Call Center Race

 Irreversible mega-trend, that?s how an analyst described offshore outsourcing. Definition wise, it means the practice of hiring an external organization to perform some or all business functions in another country other than its own, where the product or service are sold and consumed.This kind of industry has already dominated the business world. The industry comprised of: Call Center/Contact Centers, Medical Transcription, Animation, Shared Financial &Accounting Services and Software Development Services to name a few.It first started during the early 90?s when the need for large amounts of reliable and affordable communication infrastructure begun. Together with the digitization of many services, it was made possible to shift the actual production location of services to low cost countries in a manner presumably transparent to end-users.

It was India that first become known in this field due to abundant and cheap software engineering talent. In great timing with the massive demand from the Y2K problem, this helped India move up to the top of the chain to attract large-scale software development projects for US based customers. Aside from that labor in India which was really low and that which until now they claim, they presume that no others can beat their price since software programming in India costs roughly $35 per hour against to the $200 in the United States. And to their belief that their quality is world-class.Next to them is China, with their superior infrastructure, captive market, sheer size, and economic superiority are expected to eventually catch up with India. They are known in terms of the technological adjustments.

Meanwhile, the Philippines is now emerging as the top among the countries with its main or most in demand services -Call Centers. They are collectively known as the 3rd among the countries who are fluent in speaking the English language. They also boasts of a large pool of manpower that can harness a lot of different services to the world. Although, off-shore transactions faced a lot of controversies among the developed countries, since the unemployment rate to the service providers increased while a part of their own were not offered the same opportunity simply because of the wage comparison. It was questioned and had also been the source of conflict between political parties relating to job on outsourcing in the United States of America.
 

Call Center Status in the Philippines

Offshore Outsourcingbegun a few years back when developed countries begun to seek for new ways to reduce costs, increase efficiency and obtain bigger profits.
Outsourcing (or contracting services) is often defined as the delegation of non-core operations or jobs from internal production to an external entity (such as a subcontractor) that specializes in a certain operation like for example, customer service, transcription and others.
Also, outsourcing is done in a different location or country where labor is much cheaper. And because of outsourcing, many undeveloped or third world countries begun to benefit, specifically India being the primer of all.
With the different services offshore outsourcing offers, the call center industry seems to emerge on top of them all. And as of now the highest competitor of India in terms of this, is the Philippines. India has stand out as a leading market for call center outsourcing because of its high technology facilities and having the best infrastructure required for call centers set up. Also, India has many quality certified Indian firms that have world class call center outlets with thousands of seats and developed communications technologies that ensures 24/7 service.
India also has an unending pool of English speaking people that can provide high quality voice based service to customers for extremely low costs per hour resulting in bigger savings for companies.
But the Philippines, though it charged a little higher than India, proved to have more quality in the subjects of English proficiency and in handling different customers with different cultural backgrounds. And compared to other countries that are also involved in offshore outsourcing, Philippines still come out to having the lowest or cheapest labor in this field, next to India.
But as a lot of analyst said, the Philippines should further more enhance its infrastructure and obtain a lot of skilled agents in order for the country to be able to keep its place on top of the Outsourcing business.
 

The Definition Of A Work At Home Call Center Agent

At the present time there is an estimated "100,000 home-based phone representatives" employed throughout the United States. According to predictions made by the Gartner Group, it is believed that by the end of 2006 approximately ten percent of all call centers scattered throughout the United States will be relying on the skills and services of work at home call center agents for the widespread success of their businesses.

Call centers are becoming a bigger and better industry all of the time. They comprise a large percentage of the customer service work that many companies engage in. In a general way a call center refers to "a variety of actual business functions, ranging from call centers designed to handle customer calls, tech support systems, help desks, or even outbound customer call agents." Call center agents (work at home or on site employees) are trained to manage many 'call'-types, including regular telephone inquiries, faxes, e-mails and web requests.

Many call centers find that costs are lowered and the overall efficiency of a business is increased when work is "home sourced" out to work at home call center agents. Also referred to as "working remotely" these at home or remote agents often are more productive and happier and also report greater levels of job satisfaction than those who work in other capacities. Walking hand in hand with these positive characteristics is the fact that work at home call center agents tend to be loyal to their companies and not as likely to be jumping from job to job. In a lot of ways these agents get the best of both worlds- they get to have their cake and eat it too.

A remote agent is loosely defined as a "call center or help desk employee working away from the main office, either occasionally or full-time." Some people simply think of work at home call center agents as telecommuters who do their work from their own home instead of in the office.

Call centers that make the decision to institute a remote agent program experience many benefits from giving their employees the opportunity to be work at home call center agents. These benefits include the necessity for less office space (which is a definite money saver); the ability to both bring in and hold onto key agents; voice communication via the telephone when a work emergency should arise; constant support and feedback between employer and agent; a link from office to office and the ability for the company to hire temporary and seasonal staff as well as disabled individuals. Finally working from home has been shown through a variety of studies to increase levels of productivity and to allow for easier flexibility for scheduling work hours for agents.

