Middle East Call Centre 2005 show to focus on strategy & leadership issues

Dominick Keenaghan, President of INSIGHTS explains, "The Middle East is at a crucial juncture with regards to a successful call centre industry in the region. Many new call centres are popping up, but although we see a 30% annual growth overall in the number of agent positions major operational issues exist with respect to resource planning and the day-to-day running of call centres and that leaves tremendous scope for large productivity and
efficiency improvements. In general the upsurge in new call centres to date is mostly a response to the demands of regional customers for better customer service. However, significant opportunity exists for the region's call centres to take a more strategic approach to call centre deployment and this means taking advantage of the call centre's ability to
dramatically improve many different aspects of corporate performance such as increased sales, anticipating ongoing customer needs and raised brand identity. By taking this approach the reputation of the Middle East as a global call centre "area of excellence" would be enhanced and this would not only boost local industry in terms of jobs and revenue streams but also help those regional organizations such as the Dubai Outsource Zone and Egypt's Xceed who are actively pursuing international business process outsourcing opportunities."

The MECC 2005 Conference has been specifically designed to help regional decision makers decide on key strategic and operational imperatives. Continued Keenaghan, "we have arranged for 2 conference tracks at MECC 2005 addressing Strategic Differentiation and Operational
Excellence respectively. In the former we will explore the unique characteristics of the regional market, the value of learning from but not necessarily copying other parts of the Call Centre world, our current regional weaknesses and how we need to address them, and the key plans and decisions that need to be made if the region is to become an "Area of Excellence". For the "Operational Excellence" track we will highlight key contact centre principles and practices, explore strategies and techniques to improve resource planning, quality control, and performance management, and present methods and tools to continuously enhance productivity, efficiency and effectiveness parameters whilst simultaneously maintaining and increasing customer responsiveness and flexibility."

To support the Main Conference tracks, in-depth workshops on subjects such as Contact Centre Technology, IP Telephony, CRM deployment and Outsourcing will be held on the days before and after the Main Conference. In addition, conference delegates will have the opportunity to test-drive many of the new concepts and ideas they have covered in the sessions at the supporting MECC 2005 Exhibition.

The MECC 2004 Exhibition opens Sunday January 16th 10.00 am and is open until 6.00 pm, repeated on January 17.