 27,000 seats in the New Zealand Contact Centre Industry.
Ensuring CCiNZ is ‘by industry for industry,' the executive committee comprises seven elected members from key stakeholder companies within the industry. The committee is enhanced by an advisory board including representatives from specialist areas such as technology, benchmarking, corporate wellness and industry training organisations. This ensures that CCiNZ members have the best knowledge in the industry supporting them.
The inaugural CCiNZ annual conference in September in Auckland will provide CCiNZ members a real opportunity to interact and discuss key issues facing the Industry. Utilising feedback from its members via a survey, the upcoming conference will provide a variety of workshops focused on integral elements members have deemed important. These include:
* Staff engagement and resilience
* Contact Centre technology and optimisation
* Strategic thinking/forward planning versus day-to-day issues
* Return on investment – how to measure success.
The conference will offer insights into these areas through informative workshops where the skills gained will be readily transferable into the workplace.Survey responses also identified career progression for staff as another distinct area of interest. Historically, a job in a Contact Centre (or call centre as they were initially referred to) was not seen as a career – rather an in-between job before something else came along.
Now, a career in a Contact Centre is a respectable vocation. Contact Centres offer much more than just call-taker positions, with dedicated trainers, recruiters, workforce managers, team leaders and administrators now part of the everyday workforce. To further develop this trend CCiNZ works closely with the Industry Training Organisation, which administers the National Certificate in Contact Centre Operations.
CCiNZ also actively contributes by reviewing and making recommendations on unit standards and module relevancy. A recent outcome of this cooperation is the introduction of a Senior Customer Service Representative qualification and also one for Team Leaders. It is also important for the group to share the successes such as those companies choosing to on-shore their centres in New Zealand.
The subject can be emotive, resulting in off-shoring activities being more extensively reported; the outsourcing of Telecom 018 and 0172 calls to the Philippines was widely publicised. On-shoring is something CCiNZ encourages, yet the success stories do not receive the same level of publicity. Fisher - Paykel in Dunedin is one example employing 50 additional staff on a 24/7 basis to supplement its Auckland and Brisbane centres.
In February the Qantas Group announced that it was consolidating its presence in New Zealand, supporting telephone sales from the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States. The ANZ banking group announced in March that call load sharing between its Australia and New Zealand centres resulted in 100 jobs shifting to Wellington from overseas – all great results for New Zealand and something that CCiNZ aims to more widely communicate in the future.
Businesses need superior customer service and research tends to suggest that customers still want to speak with a person rather than to a machine. Business continuity plans may also be put to the test with the potential for employees to be absent with the increasing number of swine flu virus cases.
CCiNZ will endeavour to sustain members by sharing continuity plans and successes to assist in developing comprehensive strategies to successfully maintain customer service levels through what could be challenging times.Despite the current recession and gloomy economic projections, Contact Centres have a bright future in New Zealand.
The CCiNZ network is energised to provide support for members, to assist in the provision of the best service to their customers as well as support, education and engagement of their staff. For further information on CCiNZ, visit the website.