(From Business Wire) -- The Customer Contact Association (CCA), the leading independent authority on contact centre strategies and operations, says a drive to boost employee engagement in contact centres will unlock greater productivity and lead to happier staff and customers.
CCA's thought leadership agenda supports organisations who employ some 30% of the one million people working in contact centres in the UK. CCA has completed an authoritative industry census in which it emerged that an overwhelming majority of organisations described their contact centre employees as mostly committed. However, it identified room for improvement to boost the proportion of employees described as 'very committed' from the current figure of 18%.
CCA Census 2010-11, which canvassed the views of 246 respondents (the majority of whom work for organisations employing more than 1,500 people globally) found that 73% of organisations describe their staff as 'often committed' while a minority of 8% said staff are 'rarely committed'.
CCA Chief Executive Anne Marie Forsyth said: "Front line contact centre staff are living through taxing times, frequently bearing the brunt of customer concerns and complaints as well as worrying about job security. Despite these pressures, employee engagement is relatively high among our membership. CCA is leading a drive to help members raise the bar on engagement levels even higher in order to deliver consistent world class service."
Forsyth added: "We need a renewed emphasis on people issues to reflect the seismic change taking place in customer contact. Performance throughout the recession has been good - our census shows that 82% of our members have had 'very active' engagement with customers and 79% are committed to personal development of employees. We're proud of what members have achieved in a cost-cutting environment and we're collaborating on strategies designed to boost performance even further."
