Sabio and Avaya launch ‘Voice of the Contact Centre Agent’ - industry’s first major UK research project to focus on the specific needs of the contact centre agent

Sabio collaborates with YouGov and Avaya to assemble specialist contact centre agent panel of almost 1000 members to help organisations identify ways to improve their customer service operations

LONDON – 19 May 2008 – Sabio, the contact centre consultancy services company, has collaborated with YouGov and Avaya, a leading global provider of business communications software, systems and services, to assemble the UK’s first ever survey panel of contact centre agents. The aim is to use this panel to conduct research in the contact centre sector and represent the views of agents in the delivery of customer service.

Also announced today, the launch of the first UK piece of research called ‘Voice of the Contact Centre Agent’, which aims to highlight some of the key concerns facing UK agents, and then looks at how organisations can address these to help improve their overall customer experience.

Sabio, Avaya and YouGov will announce their survey results at a senior-level briefing being held at the Tate Modern in London at 09.30am on Thursday 12th June. At the briefing, speakers from YouGov, Sabio and Avaya will outline the scope and findings from the survey of close to 1,000 independently recruited UK agents. Attendees at the event will receive a free copy of the full research report – worth £295. More details and a registration link are available at http://www.sabio.co.uk/Voice-of-the-Contact-Centre-Agent-Your-chance-to-hear-the-views.html.

YouGov’s specialist contact centre agent research panel was formed to help investigate issues relating to agents’ working lives, contact centre performance and customer service concerns. The panel reflects the size, geographical spread and market sector split of the UK contact centre industry, and aims to identify key contact centre agent concerns including the most stressful parts of the job, their biggest technology frustrations, as well as information on how long agents actually stay in their jobs, the types of media they interact with, and how their performance is measured. Only agents who met YouGov’s panel industry sector and demographic profile requirements were selected to complete Sabio’s online survey.

“We believe that our ‘Voice of the Contact Centre Agent’ survey will be the industry’s first major research project to focus on agent issues, and we’re expecting it to uncover agent feedback that will have a significant impact on how organisations engage with their customers,” commented Sabio’s Consulting Director, Kenneth Hitchen. “The media are always highlighting issues around customer experience, but don’t spend enough time talking about what’s happening at the other end of all those millions of customer calls.

“That’s why we thought it would make more sense to start at the customer service coalface and work backwards, engaging agents to find out - from their perspective – what good service actually looks and feels like. We believe it’s the quality of the interaction between the customer and the agent that makes all the difference, and we’re hoping that this research project will help uncover important new directions that will both inform the industry and provide important feedback for our customers and partners. We’re also convinced that YouGov’s distinctive online research approach is exactly right for this project, and will give us the best opportunity to find out what contact centre agents are really thinking,” he added.

Sabio has commissioned the YouGov project in partnership with Avaya, and will publish the results of its initial ‘Voice of the Contact Centre Agent’ research in June. It is anticipated that the project will evolve into an annual research programme, building on the data from the initial project to provide deep insight into the changing views and concerns of UK contact centre agents.

According to Caroline Gaskin, Consulting Director at YouGov: “Sabio has played a key role in helping us to develop and recruit our UK Contact Centre Agent Panel, and we’re delighted to be collaborating with them on what we hope will become an important ongoing research programme. The project is already well under way, and we look forward to establishing Sabio’s ‘Voice of the Contact Centre Agent’ as an important piece of industry research with real longevity.”

About YouGov
YouGov plc is a professional research and consulting organisation, pioneering the use of the Internet and information technology to collect high quality, in-depth data for market research, organisational research and stakeholder consultation; providing companies with a rounded view of their staff, customers, brands and investors as well as assessing opinion amongst the general public and the media.

Through panel management expertise, flexibility and an innovative approach to recruitment, YouGov operates a panel of over 200,000 UK members representing all ages, socio-economic groups and other demographic types. YouGov also specialises in growing and maintaining dedicated panels of specialist consumer and professional audiences and offers innovative and tailored market research solutions, quality service and insight that allow clients to make effective decisions about their business.

YouGov has been acclaimed as the country’s most accurate opinion pollster and the most quoted research company in the UK and has operations in the US, Europe and the Middle East.