ContactBabel: U.S Contact Centers Handled 6.6 Billion Complaints in 2009

2010-03-05 - Research published by ContactBabel, the contact center industry analysts, has found that US contact centers handled 6.6 billion complaints in 2009. However, the vast majority of complaints received were caused by problems outside the contact center.

According to "The US Contact Center Decision-Makers' Guide", a major study of over 200 US contact center operations, sponsored by CosmoCom, inContact and Syntellect, has found that the technology, media and telecoms sector receives the greatest proportion of complaints. 27 percent of all calls received by this sector are from disgruntled customers.

However, the research has found the vast majority of complaints received by a contact center are not about the contact center itself or its staff, but rather "failure demand", caused by a breakdown of processes elsewhere in the organization, as the following table shows.

Table: Complaints and their target, by vertical market

vertical market	% of calls that are complaints	% of calls about the wider business
TMT (technology, media and telecoms)	27	87
Manufacturing	25	96
Retail & Distribution	20	99
Transport & Travel	16	98
Services	15	97
Outsourcing	9	85
Finance	8	86
Insurance	3	80
Healthcare	2	80
Public Service	1	70
Average	14	89

The report's author, Steve Morrell, commented:
"Although the vast majority of complaints received by a contact center are not about its staff, it is the contact center that has to deal with the dirty work. Further failures within the complaints process can see customers calling into the contact center again and again, becoming more irate each time. There is a real risk, especially within large contact centers, that a single agent does not have the capability or responsibility to deal with the customer’s issue, which may reach across various internal departments - like finance, billing, provisioning and technical support - none of which can or will take responsibility for sorting out the whole problem. For example, the retail & distribution sector receives a high proportion of complaints (20 percent of all calls), but 99 percent of these are actually about the results of failed processes elsewhere in the enterprise, such as a wrong delivery or faulty goods."

Author(s): CallCenterInternational

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