Telecommunication and banking are the industries that offer the best Call Center services, according to a study across six industries conducted by Mystery Shopping Agency, part of the Expo Media group.
The study was conducted in the first half of last year and covered companies in telecommunications (phone and cable operators), banking, medical services, insurance services, retail, IT and pharma.
Companies in telecommunications, IT, banking, insurance and retail are the ones that often invest the most in call centre services.
“Digital communication in banking Industries are the best ranked. This comes as no surprise, as the Call Center solutions have been implemented for the first time in Romania within these industries and the number of clients that use these services is much bigger, therefore, the standards are much higher”, explains Mădălina Vilău, Managing Partner at Mystery Shopping Agency.
Insurance and pharma, ranking last
On the other hand, the companies with the lowest rankings come from industries like medical, insurance and pharma.
The study involved 6 telecommunication operators (phone and cable services providers, 5 banks, 5 medical services suppliers, 5 insurance suppliers, 4 IT retail companies and 3 companies in the pharma industry.
The evaluation criteria were: the method for taking customer calls, correctly identifying the customer’s request, the agent’s specific knowledge, proactivity, ending the call and the emotional tone of the interaction.
On the other hand, the criteria that differentiated between the Call Center services in the banking sector and the telecom operators were the method for taking customer calls, ending the call and the emotional tone of the interaction.
The profile of the ideal Call Center employee
An average of 88% of telecommunication and banking Call Center agents manifested their availability to offer customer support, via voice tonality and enthusiasm. They introduced themselves, asked questions to pinpoint the reason for the customer’s call, showed availability to answer any other future queries, and personalised their call signoff.
“The profile of the ideal Call Center employee should look like this: determined individual, balanced, sociable, communicative, who can prove they have tact, empathy, calm and a good reaction speed. The employees that work in Call Centers are, generally, students or fresh graduates, and the mean age is somewhere between 18-25 years old”, explains Vilău.
Companies working in the externalization of Call Center services are among the most active employers on the market, offering hundreds and even thousands of jobs annually. Among the most renowned in the field are Geboc (HP’s service center), Genpact, Wipro Technologies, Computer Generated Solutions (CGS), Ericsson, Oracle, IBM, Telepormance Romania, Competence Call Center, Stefanini and Webhelp.
15-20 companies that only provide Call Center services
The manager estimates that in the local market there are 15 to 20 companies that solely provide Call Center services, however, there are some companies that have internal Call Center departments.
The companies that have their own Call Center departments invest several hundred thousand euros, or even more, in developing them. The amount depends on the size of the Call Center (number of operators), number of daily calls, number of software licenses and their target response time.
The Romanian Contact Center market has been estimated at around 200 million euros in 2012, with the average growth rate in the last years being somewhere between 10 – 15% per year, according to Computer Generated Solutions (CGS) Romania’s estimations. They are one of the biggest Call Center outsourcing service suppliers in the local market.
On the other hand, the European Contact Center market will grow to an estimated 22.5 billion euros valuation by 2017, according to the consultancy and business research company Frost and Sullivan.