NEW CALL CENTRE STUDY ASSESSES CONSUMER ATTITUDES TO USE OF MULTI-MEDIA

Lancaster, 20th May 2002— Teleconomy Group, the international research and consultancy firm (www.teleconomy.com) has announced the launch of a new study endorsed by the Call Centre Association Research Institute (www.cca.org.uk) New Consumer Expectations and Call Centres — Achieving an understanding of customer multimedia contact, is a major new multiclient study that will assess consumer expectations across a range of industries in contacting call centres.

As industry enters a new era of the multi-media Customer Contact Centre, where telephone is augmented by email, web, text, and more generalised messaging, the nature of contact is changing and understanding how customers behave towards new media has therefore become key to service evolution.

"Consumers now need to be treated very differently from even four years ago", commented Paul Hudson, Director of Research at Teleconomy, "and this study is particularly timely in tracking new types of consumer demand and their expectations when contacting call centres."

Teleconomy and the Call Centre Association (CCA) Research Institute are joining in a partnership to offer this research opportunity uniquely combining the UK’s leading research consultancies in consumer behaviour and virtual media with a depth and history of understanding Call Centres.

Download the full prospectus here

Sectors included in the study will be Banking, Financial Services, Retail, Utilities, Telecoms, Government, and Media and represents one of the most far reaching of its kind. Over 1000 consumers will be interviewed. Each respondent will have made some form of contact with at least one of the industry sectors within the previous 7 days. Interviews will seek to understand the elative importance of contact ‘attributes’, the role of multi-media contact and expectations versus actual performance, as they relate to industry sectors.

For further information please contact enquiry@teleconomy.com

Teleconomy Group Plc
Research House
Caton Road
Lancaster
LA1 3PE
Tel: 01524 382000

Teleconomy seek to understand and comment on organisational and consumer behaviours. Central to our approach is the understanding of evolving behaviours to inform future-oriented forecasting. Teleconomy employ a multi-disciplinary approach to our research, interpretations and consultancy. This approach combines insights and theory from academic fields including sociology, anthropology, psychology, management science, business research, literary theory and philosophy with empirical data collection/studies and practical understandings of the commercial issues and challenges facing organisations.

The Call Centre Associationis a professional body for call and contact centres in the UK. The CCA Standard uses A Framework for Best Practice©, an operating guide, supported by the DTI during its development, designed to provide a framework within which expectations of efficiency and customer service can be fulfilled.