Charissa Bear is the owner of http://www.momsinc.biz, a work at home resource site dedicated to helping moms find home based careers. Stop by today and sign up for her 5 day ecourse, Starting and Choosing a Work at Home Business,or get your free ecourse by sending a blank email to: mailto: wahguide@aweber.com

Call Center Operators Begin to Work at Home

If you ask any answering service owner what the biggest challenge that they face today almost all would answer employees. For a number of years employers have tried a number of methods to find a desirable employees to work in what is sometimes less than desirable circumstances. Today technology has delivered these answering service owners a new alternative; the stay at home operator.

Thanks to VoIP services it is very easy for an answering service operator to log on and work off premise with the same advantages as an operator has in the war room of the call center. There are several advantages to such technology and call centers who have implemented these advances are seeing major changes. Some of these answering services virtually had to beg for employees and the pickings were slim. Now these same businesses actually have a waiting list for employees, with highly qualified candidates..

Another advantage to the stay at home operator is that it allows the answering service to be able to fill peak time periods and cover absenteeism more efficiently. The answering service now has alternatives when there are weather related emergencies as well as filling those difficult to handle shifts. There are offices that will staff overnight shifts with work at home operators..

Still other offices have been slow to embrace this type of technology while other offices reluctantly use this technology only for emergencies or supervisory tasks. There is a general misconception that these operators are more difficult to supervise and that the only way to run a call center is from a centralized location. With the advanced statistical reporting capabilities that most answering services possess, coupled with voice recording technology these employees are as easy to supervise as they would be in your office..

As the answering services that utilize at home operators continue to flourish, others are following their lead. At home operators now make up the fastest growing segment of employees in the answering service industry. In addition this new trend seems to be an alternative to overseas outsourcing. With the advantages offered to work at home operators, answering service owners and the industry as a whole, stay at home agents seem to be the trend of the future..

Todd Cardin is the east coast marketing team leader for Specialty Answering Service. For more information about Specialty Answering Service, please visit our answering service / call center website and explore our services. This article may be reprinted and republished without permission as long as

Top ten tips for implementing a call center quality monitoring solution

Top ten tips to conducting a successful quality monitoring implementation in a customer service call center:

Call centers traditionally utilize some degree of agent monitoring to identify weaknesses and improve customer service strengths. Preparing for agent reaction to the implementation of automated call recording systems is an important part of the entire process. By no means is this a finalized list - it's more of a dynamic starting point to a really good white paper. The tips in this list are generated by actual client success stories.

1) Write a clear outline of the reasons behind bringing a call recording system into your call center's work flow: o Benefits to agents o Benefits to customers o Benefits to company It's always good to start with an outline before rolling out something new. It's like using a recipe before you cook. Not sure if that's the best comparison, but you get the picture. Your outline is your blueprint for success.

2) Introduce the concept of quality monitoring well in advance and initiate tasks to empower agents to participate in the process o The purpose of call quality monitoring is NOT to catch employees slacking off, but to help improve customer service and meet overall performance metrics. o Employees can help define the quality assurance metrics and play a significant role in continuous performance improvement Always use the word "we" when addressing your employees. Make sure they know that you're on the same side and that this implementation will benefit everyone in the company - you aren't trying to catch someone playing solitaire or visiting illicit web sites.

3) Reiterate company customer service goals o Customers are the ones who actually pay salaries and wages o It is often much easier to retain customers than get new ones o Treat all co-workers as customers and good habits will form This should hardly be done only for purposes of the call monitoring implementation, but should be reiterated often. The most successful companies in the world are the ones with the strongest customer service beliefs, unless of course, you count organized crime.

4) Create a "team" atmosphere for your agents o Set up a team recognition and rewards program o Highlight stellar service examples via internal emails and newsletter articles/photos o Sub-teams should be formed to make task management easier Is it any wonder why basketball teams full of confident role players (2003-2004 Detroit Pistons) always overachieve while collections of individuals seem to fail (2005-2006 New York Knicks)?

5) Make sure the Telephony and IT sub-teams know their roles and responsibilities in carrying out their end of the plan o All part of the same larger team along with the agents, managers and supervisors o Create detailed project plans for each sub-team If your IT and Telecom teams are uninformed about a new implementation, and they find out about it just as the call recording servers are rolled in to the data center, there may be unforeseen complexities that could have been prevented unnecessary problems.

6) Educate your call center agents on their sub-team's specific quality improvement goals o Increase upsells o Increase saves o Increase new sales o Call time to resolution o Caller time on hold o Ask them for other ideas "Our common goals are to increase upsells by 40% over the next two quarters. We believe we can accomplish this by focusing on improving our customer service techniques in the call center."

7) Include agents in coming up with evaluation criteria and forms o once the metrics are defined, your agents can help you define evaluation criteria, in essence, creating the forms Self-evaluation is often one of the most effective building blocks to improvement. More and more companies are asking their employees to perform self-evaluations - and it's not because managers are lazy.

8) Appoint a few agents to a "system review sub-team" to represent agent feedback on what could be improved with the quality monitoring program. o System improvements wish list o Team goal review o Evaluation criteria review This would be akin to asking Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera to provide input to Yankees GM Brian Cashman relative to personnel additions, potential team chemistry issues, etc. Their input is invaluable because they are out there everyday in the trenches, just like their call center agent counterparts.

