THE STATE WE'RE IN. VITAL FINDINGS FROM THE CONTACTBABEL 2023 UK REPORT AND MY OBSERVATIONS.

LOOK AT THE STATE WE’RE IN!

SIX IMPORTANT UPDATED FINDINGS IN THE UK CONTACT CENTRE INDUSTRY IN 2023.

ContactBabel is a leading data, performance and economic research and contact centre analysis organisation and a leader in its field. They have recently published their annual report titled:?the UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers’ Guide 2023. This study is widely regarded as the most comprehensive looking at our industry and customer facing industries generally.

Over 200 surveys and 2,000 interviews were completed to create the findings in the 2023 paper.

ContactBabel’s key discoveries were numerous and here are six of those with my thoughts.

1. Chatbots today handle 50% of web chats. My view is that we MUST be ensuring the accuracy and quality of the chatbot responses are being managed closely and are not (in part) exacerbating the increasing abandonment and wait time issues where poor chatbot experiences are acting as call drivers in completely counter-intuitive outcomes.
2. Call abandonment is at an all-time high, sitting at 9.1%.Up from 8.2%. There will be absolute impacts here from the increased numbers of under-skilled/low tenured volumes of agents due to increased attrition and difficulties in recruiting good people at volume. Lower employee sat figures and customer adjustment to increased automation and Ai could also be impacting this.
3. Average speed to answer has again increased, from a mean of 106 seconds to 120 seconds, there’s a probability that post pandemic changes and adjustments are at play here with recruitment and increased redundancies and resignations driving some of this problem. The median has also risen. This tells us that the data isn't coming from a small group of contributors.
4. The average cost of an inbound call is now ￡6.26 – This is 96% higher than webchat and 70% higher than email. My view is that we have much work to do on reducing these costs by further reducing repeat (spin) call demand where first time resolution was not achieved and also ensuring that self service and chat bot/automated service solutions are exact and offer a right first time outcome wherever practical and preventing customers still calling in and also helping to reduce call volumes. This will allow a reduction in agent team sizes for call handling and shifting those resources across other channels or downsizing.
5. 79% of UK contact centres now employ at least one cloud-based application. This is way up on previous numbers. I think we are clearly seeing a shift away from traditional methods and a wider embracing of new tech and delivery methodologies and there has been an up-shift in the numbers of smaller/boutique outsourcers making these investments also.
6. COVID’s impact on the workplace lingers, with 93% of UK contact centres expecting to continue working flexibly (either hybrid or remote) in 2023. I suggest that this is not going away, but one thing that absolutely must happen in our industry is that there is a common agreement on what the best and most effective hybrid working solutions look like and collaboration between businesses explore this. The remote/hybrid answer is still up in the air and feels like it needs a more strategic and viable solution industry wide. My view is that this is a key moment for the industry and the site/hybrid/remote solution feels disorientated and not cohesive across the industry. I think it's time for a cross industry collaboration on this point.

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A final observation from me in this post is the increase in average call duration for inbound service and sales calls. In 2004, the average was 220 and 280 seconds for service and sales respectively.

In 2022/23, the averages increased to 426 and 516 seconds for service and sales respectively.

Some of this will relate to automation deflecting increasing volumes of easier/low effort calls to webchat, fully automated chatbots and self service, leaving the more complex (so, longer) calls for agents to handle.

It also strikes me that perhaps there are more stages and increased complexity now that back in the day in our customer engagement. Increased channels, technology and complexity in internal tools. The simplicity of the customer journey has morphed into a more complexed set of journeys with more to go wrong for the customer and more experiences and journey’s for the industry to manage.

Are we keeping pace with the technological and more complexed journey experiences of customers who (in the middle of all of it) want faster and more accurate outcomes than ever before?

Interesting data and interesting times.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for reading,

Al