I personally like it because it's exhaustive -- a responding call center has to spend literally hours answering the survey's many questions. It trades sample size (understandably small) for detail, which makes for an interesting counterpoint to some of the other research put out in the industry. Also, they make their methodology wholly transparent. We reported on some of the initial results here and you can see their media releases here.

Meanwhile, a couple of things in the data fascinated me right off. According to the report,

"75% of today's contact centers have a customer database system, but only 53% have Computer Telephony Interaction (CTI) -- meaning that customer information is not always readily accessible to agents and that there are often duplicate requests for information."

I remember ten years ago interviewing CTI execs about the hideously low percentage of centers then reported to be using CTI -- between 5% and 20%, depending on the size and sophistication of the call center sample you'd talk about back then.

The DD report puts it at 53% today. That's fantastic, relatively speaking (looked at as a decade of progress). But here's a headscratcher: one quarter of today's centers don't have a customer database system? What are they using abacuses? Index cards?

I can understand the gap between the 53% using CTI and the 75% that haven't integrated the CTI with the database -- that's old news and a gap that's closing. But how do you end up as one of the VIP centers that get included in the exhaustive Dimension Data report and not have a database system? Weird.

Another interesting selection from the report's findings:

"Though the intuitive view is that more mature markets are more likely to adopt different channels, the logic does not hold true in North American contact centers, where the adoption of agent-assisted telephony is 19% ABOVE the global average, and adoption of the three next most popular channels is far below the global average: email (33.7% below), IVR self-service (53.3% below) and online self service (41.2% below).

"These findings suggest that customers in North Americans have:

"a) tried other channels, but still prefer to use the telephone to speak to agents.
b) not yet tried other channels because speaking with agents works well enough for them.
c) not yet been offered alternative channels to try.

"According to Cara Diemont, editor of the report: "It is likely that all three of these possibilities contribute to the counterintuitive fact that 81.4% of contact center transactions are agent-assisted in this region. Another explanation would be that a large portion of contact centers in North America do not have a mandate to use multiple channels."

"The bottom line is this: North American contact centers need to deploy more intelligent automation technology and processes while simultaneously providing a satisfying and consistent customer experience. It is essential to achieve a balance in terms of what can and cannot be done when providing automated services -- the interaction with a live agent will always play a significant role in the contact center since it provides tremendous flexibility of communication that cannot be matched by systems such as touchtone IVR.

I'm still thinking that one through in light of the ongoing conversation we at Call Center have been having with our readers about IVR use.