Consumers prefer local call centres

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 16 August 2007 09:21

IT Industry - Market

Here's one from the "bleedin' obvious" department: consumers prefer dealing with local call centres to those sited offshore.

A poll conducted by car insurance specialist Budget Direct found that 84 percent of Australians want their car insurer's contact centres to be located exclusively within Australia, with agents that can demonstrate a level of local knowledge when handling enquiries.

Poll results are almost always subject to some concern about exactly how the questions were phrased and how the sample was selected, but at least Budget Direct's sample was of a decent size: 4389.

"Customers want to deal with people that drive the same types of cars and deal with the same types of conditions that they encounter on a daily basis, and struggling with the semantics of a language can be frustrating when consumers need information about a product," said Budget Direct's director of contact centre operations Gerry O’Shaughnessy.
 
"Any company not ensuring their contact centre is delivering customer satisfaction rather than frustration is taking a huge risk with its customer asset," he added.

Not surprisingly, Budget Direct's call centres are all located within Australia.