See the latest news from our April conference.

With around 500 delegates booked to gather for the conference, exhibition and Gala awards dinner, Contact Centre Planning 2008 was the biggest event of its kind in Europe.  The must-attend event for contact centre directors, MI analysts, resource planners and others, this year's conference was held in the Midland Hotel, Manchester on 28-29 April 2008 and brought together participants from all industry sectors to learn about best practice in delivering improvements in contact centre performance. 

The agenda included specific conference plans for our specialist work streams - including the new Director's Forum, Management Information, Resource Planning, planning for the back office, planning for outbound, public centre contact centres and the small call centre.  Many members brought key management as a team, to discover how other organisations balance the needs of numbers with people and focus on the experience of the customer.  

Look at case studies and presentations from previous conferences and the innovation awards programme

 

Silver Sponsors

                     

 

Networking Event Sponsors                     Bronze Sponsors

                                             

 

Media Partners

       Call Centre Helper         

          

2008 Conference Report: 28th - 29th April, Manchester.

What people said about this year's conference -  Paul Smedley reports

 

Held in the Midland Hotel, Manchester, Contact Centre Planning 2008  brought together participants from all industry sectors to learn about best practice in delivering improvements in contact centre performance. 

With around 500 delegates booked for the conference, exhibition and Gala awards dinner, the 7th annual conference of the Professional Planning Forum was the biggest and best yet. Feedback sheets showed very high satisfaction, 95% rating the conference as good or excellent, with almost all delegates singling out the networking opportunities, as well as the speakers and the excellent facilities at The Midland.

Paul Burgess-Clements from AXA UK speaks for many when he points out that the conference is a “priceless opportunity to speak to people about my issues that I couldn’t achieve elsewhere”. Tim McKeegan from Autoglass  found it “a fantastic opportunity to share solutions” and Darren Jones from Vodafone agrees: “seeing ideas in organisations completely unlike my own that can be applied in our environment”.

 “A great conference with lots of networking”, agrees Aaron Gourlay from Eurostar, one of 4 graduates to be presented with his Advanced Certificate in Contact Centre Planning at the conference, at the end of the 2 year professional development programme.  The James-Bond themed Casino night in the middle of the conference was a great hit and provided a thoroughly enjoyable way to network, without overshadowing the next days conference.  For the first time, the hugely successful Gala dinner and presentation of the six Contact Centre Innovation Awards 2008 was at the end of the conference – providing a real high note and a fabulous evening, with dancing til the small hours to the fantastic  5CATFish  band.  The charity collection raised £271 for the Alzeimers Society.

The agenda this year included new material for our specialist work streams - including the new Director's Forum, Management Information, Resource Planning, planning for the back office, planning for outbound, public centre contact centres and the small call centre.  Many members brought key management as a team, to discover how other organisations balance the needs of numbers with people and focus on the experience of the customer

 “The directors workshop was most useful and the supplier exhibition – best one by a mile!” comments Adrian Hawes from Norwich Union.  Mark Liversidge from BT Retail “greatly enjoyed the increased scope of the exhibition and the variety of speakers”, Mike Tunstall from the AA particularly enjoyed the group discussions and Karen Moore adds that “Chris Hughes is a fantastic motivational speaker”. 

As always, each of the finalists from the Contact Centre Innovation Awards talked about how they achieved their success – this year in the format of an interview.  For many, like Craig Waterford from Carnival UK, these were a special highlight.  “Inspiring as they relate to real-life experiences” explains Michelle Brophy from QVC and, as her manager Tracey Rice adds “a great conference – new ideas”.

This year more delegates than ever commented on how much they had found that they could take away and put into action in the coming year.  This is a real sign of the growing confidence of planners and analysts and reflects the fact that many planning/analysis teams have now gained recognition for contributing in ways that really make a difference.  By meeting and sharing experience our members develop and promote best practice within the industry. “Transferrable ideas”, sums up Amanda Rice from Salford City Council.

Take a look at presentations from the 2008 conference

Workshops

Technical Updates

Innovation Award Case Studies

Why not join us for next year's conference?

Insight and best practice ... learn from the industry's leading innovators

Why not join us for the 2009 conference in London at the end of April 2009. An unparalleled opportunity to be stimulated and inspired by a wide range of initiative and innovation, inspire your teams with the chance to meet and network with leading specialists and experts in the areas of contact centre planning and analysis across Europe.  A great incentive for the best performers, the rich information can be brought back and shared with colleagues. 

Enjoyable and inspiring ... a reward for your hard work all year

The conference is well known for a fantastic mix of serious work and lots of fun.  The Gala Awards Dinner for the Innovation Awards is held on the final night of the conference - ending on a real high note.  In the middle night of the event is a more informal but equally lively networking evening.  Such events provide a great chance to meet people in a way that build relationships for the rest of the year - and supports online networking to follow-up contacts and interests.

