Category: Article

Daily Routine

Daily Routine
by Andi Anugrah, ICCA Chairman

If every morning you drink a cup of hot tea, then it will become a routine or a habit. You’ll feel like something’s missing if you don’t. Likewise, if after eating you need something sweet for dessert, then you will feel incomplete without that dish. That’s a habit and there may be a routine process that is carried out so that it reaches that stage.

Same with me, every morning I write something in #celotehpagi. It becomes an interesting habit to think for a moment about something and start writing. Various kinds of things can be written in #celotehpagi. It can be about yourself, family, work or various things that are on your mind.

Sometimes it’s also difficult to find a specific theme to cover. On the other hand, sometimes there are too many ideas that you want to write down and eventually the resulting written material becomes diverse. Sometimes too much to think about, finally a lot of writing is completed. But I also try to re-read each article and correct certain parts before publishing.

As a routine that has been carried out during this Pandemic period, writing #celotehpagi is a spirit to share something useful. There are times when you want to count how many readers of an article, whether published on websites or social media and of course WhatsApp. But in the end it doesn’t matter how many people read, the important thing is to be able to write and share something useful.

Changing the perception of a routine into a positive habit is a process to give meaning to a work. Maybe the same thing is felt by some artists, whether in painting, or composing songs or various other works of art. They don’t think about how many people will see, hear and like the work. He continued to do his activities as a habit.

In our work it is also almost the same that we serve many customers every day and view this as a routine. It could be a workload or it could be an opportunity to benefit others. It can be a burden or it can be an opportunity, depending on our perception.

But I see that in every routine we face there is always an opportunity to do better. Routine is a process that has a pattern and this can be set or programmed in an application or robotics. Of course, if it is a routine that is a workload. It is different if it is a work of art which of course requires a human touch or feeling.

Just imagine if every morning the person who wrote #celotehpagi was a robot. Which takes certain themes that are trending on the internet. Don’t we almost every day experience it, if we open our gadgets. Sharing apps provides certain notifications and encourages us to read them. There are notifications from social media, there are also notifications if we open the website.

Such is the routine and the habit. Enjoy your cup of coffee or tea. Take the opportunity to say hello to someone you love. Good morning and stay healthy. (AA)

Mega-trends reshaping the contact center industry

By Raymond Devadass, Chairman of CCAM Malaysia

In July 2019, I was asked to deliver an opening address at our annual National Contact Centre Conference. This was when I began penning down my thoughts on the mega-trends reshaping the contact centre industry. There were so many thoughts in my mind, so many opinions to share, and perhaps so many heartfelt emotions to put into words. And when you have so much to say, sometimes it all gets mixed up in your head. The opening address was eventually delivered in some structured manner, but soon after that I began writing this article to share my thoughts. In many ways, it serves more as a reminder to myself of what to focus on.

The Contact Centre industry has evolved over the last 20 years and companies have started to realize the importance of adopting advanced technologies so they could better target the customers and consumers with more efficient engagement with the stakeholders. Customer interaction via contact centres has proven to be beneficial for the businesses as it adds value to the business.

Technology has always played an important role in the development and growth of the contact centre industry where the mobile boom, social media, data analytics, and big data centres are making a huge impact in today’s world. Contact centres were not even a recognized industry until the latter half of the 20th century but today, it is considered as the key part of many of the small and big revenue generating businesses.

According to statistics, in 2012, there were more than three million positions approximately, in the contact centre industry of United States accounting for almost five million jobs. Also, the annual growth of the contact centre industry in terms of jobs is 0.5 percent and it accounts for eight to ten million jobs worldwide according to estimation. Closer to home, the contact centre industry in Malaysia comprises of 230 MSC companies, employing 53,544 people, and generates a total revenue USD2.5billion per annum. With the addition of organisations in the BFSI and Telecommunications space, this industry employs all together more than 150,000 people – accounting for 1% of the total working population in Malaysia.

The rise of the call centres in the 1980s and 90s was the shift of terminology from telemarketing to call centres and it became a distinct function for the businesses and organizations in the last two decades of the 20th century.

By the end of the 20th century, the industry started to take off and call centres were being established by organizations of all sizes to address and cater the customer service requests, inquiries about the organization and its services, marketing and other similar areas. Not every company established their own contact service centres as some of the organizations also outsourced it to the already established contact centres whereas some established and ran the centres internally or did a little bit of both for better performance.

In today’s world where the competition is tough and economies are volatile in most part of the world, maintaining and establishing a profitable business is important. That is where contact centres play their role as it delivers and provides a quality customer experience (CX) to the individual customers as per their preferences, needs, and satisfaction. However, the technological advancements in the past have focused only on providing better and better customer service and improving the efficiency of the organizations.

