Call Centre Conference to address regional customer service issues

President of MECC 2006 show organizers INSIGHTS, Dominick Keenaghan commented, "a recent 'mystery shopper' survey in the UAE highlighted the disconnect between different and un-coordinated customer-facing interfaces in a company such as the web and the call centre, and the relatively poor performance of agents in many of the UAE's leading call centres. Whilst it is easy to point the finger of blame at the agents for their lack of performance, the fact is that many organisations "make false savings" by failing to provide adequate initial, ongoing and refresher training for their staff. On top of that they have not established clear processes to formalise internal communications and help customers find their way around a company. The classic example is that of a marketing department launching a campaign, say with contact numbers in newspaper ads, and not telling the call centre to expect a larger volume of calls. The first the call centre knows about the situation is when the customer starts describing the promotion on offer to the agent himself."

To help delegates understand how these situations start to develop and the dangers companies face by failing to address the above issues, the MECC 2006 conference will present several recent case studies that illustrate the strategies that can be adopted to rectify and improve these situations. Experienced call centre professionals from around the world such as Brad Cleveland will, in addition, explore crucial strategic topics such as "the management of customer experiences" and " helping senior decision makers understand the value of the call centre", whilst the regions top call centre practitioners will present their strategies and methodologies for keeping their customers satisfied and retaining their custom.

Other key topics to be presented at MECC 2006 include the best ways that a contact centre can move from being a cost centre to a profit centre by, for example, fostering customer satisfaction and loyalty, and the new capabilities being enabled by new advances in contact centre technology. In the latter a particular highlight is expected to be the discussion on best practices to ensure disparate, corporate systems are integrated together tightly so that contact centre applications can function as a unified whole, thus substantially increasing the potential value of each individual customer interaction.

The MECC 2006 Conference will feature two parallel tracks. One will explore the latest thinking in strategic leadership, especially now that the percentage of customer contacts through different channels other than voice is rapidly increasing and maintaining a constant customer experience becomes ever more important. The second track on operational management will present the latest techniques and tips, that call centre managers can use to ensure they can best plan and cope with variable caller volumes as these fluctuation occur.

The MECC 2006 Conference is supported by two days of pre-conference tutorials and post conference workshops covering in-depth treatment of key management topics such as resource planning, finding an outsourcer and team building.

The MECC 2006 event takes place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Sheikh Zayed road from Saturday January 28th till Tuesday, January 31.