Following the well-proven success of previous conferences, the Forum's benchmark research and case studies from the Contact Centre Innovation Awards form the core of the conference agenda.  Using the Planning Forum's renown methods, the conference is a unique chance to learn from an immense and eminent gathering of the industry's specialists and experts - to learn from what works and what doesn't.  It's about how we make things happen and about the day-to-day tasks that make up our jobs.  We need the right policies and process in place, if we are going to raise the bar as well as doing all the basics brilliantly, like getting the calls answered quickly and resolving the issue that led the customer to call in the first place!   Success does not happen by accident and the conference brings together a remarkable range of speakers, research, case studies, workshops and discussion forums to help you identify what you can take back to your own organisations.

Get involved ... opportunities for vendors and consultants

The key event in the annual calendar for planners and analysts wanting to keep up-to-date and learn from innovation and from users of all kinds of technology, why not get involved in our conference exhibition or in the wide range of sponsorship opportunities - or find out about how to support your clients and colleagues in nominating their centres for our Contact Centre Innovation Awards?  Case studies from all the award finalists and site visits are central to our best practice programme and provide high-powered exposure throughout the year in our networking, best practice and training programmes.   The awards dinner is also a great place to bring clients and prospects - and is conveniently located in London in 2009, making this the ideal year to book a table.  Relax and enjoy the evening - plus the first-rate networking at both the dinner and the conference. 

To get involved or for information about sponsorship opportunities, call Steve Woosey or Penny Hicks on 0870 112 60 73.

Teleopti - Silver Sponsors

 

For the fourth year, Teleopti is delighted to sponsor Contact Centre Planning.

Teleopti is an award-winning provider of leading workforce management tools.

Our class-leading software and team of expert consultants combine to deliver our customers a first-class workforce management experience.

We enable our customers to run their contact centres at the right cost by helping them achieve the right balance between customer service and employee satisfaction.

Join organisations such as P&O, MyTravel, Fortis and Allianz in transforming your contact centre by using Teleopti solutions to lead you to success.

For more information visit www.teleopti.com

 

Aspect Software - Silver Sponsors

 

Aspect Software, Inc. founded the contact centre industry and is now the world’s largest company solely focused on Internet Protocol (IP) and traditional voice-based products and services for customer service, collections, and sales and telemarketing business processes.

PerformanceEdge™, the industry’s first fully synchronised contact centre optimisation suite, combines workforce management, recording and quality management, performance management, campaign management, and coaching and eLearning applications. Its pioneering Unified IP™ Contact Center product line reduces complexity by uniting automated call distribution (ACD), predictive dialling, voice portal, email management, web chat and collaboration, and recording and quality management to provide consolidated administration, routing, reporting and workflow. And the company’s trusted Signature product line delivers reliable best of breed ACD, predictive dialling, CTI and voice portal capabilities.

By combining the #1 workforce, performance and campaign management applications with next-generation recording and quality management, as well as integrated  coaching and eLearning into a complete suite, PerformanceEdge delivers true contact centre performance optimization – and puts the power in the right hands…yours.

For more information, visit www.aspect.com and www.performanceedgesuite.com

Verint - Witness Actionable Solutions

Silver Sponsors

Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions™ was formed as a result of the company’s successful combination with workforce optimisation provider Witness Systems.

With the industry’s broadest portfolio of innovative solutions for customer service analytics, workforce optimisation, quality monitoring/full-time recording, workforce management, eLearning, performance management and customer surveys, Verint Witness Actionable Solutions helps companies uncover business trends, discover the root cause of employee and customer behaviour, and power the right decisions to help ensure service excellence and achieve continuous performance improvement across every aspect of customer operations.

For more information please visit www.verint.com

QPC - Silver Sponsors

 

QPC helps the world's leading companies like Vodafone, TNT and Barclays to improve their business performance by enabling their customer service operations to surpass their operational and strategic goals.

Our consulting, workforce optimisation systems, training and development services have a substantial track record of reducing costs, increasing revenues and improving both customer and employee retention within contact centre and other service environments.

To find out more visit www.qpc.com

XTAQ – Conference Networking Sponsors

 

 

Nuqleus from XTAQ, delivers intelligence on your back office operations to enable more accurate resource planning .

As part of your resource planning for your contact centre and blended operations, you probably have access to the right kind of data from your telephony systems.  But what about your manual and paper back office processes - how do you capture, record and input these into your forecasting model? 

Nuqleus is a process management software tool that captures the detail of an individual’s electronic and manual work activities.  It accurately measures what is being done, by whom and how long it takes.  Nuqleus provides you with metrics that are both quantitative and qualitative and enables you to include all of the factors that influence resource planning.  Already used extensively in Processing Centres, Call Centres and Mobile Workforces, Nuqleus can assist back office operations in measuring, understanding and driving tangible improvements within their business operation by providing more accurate and meaningful resource management information. 

Become a better and more successful manager… visit www.xtaq.com/backoffice 

Invision – Bronze sponsors

InVision Software is a world leader in fully web-based, enterprise-wide Workforce Management solutions. InVision empowers customers to reduce personnel costs, increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction and to boost revenue by leveraging better customer service. For more information, please visit: www.invisionwfm.com

 

For more information

 Email info@planningforum.co.uk or phone 0870 870 59 60 to reserve your place now.

 

 

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