Australia, Oct 20 2008 - Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a global leader in relationship management today released findings from a recent study by Frost & Sullivan. The analysis, as commissioned by Convergys on the Australian banking, financial services and insurance sector (BFSI), details the challenges facing Asia Pacific organisations to meet rising customer expectations, and how to address them with best practices in global sourcing strategies.

The analysis confirms that customer service remains a critical focus of the Australian  BFSI and telecommunications sectors. With the internet, SMS, mobile broadband and social networking, customers have many channels to interact or voice their concerns. As a result customer expectations are increasing.  Businesses are driven to meet these demands while managing costs.

One compelling solution to the problem of achieving more with less is to outsource the contact centre function to an offshore location. Out of 25 respondents from the BFSI sector that Frost and Sullivan surveyed in this study, 64% of respondents cited cost savings and 40% cited access to skills as key drivers for outsourcing.
 
“The rising demands of more sophisticated customers and a highly competitive market are pushing more organisations to rethink their customer engagement strategies,” said Max Tennant, Senior Account Executive at Convergys. “Global sourcing may offer the solution to these and other issues, equally the partnership between the organisation and the outsourcer is also critical to ensure success.”

Global sourcing has emerged as a solution that can meet the contradictory demands of today’s business conditions - rising customer expectations and the need to maintain high customer satisfaction while managing costs.

While the business case and cost savings for global sourcing are obvious, several challenges have discouraged organisations from exploring it as an option. Businesses need to identify the processes that would benefit most from the arrangement and set the right metrics to measure performance and progress of the engagement. Businesses also need to decide on which location and what kind of engagement model will be optimal to manage the partnership.

Ultimately, the secret to a successful offshore engagement is in finding the right partner, with the most relevant experience in delivering offshore services, and the expertise to optimise business processes to deliver a superior customer experience.