The majority of the UK jobs we provide are in contact centres and we have therefore also benefited from the UK workforce’s excellent communication skills. The ability to have a proper dialogue is crucial in customer service and our UK staff from different ages and backgrounds consistently deliver meaningful conversations and interactions enabling customers to have deep and hopefully lasting relationships with their chosen brand. This is even more important with the growth of comparison websites providing greater consumer choice and therefore more competition than ever before.
The UK is also a world-leader in contact centre growth, techniques and methodologies. Many of the tool sets have been pioneered and developed in the UK, from predictive analytics and call handling to the development of mobile apps and contactless payment.
Our UK clients, whether they be telecoms companies or banks, are constantly looking to give their customers the very best in terms of speed, variety and depth of help. With the 21st century population constantly on the move, diversity of communications tools (smart phones, tablets, laptops, netbooks, PCs at work and home), flexible working and shift patterns all demand 24/7 service. Our clients understand that if you want to compete, then the most important lesson of this digital age is that people are increasingly short on time and patience. It’s now crucial to ensure that the communication channel your customer chooses works first time.
The UK has been at the forefront of these social and technical changes and therefore Firstsource has learned many lessons and developed its approach from its work in the UK. As a result, we have enabled UK companies to stay competitive and able to expand against an ever more challenging business and economic background.
A new report by Global Industry Analysts predicts that the global market for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is projected to surpass US$322 billion by the year 2018, driven by the growing need among businesses to reduce costs, improve customer services, enhance competitive capabilities, and accelerate speed to market. Combined with the fact that Europe continues to face troubled times in view of the slowdown in GDP growth and large budget deficits, there is no doubt that UK companies struggling to stay competitive, are increasingly having to look at their operations and ask themselves ‘can this be done better at a lower price?’
British business, with typical ingenuity, increasingly suspects that the answer to that question may be ‘yes’, which is why my door is open to them to help ensure they succeed and prosper.