9) Throw a great kick off party o Announce weekly performance goals and prizes o At the party, allow your agents to evaluate supervisors' calls Every great party needs a contest with fun prizes. Give the best evaluations a cool gift, such as a Starbucks card or Ebay gift certificate.

10) Schedule a benchmarking session with another call center that has been quality monitoring for over a year and seen improvements o Exchange discoveries, stats, tips Not only would this be a fun exercise, but watch people relate as they realize common issues in their everyday jobs - and watch them bond as they solve these problems....then watch your company's customer service goals be accomplished.

Richard Marcia is the marketing director for Coordinated Systems, Inc., a call center monitoring software system provider that has been building great customer experiences since 1972.

Conference Call Centers

It is hard to imagine the present-day world of million per minute transactions without an organizer, without someone ready to serve the God of Instant Deals thus making profits. These organizers do not have to go the extra mile looking for customers - their clients are everywhere, all way around the globe. The organizers are those telecommunications companies and owners of conference centers that provide conference call services.

The significance of conference call services is hard to overestimate: their mission is to provide a continuously high quality of real-time(or near real-time) communication for those, who are eager to save time, travel costs and concerned about security, in a word for those in the know of modern-business values.

Basically, there are two types of conference call providers: mortar-and-brick and online ones. The first type can lend you conference rooms and cutting-edge equipment (depending on the company), while the virtual one provides you with software and connection services.

Conference centers are impressive buildings with a wide range of facilities and equipment installed and designed to meet the high needs of top-management meetings and gatherings. They usually have business centers with classrooms ideal for arranging presentations, cabarets (with two delegates at a table, suitable for presentations that involve audience participation), boardrooms for interactive discussion, spacious theatres with several hundred seats and other facilities. They provide such services as audio- and video-conferencing tools and equipment. As well, there is a team of professionals responsible for security-related issues and an efficient event-planning service that offers specialist advice in catering, technical issues, telecommunications and room set-ups.

The option described above is the best for large meetings drawing top managers of different companies and corporations. It is rather costly. For those, who would like to have access to less expensive conference call services, virtual solutions can be more attractive.

Among the most popular companies that offer conference calls online are Free Conference, Conference Call and Conference Call Unlimited. If you want to organize an audio conference, you can use reservationless and managed or operator-assisted solutions. A telecommunications company allocates a dial-in number and a password code to the user of the service, who sets a date and time of the conference and invite participants. If you want to have specialist assistance in organizing a conference event over the phone, they can again give you advice and take responsibility for inviting all conferees on your list. Microsoft offers downloadable LiveMeeting and NetMeeting solutions, which are first-class: free of charge private and low-cost business versions.

Besides, conference calls are easy to make using such software as Skype, Firefly, Yahoo! Messenger, Hotmail MSN and others. You will just need a PC, a headset and broadband connection. You can enhance your conferencing experience adding a camera. Conference calls are getting overwhelming attention and great respect from businesses in all countries. Try to bring together 4 people from 4 different countries together in one place at one time and then trying making a conference call. As soon as you realize the benefits of the latter, you will start saving considerably.

This article submitted by Mike Daniels, a specialist in the branch of conferencing services and telecommunications. Visit my site - www.conferencecallinc.com

Call Centers, The Voices Of The 21st Century

The rhythm of life in the 21st Century has been requiring new things every day. Companies are bigger than 100 years ago and they need different approaches in order to keep providing their clients with the best service they can.

The number of incoming phone calls has also increased, due to the increase in the amount of clients. Secretaries are no longer able to answer phone calls, solve problems and keep up with their daily routine. For this reason, mankind had to find a way out of this problem and answering services - such as call centers - seem to b the solution.

Answering services are a growing market. Since companies are becoming bigger and bigger, they needed to distribute their services and separate their tasks

The work of an answering service consists of answering incoming phone calls. However, there are four sub-divisions. These divisions are:

- the responsibility for relaying urgent calls to on-call personnel - the responsibility for screening the calls, usually after-hours, in order to protect the company personnel from unwanted calls - provision of an off-site "front office secretary" - responsibility for handling excess traffic through the company phone lines

How the sub-divisions of answering services work has to do with the type of company or professional client they are offering support to.

The basis of a high-quality answering service

Although there are many companies that offer this type of services but in spite of the great number, finding an answering service of high quality can be a difficult task. That's why when you think of hiring an answering service, there are some issues and simple details that you should pay attention to.

If you are considering hiring an answering service, you should bear in mind these simple questions:

- How long has the company that will provide you the service been in the market? This question is important to define how much experience the company has.

- What are the types of equipment they use? Another essential question. This way, you can get an idea whether the company is concerned about technology and use the most advanced equipment, in order to provide the best quality of service.

- What controls and systems do the company have in place? You won't want to hire a company that is careless with the work. It's important that the answering service employees keep a rigorous control over their activities. In order to keep everything in perfect order, they should monitor the process minute-to-minute.

Despite the work and the time involved looking for a good answering service, these call centers are still the best way to keep providing the best information and support for your clients.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Call Centers

Call Center Benefits

Are you a business owner looking to make use of call centers and the services they provide? The use of call centers can increase your productivity. What does this mean for the small business person? It means an increase in your bottom line - truly a benefit derived from the use of call centers and the services they provide.

