Much is being written about the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions in the press these days. This has been further highlighted by various worldwide movements such as last year's Live Earth concerts, which became the starting point of a 3-year global campaign dedicated to reducing the climate crisis. Although not the first or only report on the issue of global warming, The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report commissioned by the UK government, is the most widely known of its kind, and is regarded as a landmark in climate control observation. The main assertions of the report are:

• Climate change is the greatest long-term threat faced by humanity. It could cause more human and financial suffering than the two World Wars and the Great Depression put together. Though all countries will be affected, the poorest nations will be hit the hardest.
• The costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action. At a minimum, a failure to tackle climate change will cost 5% of the global GDP. In comparison, costs of inaction could run up to 20% of GDP. The window of opportunity to reverse the rise in global emissions is narrowing. Science and economics suggest that to avoid catastrophic climate change, global carbon emissions must peak in the next 10-15 years.
• Climate change is not an insoluble challenge. Technologies to reduce energy demand, increase efficiency and develop low-carbon electricity, heat and transport are within grasp. The costs are manageable at around 1% of the global GDP. The earlier we act, across all countries and all sectors, the more we keep costs down.

What this Means for Contact Centers
We can all see that the government should focus their attention on heavy industry, but climate change affects us all. Hence, the contact center market must also be aware of environmental issues. The contact center industry is, by definition, a large energy consumer, with operating hours often longer than normal office-based industries. As a result of multiple shift patterns, a large number of staff traveling to and from the contact center premises on a 24x7 basis are often unable to use public transport due to the sometimes unsociable working hours. Furthermore, as agents often require access to multiple IT systems in order to process customer transactions, majority of contact centers have a large carbon footprint.

Within 5 years, it has been suggested that all UK organizations will be obliged to publish their carbon footprint, and the government is already enforcing financial penalties for some sectors, particularly those that are affected by the government's UK emissions policies. This could have a detrimental effect on contact centers, as it is estimated that any organization with less than 10 computers left running, but not being used, could be found in breach of guidelines defined by the Environment Agency.

However, the good news is that these penalties are balanced by new government levies and change agreements that provide incentives to companies that take action to reduce their carbon footprint. Cirquent carried out a survey of senior contact center managers and executives who attended a recent contact center conference in Edinburgh. The results are significant, with the top three benefits of 'going green' being listed as increased productivity, revenue and effectiveness. However, in spite of evidence showing that the benefits of 'going green' are apparent to respondents, a startling 36% of them had no current plans to implement greener business policies within the next three years.

A Greener Workplace
So why, as indicated by the survey results, are companies not taking the appropriate steps to move to a greener working environment? The answer is simple; companies will only go green if it makes good business sense to do so, not simply for the altruistic ideal of going green.

Early indications are that in some industries, such as UK's retail market, the consumer is driving businesses to make a conscious effort to go green, as demonstrated by the recent efforts from supermarkets such as Tesco. However, for other vertical markets where operational decisions are not yet as visible to the public eye, the decision to implement a green policy needs to be a RoI-based business decision.

A key finding is that IT buyers do not feel that enough information is available about vendors' policies on producing environment friendly products and services. Although they acknowledge that green issues are likely to influence their purchasing decisions in the future, the inevitable result is a stalemate.

On the other hand, it would be wrong to claim that there is no information available on greener IT. Some of the leading hardware vendors are taking steps to change perceptions and have even become synonymous with green issues. These vendors have invested heavily in successfully producing energy efficient servers, power supplies, and cooling systems. As a result, much of the focus on green issues has been centered on the data center itself, simply because this is where the available information is.

However, often other areas of the business consume more energy. As fuel prices for companies increased by 57% over the last year, it is estimated that one third of all UK workers still make no attempt to reduce the amount of resources they use. Commuters still travel large distances to and from their workplace, making transport a larger source of harmful emissions than power stations.

Advances in Technology
The good news is that recent technology advances not only provide immediate revenue benefits in technology refreshment and implementing best practices, they can also have dramatic effects on an organization's carbon footprint. The contact center market grew out of the need to improve the overall operational efficiencies by centralizing resources in one or more self-contained locations. Early contact center-centric technologies were therefore designed to improve efficiencies, focusing on mass production of services and products and largely ignoring the human impact, as internal measurements were largely based on the number of customer interactions handled which, in turn, drove internal performance measures.

However, the introduction of contact centers also brought about a new era of how companies are measured. In more traditional industries, companies are measured by their tangible assets like buildings, installations, among others. In the contact center industry, the most valuable asset is the contact center staff, also known as 'human assets'.

The impact of human assets is notoriously difficult to measure and recent studies have shown that while most companies recognize the need to focus on staff retention initiatives, the majority still primarily employ customer acquisition strategies. The reason for this is that measuring the impact of human assets has always been deemed impossible, due to the cumbersome nature of accessing management information from the data silos that exist in many organizations today. Technology changes are helping to facilitate the process.

In addition to cost management issues, increased demand for better, more flexible services and the advent of the 'promiscuous' consumer, coupled with the internal demands of contact center staff is forcing organizations to review their contact center processes and technology.

There are also some growing trends in the contact center market, as competition for highly skilled workers has increased. A major change in operational practices is the introduction of home working, which not only provides greater flexibility and quality of life for the employee, but also opens up a much larger pool of talent that is available for recruitment. The good news is that the technologies that can assist the contact center in achieving greater efficiencies and providing better levels of service also contribute to reducing the overall carbon footprint of the organization; good for the environment and good for the business.

Possible Measures
Making your contact center greener is no longer an altruistic ideal, but a vital step in improving the business using a combination of automation technology and processes. Cirquent has identified the key steps to reducing your carbon footprint:

• Assign green advocates within your business, who will proactively promote green campaigns and encourage others to do the same. Take steps to measure your business' current carbon footprint and formulate a plan to reduce overall carbon emissions and recycle more.
• Consider home working contracts for employees as an alternative to asking employees to travel to site.
• If your business currently produces large paper trails, consider using speech-activated technologies for user validation and acceptance.
• Minimize your computer footprint by providing self-service options and improve peak staffing levels through workforce optimization.

Elisabeth Olafsdottir
The author is senior consultant of Cirquent's Customer Management Practice
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in