Fast forward 20 years, the pace of change is accelerating, fuelled by technology and changes in customer expectations. The global CX industry is undergoing a major revolution as a result of automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning. With the new cutting-edge technologies, the scope of the contact centres is increased exponentially, and it is more important for the success of the businesses as it was ever before. Contact centres are considered as one of the most technically sophisticated operations, having a wide range of responsibilities and applications, within an organization. These new disruptive technologies are forcing us to re-think the way CX activities operate.

Companies, on one hand, are striving to improve the quality and efficiency of the customer experience by understanding the needs of the customers and, on the other hand, to cut down the costs associated with it. The technological advancements and new trends in the contact centre are revolutionizing the industry with self-service tools, simplifying operational requirements and environment, better online security and protection, the use of Artificial intelligence and deep machine learning, mobility, and big data analytics. These technological advancements have made it possible for the contact centres to provide more value-added services to the businesses and in turn create high-value jobs in the industry. (RD)

Digital Transformation of Contact Center Services

By Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia

The development of telecommunications technology encourages the transformation of digital services. If we pay attention, the transition to digital contact center services is more likely to use self-service technology or the use of new media. We can sense that this transition is initiated by the service using the Interactive Voice Response or IVR engine. Self-service with IVR helps customers to solve various information and transaction needs independently.

Then the use of email and the internet became the next service medium. Although the presence of an internet contact center with VoIP at that time was less successful due to network limitations. When the development of cellular telecommunications networks dominates, the use of SMS as a service line becomes the solution and continues with service codes.

The development continued with the presence of live chat, social media and various other message-based media. This encourages written communication to become a more complete way of communicating services. Likewise, the presence of Artificial Intelligent technology has encouraged the use of chatbots applications. The ability of Artificial Intelligent applications that are able to recognize sound or images or writing causes this application to be able to provide various variations of self-service services to customers.

The presence of various mobile applications has supported self-service customer service. Customers simply select the menu available in the application and can perform various activities including getting information, making transactions, registering, changing status, or various other requests. With the convenience provided by the mobile application, it allows customers to solve various problems self-service.

With the increasing number of applications used, customers depend on the availability of these applications. On the other hand, the need for assistance is also increasing with various personal problems. When the customer does not get adequate service from the application, the choice is to contact the contact center. They can use chat or chatbots. They can also then use email or even they choose to use the phone.

The challenge faced with digitalization is the reduction in the number of workers used, because most of the services are already done by self-service. The next challenge is that digital presence causes customer expectations to be higher. Hope that with automation or digitization it is able to provide faster, more accurate service even with a larger service capacity. For this reason, contact centers that implement digitization actually need to implement new standard procedures that are able to accommodate changes in service patterns.

Sometimes these changes are not a concern, because they assume that the digitization of services will run automatically. This is the challenge of transitioning the service automation process. However, this change requires the workforce to be more creative and use digital technology effectively in reducing various routine jobs. The rest of the workforce’s abilities should place more emphasis on services that are relational, personal, and something that requires more complex feelings or thoughts.

Enjoy the era of digital transformation of contact center services. I hope to be a part of that change. (AA)

Millennial Leaders in Contact Center

Contact Center Asia Pacific Leaders Talk

It is undeniable that the leadership transition with the presence of millennials in contact center operations. They were previously contact center agents and later became Team Leaders and even became Contact Center Managers. Rapid changes, lifestyles and work styles make this leadership transition affect the work environment of contact center services.

In principle, millennials prefer a group work approach to a power or tiered management style. One of the most important values that millennial leadership concerns about is their need to build relationships. Millennial leaders prefer to use a work group approach rather than an individualistic approach to achieve organizational goals and missions. Millennial leaders will discuss and seek their team’s opinion before making a big impact decision.

Millennials as leaders seek individual goals and fulfillment of needs with specific values. Family values, friendships and individual goals are key aspects of the millennial leadership style. Millennial leaders are embracing their employees working from home. Millennials will stay connected to the team, even when they work remotely. The availability of video communication becomes an important communication component when employees work away from their usual workplace. No wonder the intensity of communication via video and collaboration applications during work is becoming more common.

Join our monthly interactive Contact Center Asia Pacific Leaders Talk “Millennial Leaders in Contact Center, Friday, 23 July 2021, 13:30-15:30 Jakarta Time.”

Speakers : Sarun Vejsupaporn, Nice Call, Thailand (Direct Marketing), Joyce Poon, Equity Global Consultants, Hong Kong, Gratiano Yeoung, Roojai, Thailand (Insurance), Lily Shen, HSBC, China (Bank) and Moderator : Andi Anugrah, Telexindo Bizmart, Indonesia.