Call centers offer business services that typically include telemessaging, order collection, customer service options, customer care, outbound calls that follow leads, and more. Plus, the services supplied by call centers are offered in multi-lingual options - representatives that speak Spanish, French, Chinese and English will be handling your clientele and increasing your business.

Telemessaging is a process in which a hired agent collects all of your incoming messages for you and your business. Once your messages have been collected by professional agents, they will be directly sent to you in the medium that you pre-select. Whether you desire the warm transfer approach, or you want your messages sent to a special voice mail, representatives are happy to take and direct your business calls for you. Alternatively, if you prefer, you can easily receive a pager notification - whatever is easier for you in terms of communication.

Do you want live representatives to handle all of your website chat users? You can hire a message center to handle all of the incoming web clients you receive at your website. Answering email questions and controlling live chat is no problem whatsoever when you hire a professional message service to handle the job for you.

With the services offered to you by professional message centers you can earn more money for your business. Qualified representatives will be more than happy to follow leads to new clients, search out new clientele for you with an outbound service, and they can even process any and all credit card orders that you may receive. Want to give your customers the impression that you are a caring business professional? Hire a message service to handle any and all customer service issues with the greatest of care. Or, if you prefer, you can create a customer hotline where qualified representatives will address any and every question your customers may have.

The benefits associated with developing your own call handling center are truly phenomenal once you consider them. Not only will you generate new clients, but you can keep existing clients satisfied. Furthermore, with your call handling associates hard at work taking care of the important and finer details of your business you can spend your time on more important issues like monitoring that bottom line. Watch your profits increase by leaps and bounds because you have a professional staff of friendly individuals working hard for you and your company!

Clearly, you have more to lose by not creating a call handling solution for your company than if you try a call handling service out for size. The nominal fees associated with such services are nothing compared to the benefits you will derive from the services afforded to you. Go ahead - test the waters and create a call handling solution for your company - you'll be pleased with your decision to do so.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Call Centers

Finding Offshore Customers For A Call Center Startup

Finding offshore customers for a call center startup is a difficult proposition. The real challenge, however, comes afterwards - delivering and meeting the expectations of those customers!

First things first though - how to go about finding your initial customers? The first question that you need to ask yourself is why some organization should outsource work to you? For them outsourcing is certainly an attractive, but high-risk proposition. It is attractive not only because it lets them concentrate more on their core activities, but also because of cost-savings. Their risks are primarily quality and reliability related. As a startup you should be prepared to address these risks in a satisfactory manner.

For starters, you should be able to back the quality and reliability of your service. This can be done in many ways: you should try to do them in as many as possible. A standard device guaranteeing the quality and reliability is a Service Level Agreement (SLA). You should develop an SLA defining industry-standard performance criteria for your company.

You should also show the prospective customer some evidence about your track record (e.g. list of customers and testimonials) in the running of call centers. As a startup, you may not have such testimonials. In that case, you should highlight the call-center-related experience of your key team members.

Call center customers prefer specialists over generalists. Try to select a niche for yourself, e.g., order taking, helpdesk, telesales, etc., and try to build your whole selling pitch around that niche.

Before making a pitch to prospective customers, try to understand how their business work and be ready to tell them the following: how they can make-more-money or save-more-money or get-more-business or enhance-the-quality-of-their-service or improve-their-product by outsourcing their call center function to you?

Do tell them about the processes that you have in place to assure the quality of your services. An industry-standard quality certification will be invaluable in this regard. Do develop a disaster-recovery plan and share it with the potential customer.

Here are a few more suggestions: get in touch with your country?s expatriates in the target country for leads and other assistance. Register your company with country-specific organizations (like NASSCOM in India, PSEB in Pakistan) and international portals like offshorexperts.com. Write to other offshore companies in outsourcing powerhouses like India, Philippines, and Canada and see if they would like to develop a partnership with you.Altaf Khan -- Managing Staff Turnover in Offshore Call Centers http://www.altafkhan.com/ib/managing-staff-turnover-in-offshore-call-centers.htm

Will Call Center Management Software Improve Your Business?

Call center management software is becoming increasingly popular, even with businesses that have only a few workers. More often called ?contact centers,? call center management software has the ability to control and handle the many different needs of businesses today. Many features include instant routing of important customers to the best agents, reduce holding times for customers, and offer more efficient scheduling of employees and detailed reporting. Your call center management system will help your customers and corporations talk to each other by managing their interactions. It is said that by using the right call management center software will have an immediate positive impact on your business and customer satisfaction. By not making your customers wait, being able to connect them immediately with the right service people, will improve customer perception. Now days, with technology making things faster and faster, customers' expectations are high and they expect your business to be on its toes and have the information they want?yesterday! The best thing you can do is upgrade your system with good call center software, and keep your customers happy. Happy customers spend more money.

Your investment can reduce your costs, depending on which call center system software you buy. The sooner your business is able to handle more calls, the sooner you can start making more money. Efficiency is key and a call center system can provide a wide selection of reports that give you detailed information, from live statistics on hold times and drop-off rates to yearly overviews of the entire operation. This will help you find out which employee is successful and which ones may need a bit more training. It is suggested before you call a dealer or go online looking for the best call center management software to fit your needs.

