Call centres in Thailand need to focus on improving and developing their agents according to a survey released yesterday by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, a company that provides software for the customer-service centre industry.

At the "Unleash the Power of Your Contact Centre" event yesterday, senior executives from Thai and international companies discussed call-centre trends, developments and their experiences. They noted that effective customer-service strategies were the key to increasing competitiveness, market share and brand awareness.

In a highly competitive environment, building and managing customer relationships is a way for companies to differentiate themselves from others. The growing importance of customer service has transformed the role of call centres from managing costs to generating revenue and long-term customer loyalty.

This is in line with findings from an Asia-Pacific consumer survey commissioned by Genesys in August. The survey found that the main determinant of loyalty is the quality of customers' experiences.

The survey found that 71 per cent of respondents would do business with a company based on a positive experience with call centre agents, while 67 per cent had stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer service.

The survey also revealed that 56 per cent of customers would be less loyal to a company if it shifted them to self-service systems instead of a live agent. Another 28 per cent would complain to friends and family and 16 per cent would simply stop doing business with that company.

"As the first point of contact with the customer, agents continue to be the face of most companies and it's the experience they deliver to customers that has the most impact on customer loyalty," said James Brooks, Genesys' senior Asia-Pacific vice president.

Effective engagement of customers increases the value of call centres as corporate assets, transforming them into a revenue source for the organisation, he said. Call centre software can further improve agent performance and productivity and enhance the customer experience through better service.

While remuneration is important to agents, it is not necessarily their biggest source of motivation. Seventy-five per cent of agents are most motivated by factors that engender a sense of personal satisfaction and achievement in their daily work, although only 52 per cent report experiencing this. The biggest agent motivator is being told that they have helped a customer, while most of their job stress relates to customer frustration and the inability to serve them well.

One of the keys to maximising agent productivity is to manage the balance between service levels and costs, and many call-centre managers are achieving this by asking agents to make outbound calls when call volumes are low.

Companies that have had the best success with this are the 27 per cent working with dynamically integrated inbound and outbound systems.

One type of outbound call is the courtesy call, where an agent contacts customers to provide them with information or evaluate their satisfaction with the company.

In an era where telemarketing is becoming less effective, these outbound calls have a positive impact on both customers and agents. The study found that 89 per cent of consumers said their opinion of a company would improve if they received a courtesy call, while 39 per cent of agents say these calls would make their jobs more satisfying.