Here at MECC ’14 Central, the main news to report this month is the slew of new companies wanting to participate in next year’s MECC ’14 Exhibition on June 8/9. They include both regional players and aspiring market entrants from other parts of the world. Suffice to say at present that ALL of the major contact centre vendors and solutions providers, regional outsourcers and professional services companies will be at MECC ’14, and as such it will be the ideal local opportunity for organizations to understand new customer interaction options, compare rival offerings and take advantage of special show offers – please mark your calendar for June 8/9 in Dubai accordingly.
Now, before going any further, we cannot but extend our congratulations to the UAE Government and the Dubai team on winning the Expo 2020 bid. We are doubly delighted because we suspect (ok, know) that the Award will act as a catalyst to further improve levels of customer service in the Middle East and so look forward to all the new regional initiatives that will undoubtedly be announced as a result. People, your role as customer service specialists in the region is about to get significantly enhanced/ more important.
Those folks at Ovum have attracted our attention again this month with their latest research report on telco IT focus for the coming years. To quote the press release, “Customer Experience Management (CEM) has emerged as the top driver of telco IT investments in 2014… reflecting a long term shift in spending towards customer-oriented systems and on improving customer satisfaction……. multichannel integration and service personalization are top areas of focus in the next 18 months.”
It would appear therefore that the era of cost reduction is now over as telcos gear up technically and to break down silos internally (the two have to go together) in order to support an improved customer experience. I suspect other industries will follow this lead in order to better service their customers’ increasingly digital lifestyle, and that can only bode well for customer-driven contact centres.
So, as you might expect, CEM is going to feature heavily in next year’s MECC ’14 Conference on June 8/9 alongside the perennial “big issue” in the region, leveraging human capital. (On that format several new Personal Certification issues are due to be announced for the region shortly, so these will definitely help – more details in our next issue.) Other key MECC ‘14 themes will include Outsourcing, leveraging new Technology, and Voice-of-the-Customer driven initiatives and to whet your appetite here, the following 3 newsletter articles on said subjects from recognised industry experts will I hope be of use.
The full MECC ’14 Conference program will be available early in 2014 so there is still some time for your input. I look forward to hearing back from you on this or any other ideas you can have for next year’s MECC ’14 show.
Till the next time
Dominick J. Keenaghan
MECC ’14 Show Director
PS. Our “Customer Care Big Data” event has been re-scheduled to run alongside MECC ‘14
You must be logged in to post a comment.