? How many requests do you handle per month?

? Where do your requests originate from? (phone, fax, email, web, online chat?) How many to

? What are your primary calls? (Inbound or outbound? sales or service? internal or external?)

? How many agents handle these calls? In how many locations?

? What metrics do you currently use to measure performance?

? What phone system are you currently using?

? What systems will the call center need to connect with? (Existing phones, databases, CRM, etc.)

? What's your budget for this purchase?

? What IT resources are available to help integrate and maintain the system?

? How will you measure the success of the new system?

Hopefully some of these tools will help you decide whether you need or want to get into call center management software. These are just some of the idea's out there that can help you decide. Always check out your different options that are out there for you to decide. Leeanna is an expert author who writes for Call Center Management Software

The face of the Call Center business is chang

Conservative consumers, shifting economic conditions and increasingly competitive business conditions are making it easier than ever to get new customers. These factors are also making it harder than ever to keep your customers. Customer loyalty isn't something easily given, it is something that is earned.

The fight for customer loyalty is nothing new to contact center professionals, but the changing face of the contact center industry is. DialResults predictive dialer system has been designed for the next generation of contact centers, and the new breed of contact center professional. DialResults emerging technologies and evolving team management strategies will lead the industry into the next phase of contact center growth.

The driving force behind these changes is FTC Legislation also an expansion/revision in basic call center objectives. Measures of success in call center operations have changed dramatically in the last decade. While once only call completions or number of orders were the primary measure, depending on the call center function, customer centric measures are now the focus

Predictive dialing is changing almost as fast as traditional dialers bring screen pops to an agent's desktop. The US market, which is the leader in terms of installed systems, is in a period of transition. Predictive Dialing started off as a way to attract new customers and to sell new ideas, but that model does not fit well in today's marketplace. Instead, companies are implementing DialResults predictive dialers in innovative ways, calling airline consumers if their flights are late, alerting utility customers to power shortages, reminding drivers to get their annual checkup, and even notifying retail customers when a package will be shipped late. Does that mean that consumers can say goodbye to someone asking for "the man or woman of the house," or having someone stumble with a long last name? Probably not, but there will be a drastic change over the next five years in which dialers will migrate from being used for primarily outbound sales activity to being used for proactive outbound customer service.

Companies without call centers, though, will be at a distinct disadvantage if their competitors have them. DialResults Advanced technology is made for dealing with a customers base on a large scale or even a SMALL SCALE USING call center TECHNOLOGY from DialResults. The future of the call center is rather like its past-it will continue to be the focal point for corporate efforts to handle customer contact. It will also incrementally add technology to handle different kinds of contacts, like emails and web interactions. DialResults has already seen and recognized and implemented these transitions in our call center technology in the marketplace.

The fight for customer loyalty is nothing new to contact center professionals, but the changing face of the contact center industry is. DialResults predictive dialer system has been designed for the next generation of contact centers, and the new breed of contact center professional. DialResults emerging technologies and evolving team management strategies will lead the industry into the next phase of contact center growth.

The driving force behind these changes is FTC Legislation also an expansion/revision in basic call center objectives. Measures of success in call center operations have changed dramatically in the last decade. While once only call completions or number of orders were the primary measure, depending on the call center function, customer centric measures are now the focus

Predictive dialing is changing almost as fast as traditional dialers bring screen pops to an agent's desktop. The US market, which is the leader in terms of installed systems, is in a period of transition. Predictive Dialing started off as a way to attract new customers and to sell new ideas, but that model does not fit well in today's marketplace. Instead, companies are implementing DialResults predictive dialers in innovative ways, calling airline consumers if their flights are late, alerting utility customers to power shortages, reminding drivers to get their annual checkup, and even notifying retail customers when a package will be shipped late. Does that mean that consumers can say goodbye to someone asking for "the man or woman of the house," or having someone stumble with a long last name? Probably not, but there will be a drastic change over the next five years in which dialers will migrate from being used for primarily outbound sales activity to being used for proactive outbound customer service.

Companies without call centers, though, will be at a distinct disadvantage if their competitors have them. DialResults Advanced technology is made for dealing with a customers base on a large scale or even a SMALL SCALE USING call center TECHNOLOGY from DialResults. The future of the call center is rather like its past-it will continue to be the focal point for corporate efforts to handle customer contact. It will also incrementally add technology to handle different kinds of contacts, like emails and web interactions. DialResults has already seen and recognized and implemented these transitions in our call center technology in the marketplace.

Richard Logan has over 15 years in the call center industry, both as a call center manager for the 8th largest service all center in the United States to help in developing a windows predictive dialer from a call center managers point of view

 

Career Pathing for Call Centers

 

IB"Career development...can be said to be at the core of human resource development. It requires the integration of human resource planning, assessment, selection and places appraisal, training, development, performance and reward management within the organizational structure and culture."/B
- Marina Nordin, "Career Development and Planning Strategy," New Strait Times/I

Do you wonder if implementing a career path will make a difference? Are you convinced that putting a career path process is right, but don't know where to begin? Should you certify your agent, supervisory and management staff? Are you wondering whether the benefits would be worth the time and expense? If you're grappling with any of these questions, here are some thoughts and solutions for you to consider.

