Customers Frustrated with Offshore Contact Centers

Businesses are risking driving customers away by offshoring their customer service overseas, research from Ovum has revealed.

According to a survey by the independent telecoms analyst, not being able to understand contact center workers from overseas is the most frustrating aspect of customer service for UK consumers.

Out of 11 options, half said they found this the most annoying aspect.

Ian Jacobs, Ovum analyst and author of a new report unveiling the survey findings, commented:

"It has been more than 10 years since the offshoring of contact centers began to take off, and problems still persist to date, as seen from the results of this survey.

"The high levels of frustration caused by accents and language barriers can lead to customer churn. While there are economic advantages to
offshoring customer care, the reality is in today's world of customer loyalty and retention these cost savings can be negated if customers are
driven away.

"Businesses need to become more proactive in the hiring and training processes of their offshore contact centers providers to ensure improved
English proficiency levels and accents of their agent labour pools. More importantly, businesses may want to consider using a mixture of
nearshore locations and domestic home agents where cultural affinity and accents are more closely aligned with customers in the UK."

The second most frustrating aspect for consumers was 'inability to access human agents when I need to speak to a customer service
representative', followed by 'automated telephony system is annoying'.

Ovum conducted a survey of UK consumers from November 2010 to January 2011 to gauge their attitudes on changes in customer service,
frustrations with contact centres, channel preferences and social media usage.

The report is part of Ovum's signature research portfolio for 2011, which represents the premium content produced by Ovum analysts.

About Ovum

Ovum provides clients with independent and objective analysis that enables them to make better business and technology decisions. Our
research draws upon over 400,000 interviews a year with business and technology, telecoms and sourcing decision-makers, giving Ovum and our
clients unparalleled insight not only into business requirements but also the technology that organisations must support. Ovum is part of the
Informa Group. http://www.ovum.com.

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