Call-centres the poor relations

The key to a successful call centre is to put customer interaction first, according to a report by researcher Ovum which evaluates software from eight vendors, writes Lisa Kelly.

David Bradshaw, senior Ovum analyst and report author, said: ?From the plumbing point of view, companies are treating the telephone network like God.?

He believes that productivity is optimised ?by doing the most important job ? putting customer interaction first?.

Interaction management is assessed by evaluating how easy it is for the agent to manage the customer call or the transaction.

The report measures the performance of the products against the other three core tasks of call centre software ? call centre management, application and script development and integration with other systems.

According to Bradshaw, the Internet will not kill off call centres because they ?are complementary forms of customer interaction?.

?When customers using ecommerce on the Internet encounter a problem, they want to speak to someone,? he said.