BWhat are the advantages?/B

I"The more professionally you treat employees, the more professionally they will treat their internal and external customers."/I

Many call center experts agree that the benefits do, in fact, far outweigh the efforts, resources and costs required to implement and maintain a career path program. In a recent study by Manpower, results indicated that among the top motivators for call center personnel is the opportunity learn new skills, be offered continuous new challenges, and support for personal growth. Employees who are happy and satisfied with their jobs exude their confidence and satisfaction in the way that they approach and handle customers.

Outlining what is available in terms of different career paths allows employees to feel in control of their destiny, passionate about their work, energized by what they do, proud of their achievements and optimistic about their future. Call centers that have implemented a career path and/or certification program find that they experience lower turnover, retain high performers, maintain high morale and attract high performers.

BWhat are essential components of a successful career path program?/B

By setting individual performance plans and goals, implementing a quality assurance program and developmental coaching process, many call centers already have a strong start towards a career path program. The next steps include identifying a progression of skills and measurements for increased complexity and job responsibility. Here are essential components to consider when putting together your career path program.

The first step is to identify the competencies-key skills, behaviors and attributes-that are required for success on the job. An example might be "customer focus" which includes behaviors such as the ability to identify needs, acknowledge impact of services and products (or lack of), use appropriate probing, finding solutions, follow through, using available resources, and courtesy.

Once your competency model is identified, then job clusters need to be created. These are the specific job tasks where the competencies are applied. These also become the foundation for your compensation planning.

A critical component of any career path program is the availability of training and performance feedback. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, such as developmental coaching, "360" assessment tool where peers, supervisors, direct reports give direct written feedback (thus a full circle of a performer's impact), training, on the job opportunities, and a way to prove mastery.

Many call centers have been very creative in keeping costs to a minimum while offering high quality training options. Partnering with local community institutions and educational programs, obtaining funds from economic development programs, using in house experts, or contracting for vendor supplied programs are among the options.

Most career path options take a building block approach where specific tasks need to be successfully accomplished in order to move on to the next level of complexity. This often requires a well thought out pay and reward strategy, where base pay drives skill acquisition, there is some type of variable pay driven from business results, and a strong reward and recognition program that continues to drive results and maintain a culture that values learning. At a minimum, a successful program outlines expectations and standards, and the specific approach to advance. This requires a planned effort of measurement for results, promoting both individual and team wins.

BWhat about a Certification Program?/B

Having a certification program is a clear outline and process to set expectations and reward those individuals who meet the individual and organizational goals. A certification program is a form of reward, indicating that the individual has not only learned new skills and behaviors, but can apply them and maintain high performance on the job. A well executed certification program offers both a career path and an succession plan for an organization.

BPitfalls To Avoid/B

Here are some tips from managers who have "learned by doing" that provide some pitfalls for you to avoid. Get buy in to any changes you may make by inviting staff members representing each area of the call center to help design the program. Here are some additional suggestions to be successful:
* Create an team consisting of human resource experts, end users, managers
* Design, develop and implement quickly
* Set and manage expectations
* Launch with hoopla
* Create a formal and informal feedback process
* Make adjustments quickly
* Set up a mentoring program
* Tuition reimbursement and local educational alliances
* Determine policies regarding opportunities
- within the department
- outside the department
* Create a "Marketing Plan" to brand the image
* Measure and publish results

Anne Nickerson can be reached at 1-888-860-2622 or anne@CallCenterCoach. com for additional one-on-one coaching on this topic, and other human resource development processes.

Offshore call center outsourcing

Rationale

If you crawl the call centre newsgroups on the Internet, you will find countless articles for and against offshore outsourcing. The articles in favour of offshore outsourcing are generally written by people who have a financial interest in their success and the opposing articles written by people who stand to gain should they fail. So, we at Asian Call Centres decided to thoroughly examine the offshore industry so that we could predict what would actually happen over the next 5 years and write it without the usual bias we see in other articles.

If we take a close look at the industry today, it is in many ways following the development of both the in-house and outsourced call centre industries in The United States and United Kingdom.

Where to and from?

As you would expect, The US will lead the drive for offshore call-centre outsourcing and 2 countries namely India and The Philippines will dominate the market. The Philippines will actually take over India in terms of number of agents before the end of 2003 for more high value work into the US market due to the higher standard of English there. The vast majority of offshore outsourcing will be English speaking with Spanish, German and French falling way behind mainly due to public adversity to outsourcing and the importance of labour groups in these countries. The Spanish speaking market will mainly serve Spanish-speaking communities based in the United States and will be served by Mexico and South American countries. Almost all work will be conducted in major commercial cities with companies unwilling to risk ventures in provincial towns until the market has matured considerably.

Impact Back Home

The domestic markets in The USA and UK will be affected but only minimally for the in-house call centre market. We have already seen that companies who operate predominantly in-house centres in the UK are far less likely to outsource offshore. However, there is and will continue to be a major shake-up for outsourcing companies. There is already over-capacity in the domestic outsourcing sector and the growth of offshore call centres will continue to squeeze margins and force consolidation. As a result, some vendors will be forced to downsize or go out of business. The overall market is still growing and vendors willing to transform and move up the value chain will continue to prosper. Those companies engaged in low-value outbound activity will be acutely affected as offshore facilities drive down costs in this area. Companies focusing on the out-of-hours inbound market will also see their market reduce as companies adopt a follow-the-sun-approach.

