London, 8th November 2006 – The continued use of mainframe applications in contact centres is lengthening call times and leading to poorer customer service in many contact centres, according to research published today. The report, jointly commissioned by Corizon and Attachmate, found that more than a quarter of companies using mainframes in their contact centres say that exposing information from mainframes to agents in the form of green screens leads to poorer customer service and 34% say it leads to inefficient calling. The research also highlighted a disconnect between the IT and operational arms of contact centres: IT people are reluctant to lose what they see as critical and reliable systems but are far less aware of the negative impact that contact centre managers see mainframes having on the effectiveness of front line agents.
The study, ‘Managing the Mainframe: Assessing the impact of mainframes on UK contact centre effectiveness’, was carried out by research house, Dynamic Markets, during October 2006 and examines the views of both IT managers and operational contact centre managers in a number of industry sectors. It was commissioned to gauge the impact mainframe technology has on front line customer service, and look at the efforts made to replace or integrate mainframe technology with modern Service Oriented Architectures.
Agents struggle with aging systems
Over half (56%) of all the call centres contacted for the research used mainframes in their customer service operations, suggesting widespread use of these systems. The researchers then conducted 100 detailed interviews with those contact centres that were using mainframes. The technology was clearly very important - 93% said they are mission critical to the running of their contact centre – yet they were not designed with today’s call centre business in mind. Indeed, these mainframe systems were often older than the agents using them – the average mainframe was found to be 21 years old, and the oldest 51 years old.
This clearly posed problems for the contact centre agents who are forced to interact with mainframes via ‘green screen’ applications on their desktops. 46% of companies say their call centre agents complain that green screens are difficult to use, and 44% said it takes longer to train agents to use green screen applications than it does on other sorts of modern applications.
Moving away from the mainframe
Despite the problems they generate, the study found that IT departments are reluctant to ditch the mainframe. 74% of the IT managers surveyed felt that mainframes ‘deliver the goods’ and 46% see mainframe technology as risk-free and reliable.
The research suggests that mainframe technology is not going away anytime soon: 50% of IT manager respondents regard migrating to a new system as too risky. In fact, 72% of respondents have not tried to migrate away at all. Of the remainder who have tried, 29% admit to zero success.
Addressing the disconnect
When the views of contact centre managers were compared with IT managers, some clear divisions emerged. Whereas half (50%) of contact centre managers saw mainframes leading to inefficient calling, only 14% of IT respondents agreed. Similarly, 36% of call centre managers saw a knock on effect of poorer customer service, compared to just 16% of IT managers. And 52% of call centres managers said it took longer to train agents to use mainframe green screens than it did other applications, versus just 36% of IT respondents.
“Customer service and operational issues that stem from complex applications such as green screen mainframe systems present a real problem to the business, as this study has found,” commented Eric Guilloteau, CEO of Corizon. “But, from an IT perspective, the mainframe is often the most reliable part of an organisation’s infrastructure. We clearly have a tension here that is preventing the problem being addressed properly and it’s the end customer that suffers.”
“Mainframes have a reputation for providing continuous, reliable performance. They are complex systems woven into the fabric of an IT infrastructure. Migrating away may not be the best option for many organisations. Instead, businesses should look for new ways of leveraging data stored on the mainframe into a Service Oriented environment,” commented Ian McKay, Director of Sales, UK and Ireland, Attachmate.
Guilloteau concludes: “What is needed is a new way to access and re-use the valuable information in mainframe systems which shields the agents from their inherent complexity. Organisations can take a Service-Oriented approach to their contact centre infrastructure, providing mainframe functionality as visual components that could be orchestrated into an intuitive, modern, web-based composite user interface. This would allow IT to avoid the issues of complex mainframe migration whilst addressing the difficulties agents experience at the front line – thus giving organisations the best of both worlds.”
About the study
This report was commissioned by Corizon and Attachmate and conducted by market researchers Dynamic Markets. It details quantitative research with UK companies with call centres and covers a variety of industry sectors, including retail, telecoms and financial services. In these companies, call centre operations managers and IT call centre application managers were interviewed.
More than 200 companies were contacted for the initial stage of the research project to help understand how widespread mainframe use is across all call centres. A total of 100 in-depth interviews then took place with companies where call centre agents use green screens from the companies’ mainframe applications. The sample is split evenly according to respondent type, with 50 IT respondents and 50 call centre managers.
Notes to Editors
- Mainframe computing systems are in place in many business environments, but the call centre is a specific context where interaction with a complex system can cause significant issues. Mainframe applications, often called ‘green-screen’ applications owing to the user interface appearing as green text on a black monitor, have been known to cause operational issues.
- This release details the key findings of the report: Managing the Mainframe: Assessing the impact of mainframes on UK call centre effectiveness. For more information, interviews with Corizon or Attachmate or a full copy of the report please contact Brands2Life on corizon@brands2life.com or +44 20 7592 1200.
About Corizon
Corizon is a software company that has pioneered the development of User Process Management. Its products work with packaged and legacy applications and Service Oriented Architectures to allow organisations to provide employees and customers with composite, functional user interfaces that are easily tuned to the task at hand. Corizon’s solutions experts and methodology bring together a unique combination of usability, customer service operations and systems integration expertise to allow our customers to realise a rapid return on investment.
London-based Corizon works with enterprise customers in UK and European markets: corporations such as BT and Telewest already use Corizon technology. For further information please visit www.corizon.com.
About Attachmate
Attachmate is the largest independent provider of software to access and integrate legacy systems. Attachmate enables organizations to maximize the value of their existing IT investments as they advance their long-term business and IT strategies. More than 40,000 customers representing over 16 million desktops worldwide take advantage of Attachmate’s quality solutions and deep expertise to help them run their businesses securely, efficiently and competitively.
For more information, please see www.attachmate.com.
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