Results from this year's Dimension Data's Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report indicate that the contact centre industry is entering the next stage of evolution in communicating with customers.

Demonstrating this transition is the 22% increase this year in the number of contact centres that have processes and systems in place to identify sales opportunities during an inbound call.

Nearly two thirds (61%) of contact centres now have these systems in place. In addition, the number of organisations that have a strategy in place to reduce the cost of serving customers has increased 9.4% year on year to 67%.

The 2009 Report released today by Dimension Data, the $4.5 billion IT services and solution provider is now in its twelfth year. The Report, which surveyed over 550 contact centres in 36 countries across five continents, also shows:

Customer value is king

• Contact centres are gaining a better understanding of the true value of multi-channel customer service and strategies to move consumers away from using the phone as their primary method of customer service have become more selective. Consequently, overall call volumes to contact centres have risen again this year.

• As contact centres search for a balance between personal interaction and cost effectiveness only 11% are offering financial incentives to consumers to use self-service or other lower-cost customer service channels.

• Instead, more organisations are telling their customers about the benefits of using lower cost methods of communication such as the web and self service - doubling to 36% of contact centres doing so this year.Surprisingly for a recession where cost cutting is rife, one third of contact centres do not measure the cost per interaction of agent assisted calls - the most accurate means to determining the cost effectiveness of an operation.

• UK consumers will wait longer in a phone queue than their counterparts around the world before hanging up - 66.8 seconds compared to 45 seconds in Africa and the Middle East and just 34 seconds in Asia.

• However, levels of service in contact centres are continuing to improve: on average over 70% of customer calls are answered within ten seconds, and customer satisfaction increased three percentage points to 83.8%.

• Unfortunately for those not on the internet, most contact centres surveyed respond faster to emails than letters.

• Surprisingly for an internet-savvy country like the UK, we have the lowest number of customer service interactions conducted online: less than one percent of overall interactions compared with 13% in Australia and 8% in America.

• Despite regular news reports about high staff churn in contact centres, the UK has one of the lowest 'agent attrition' rates in the world: 18% compared to the highest rate of 33% in the Americas and nearly 20% in the rest of Europe.

• In UK contact centres, salaries make up a higher proportion of operating costs than in any other surveyed country. However the UK also has the lowest recruitment costs and lowest phone call costs.

• 12 years ago CRM systems were the key technology focus for contact centres. This has now given way to IP telephony. In fact while CRM projects have fallen away during the recession, the number of IP projects has increased.

• Organisations are looking at integrating solutions to enable improved service and sales capabilities. 50% of all contact centres polled reported that they already had integrated business systems in place.

• Businesses are taking a more strategic approach when implementing new technologies, with nearly 80% of contact centre managers saying they had to get sign off from other areas within the business such as IT and business leaders.

Howard Spink, Dimension Data's UK director for Customer Interactive Solutions (CIS) says, "Traditionally, contact centres were seen as cost centres and the primary business focus was on decreasing costs through consolidating and rationalising processes, functions and activities. Our report suggests that we are on the cusp of a contact centre evolution driven in part by the tough economic conditions of today. Within three to four years, we expect that most contact centres will become a key source of value creation for businesses. One of the main ways this will be achieved is through seizing sales opportunities from inbound calls. Meanwhile, however, with the recession still biting hard, the focus on driving down costs has not gone away, as shown by the 66% of contact centres with a strategy in place to cut costs of serving customers."