Structure of Vendors

The current offshore market is made up of local entities, global players and partnerships combining both these groups. The larger vendors will continue to develop partnerships with Asian vendors with the Western company operating as a sales and account management function. Unfortunately, many of these partnerships will fail as these partnerships fail to bring the benefits originally sought. More Western companies will look to set up their wholly owned centres in order to gain additional control over the operations. This will be opposed by a number of wealthy families and conglomerates in these developing countries that will attempt to pressure their Governments to enforce foreign ownership rules. Those Governments who buckle under this pressure will lose out to countries offering more liberal laws. By the end of 2006, over 80% of vendors will be 100% owned by British and American shareholders. The local brands already have a poor reputation in the American market, which has severely tarnished the reputation of this entire group. As more of these centres set up, the average quality of these vendors will continue to fall, which will then push this group to near extinction. More and more foreign vendors will seek to bring middle management expertise. There has already been severe criticism of the quality of middle management in offshore centres and this will become even more apparent with the rapid growth anticipated over the next 3-4 years.

Pan-European Centres

Companies which have previously centralized their call-centres on a pan-European basis in countries such as The UK, Ireland and Belgium may continue with this option but will certainly be reviewing their options particularly with the English speaking requirement. Very few of the countries offering low-cost, English-speaking offshore services have large numbers of people fluent in other European languages.

Size, Scale and Growth

The size of each operation moving to offshore locations will steadily grow.
In terms of specific industries, the growth will vary hugely from industry to industry. Publishing will be the major mover and some utilities except when it could pose political embarrassments. Some utilities are still heavily unionized and this may slow the progress of offshore outsourcing. The I.T. industry will also look to take advantage of specific technical skill-sets in India for help-desk activity and will push lead-generation and telemarketing work to reduce costs in a market with shrinking margins. Although travel is generally considered a low value call-centre activity but it is unlikely to see much movement except for foreign airlines who will seek to take advantage of low telecommunications costs to centralize their call centre operations in their home countries. The financial services industry will be a significant player except in sensitive areas of the industry where there will be little movement. There will be little movement in FMCG and Government. Unfortunately growth will not meet the expectations of many venture capitalists, which have pumped millions of dollars into the Indian call centre market. The newer vendors have been very careful about spending vast amounts of money on technology like the early players and as a consequence are able to be cheaper than the early players who are trying to pay off investors. These early players may well find the conflicting demands of their investors and clients may force them out of business.

There are essentially 3 periods for the offshore industry.

Honeymoon Period (until 2003)

Call centre companies are currently experiencing a honeymoon period with their shareholders, employees and Governments. For the vendors in these offshore locations, finding good quality staff is easy. Any industry seen as a growing industry encourages an abundance of employees especially when it is seen to be part of the developed world. Investors are still investing large sums of money into call-centre ventures even though it is not clear when they will start to see a return on their investment.

Decision Time (2003-2005)

Decision time is already starting on a small scale. Companies are starting to ask the following questions:

Is offshore outsourcing for my business?
Which types of work should I be outsourcing?
Where should I outsource?
Should offshore outsourcing be part of my strategy or simply a tactic to fulfill a short-term requirement?

An economic recovery limiting the availability of agents in developed countries, and continued downward pressure on costs will fuel the growth of the offshore industry.
Governments in Asian countries will continue to develop new initiatives to encourage call-centre investment. A number of Indian owned companies will go bankrupt, sell their facilities or merge with foreign partners. A number of these will go bankrupt as a direct result of their over-investment in costly IT infrastructures, which are too expensive to maintain with the margins, which will be increasingly tight. The interest in accreditation bodies such as COPC will continue to grow in developing countries but this will be short-term as clients and vendors fail to experience the promised benefits.

Consolidation (2006 - )

Growth will slow and it will very difficult for new companies to obtain a significant market share. Some call-centres will start to set up in more remote areas. Less and less centres will be set up in Manila, Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai as centres look to reduce costs further to maintain their competitive advantage and compete against their rivals who are continuing to drive down margins. The size of each vendor will be substantially larger than now but there is likely to be less vendors. These vendors will operate in a number of locations and possibly across international borders.

Conclusion

There is a very rosy future for the offshore call centre industry but it will not grow as fast as many have anticipated and quality will become far more of an issue than at present. Poor quality call centre companies at home and abroad will face extinction within the next 3 years. The market will become more sophisticated and the level of management will slowly improve over the medium term. My advice to call centre companies would be to remain focused on quality and not on over-rapid growth or expensive marketing campaigns. Vendors with good reputations will be sought out. Focus on what you are good at and bring in the areas where you lack. My advice to customers and potential customers of offshore companies is to keep your eyes open. Many of the companies with account management teams in London and New York often do this at the expense of quality ex-patriot management in their operations. Use multiple vendors in multiple countries and constantly evaluate all areas of their service. Be patient and you will reap the rewards. To call centre companies in The United States and United Kingdom, I would say, Move up the value chain. We cant make widgets as cheaply in the U.K. as they can in China so just give up and do something that they cant do as well in China. Finally, my advice to technology companies such as Avaya and IBM would be Keep to making the boxes and stop trying to over-hype the industry in order to sell more of your equipment. The success of offshore call centre companies will be driven by their ability to successfully manage high quality call centre projects and not by the size of their equipment or their debt mountain.

This articles was written by Rob OMalley of Asian Call Centres, a leading offshore vendor of call centre services.

Rob O'Malley is one of the world's leading experts in business process outsourcing. He is the COO of Asian Call Centres in Manila Philippines.

The face of the Call Center business is changing

 

Conservative consumers, shifting economic conditions and increasingly competitive business conditions are making it easier than ever to get new customers. These factors are also making it harder than ever to keep your customers. Customer loyalty isn't something easily given, it is something that is earned.

The fight for customer loyalty is nothing new to contact center professionals, but the changing face of the contact center industry is. DialResults predictive dialer system has been designed for the next generation of contact centers, and the new breed of contact center professional. DialResults emerging technologies and evolving team management strategies will lead the industry into the next phase of contact center growth.

The driving force behind these changes is FTC Legislation also an expansion/revision in basic call center objectives. Measures of success in call center operations have changed dramatically in the last decade. While once only call completions or number of orders were the primary measure, depending on the call center function, customer centric measures are now the focus

Predictive dialing is changing almost as fast as traditional dialers bring screen pops to an agent's desktop. The US market, which is the leader in terms of installed systems, is in a period of transition. Predictive Dialing started off as a way to attract new customers and to sell new ideas, but that model does not fit well in today's marketplace. Instead, companies are implementing DialResults predictive dialers in innovative ways, calling airline consumers if their flights are late, alerting utility customers to power shortages, reminding drivers to get their annual checkup, and even notifying retail customers when a package will be shipped late. Does that mean that consumers can say goodbye to someone asking for "the man or woman of the house," or having someone stumble with a long last name? Probably not, but there will be a drastic change over the next five years in which dialers will migrate from being used for primarily outbound sales activity to being used for proactive outbound customer service.

Companies without call centers, though, will be at a distinct disadvantage if their competitors have them. DialResults Advanced technology is made for dealing with a customers base on a large scale or even a SMALL SCALE USING call center TECHNOLOGY from DialResults. The future of the call center is rather like its past-it will continue to be the focal point for corporate efforts to handle customer contact. It will also incrementally add technology to handle different kinds of contacts, like emails and web interactions. DialResults has already seen and recognized and implemented these transitions in our call center technology in the marketplace.

I have over 15 years in the call center industry. I have both worked for the 8th largest call center in the world and have also worked in the Predictive Dialer arena

eProcurement and TranslationGavin Wheeldon

eProcurement and Translation
Gavin Wheeldon of Applied Language Solutions

Background of eProcurement

The world of purchasing took a significant change with the introduction of eProcurement systems. Unbelievable ROI was promised and the whole purchasing world was about to revolutionise, all for a mere few million investment.

This would be done by rationalising the supply base to an absolute minimum and then ensuring no off contract buying was done by enforcing purchases through the system. There were additional savings in the reduction of administration from purchase orders through to invoice payment.
A small problem

Then along came the rather significant problem of supplier adoption onto these systems. Without a critical mass of spend there would be no real ROI. The problem came in that there were so many different proprietary systems including Oracles iProcurement, Ariba, Commerce One, SAP and a multitude of others that the cost of supporting multiple catalogue formats was prohibitive for suppliers. Even worse was when services or configurable products were attempted to be catalogued.
Punch Out

Then along came Punch out or Round Trip depending on which you prefer (This article will use punch out), however the principle is the same. This allows end users to browse a suppliers website and bring back into the system the details of the purchase, therefore allowing all the same business rules and processes to be applied. This solved problems for configurable products, volatile pricing and some other key supply chain issues.
Translation

The level of translation spend in a company is often underestimated and in most large organisations runs into many millions. It is estimated that through the correct use of technology and the consolidation of this spend savings of up to 60% can be achieved. Therefore the benefits of adding this spend to eProcurement can far outweigh even the larger spend categories.

There is however, still a problem when trying to add your translation supplier to eProcurement systems. This comes down to two reasons:

Translation purchases still need to go through a quotation stage in most instances. This is due to the fact there are so many variables that can change the price including such things as graphics with files.
Most agencies will use translation memory tools, which mean that the same document can be differently priced dependent upon when you get the quote. This works by storing translated units in a database and when this same unit is encountered again it is priced lower.

These problems make it almost impossible to purchase translation in a single punch out session.

How to eProcure Translation

Translation can be procured through the system with a slight adaptation of the normal punch out process. This is done by providing a standard link to the agencies secure server where a quotation can be requested and documents submitted. The quote is then emailed to the requisitioner with a link to return to the secure site via the eProcurement system. This will then start a punch out session and the quote can be added to a shopping basket in the normal way.

This article may be reproduced as long as information remains intact

Applied Language Solutions provide translation solutions for business of all size and have a range of solutions to meet all needs.

ALS
TranslationHaving worked in the technology industry including eProcurement and CMS systems, Gavin has in the past three t=years been working in the translation industry to bring technology and language together.