Customer service representatives connect the dots between the organization and customers. They are backbone and key strength of Call Centers. Customer Care Support should be laced with inherent verbal and interpersonal attributes. These skills could be polished and nurtured with consistency and practice. The executives of call centers could fare better and tactfully if under mentioned points be followed. Read More

Continental Airlines is cutting about 600 jobs in its reservations centers because customers increasingly prefer to book flights online.

Continental told employees about the furloughs on Monday and said they would take effect April 11.

The airline said it will cut the jobs of 250 agents who are currently on leave plus another 350 still working.

The company said calls to reservations agents are falling 15 percent per year as customers instead buy tickets from Web sites. There is no charge for booking on continental.com, but customers must pay $20 to make a reservation by phone. Airlines use the call center fees to raise money and encourage passengers to book online, which is cheaper for the carrier as well as the passenger.

Continental also said it won't renew a contract to answer calls for Disney resorts, which will result in about 100 of the 600 job losses.

The Houston-based airline has about 2,600 U.S. reservations agents, with about 1,000 working from home and the rest at centers in Houston and Salt Lake City. Spokeswoman Julie King said most of the furloughs will be in the Houston area, including agents who work from home.

Last year, Continental cited the same downward trend in online bookings when it closed a call center in Tampa, Fla., and eliminated 500 jobs there.

The April furloughs will be based on seniority. The airline said it will offer early retirement packages including travel benefits to employees with at least 10 years of service, and will offer severance payments to others losing their jobs.

As of Dec. 31, Continental had 41,300 employees.

Airlines are looking for ways to boost revenue and cut costs as they deal with a slump in travel that started during the recession and has been slow to end.

Higher traffic and lower fuel prices helped Continental earn $85 million in the fourth quarter of last year — a profit that surprised analysts. Still, the airline lost $868 million in 2008 and 2009 combined.

The Arkansas Department of Health is seeking a contractor to develop and manage a call center that will be the “nerve center” of the new statewide trauma system, the state health officer said.

Center staff will be responsible for monitoring the status of hospitals across Arkansas and directing paramedics responding to accidents and other trauma scenes to the closest hospital best able to treat a patient’s specific injuries.

It’s a system that will save lives and reduce long-term disabilities by getting trauma patients the emergency care they need faster, said Paul Halverson, Health Department director and state health officer.

“The idea here is to reduce the amount of time betweeninjury and treatment, and that’s counted in minutes ...

Indiana call center directors say a slumping economy led to record call volume at the state's 211 lines in 2009.


Indiana 211 Partnership Executive Director John Krom says requests to the state's 15 call lines jumped 18 percent between 2008 and 2009.

Krom says referrals to assistance agencies rose 25 percent because the higher demand forced call center staffs to send people to multiple agencies to cobble together assistance.

Requests for food and utility assistance topped lists statewide.

The Indiana 211 system reaches about 95 percent of state residents. It connects callers with health and human services agencies that can help them pay for food, utilities and housing.

When setting up a new call center, or refurbishing an existing one, installation of voice and data cabling can be a significant cost. This is especially true when the cabling is being installed in the walls and floors of the facility.

However these days companies operating call centers are looking for ways to lower their installation and reconfiguration costs. Organizations need the flexibility to rapidly scale up or scale down their call center operations -- including the ability to quickly and easily reconfigure their call center spaces.

As a result, organizations are increasingly looking for call center furniture solutions that offer simplified cabling options. Instead of running cables through conduits in the walls and floor of the facility – and “trunking” them in at each cubicle – organizations are looking at lower cost options that allow them to more easily install and reconfigure their cabling as the layout needs change.

Interior Concepts’ call center furniture utilizes their Chase Wire Management System that keeps cables and wires out of sight – and out from under people’s feet – while at the same time keeping them easily accessible. Most importantly the Chase system allows easy initial installation and reconfigurations of cabling and easy technology swaps for IT. Interior Concepts research has shown that companies that purchase their furniture can reduce cabling and contractor costs by up to 40 percent and speed installation time by 25 to 30 percent.

Lakas-Kampi vice presidential candidate Edu Manzano has expressed concern that the call center industry is pulling young people away from higher learning
or professional disciplines needed in building a strong country.

He called for the "revisiting" of the education system in the Philippines when he spoke before hundreds of students and faculty members in a visit here, Wednesday.

“To be globally competitive, what is being looked at today is having PhDs (and the) mechanisms where students are active (and) vying for higher learning,” Manzano said in a mix of English and Filipino during a forum held at the University of the Perpetual Help System here.

He came with presidential candidate Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro and visited the town of San Pedro and the cities of Biñan and Sta. Rosa.

“(But) There’s a problem. ‘Wag ho sanang magagalit yung iba sa ‘tin dito, pero maraming first year college tapos umaalis. Call center! Ang starting sa call center P16,000; dalawa sa pamilya P32,000; maginhawa na ang buhay ng pamilyang iyon (But there’s a problem, I hope I’m not offending some of you, but a lot of first year college students drop out of school to work in a call center. The starting salary in a call center is P16,000. Two in the family, that would be P32,000. That already makes a good living).

Manzano, who said he conducted his “personal study” of the call centers, said call center workers accounted for the highest number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, alcoholism, problems in the family and low self-esteem.

Call centers and the business process outsourcing industry were among the economic legacies President Macapagal-Arroyo boasted in her legacy tours across the nation.

“These are social causes. We can’t have that kind of citizenry (but) we need educated citizenry if we plan to move forward,” Manzano said.

“There is nothing wrong with the system, but the status (in the) system,” he replied to a question on possibly initiating changes in the education curriculum.

He said the Philippine government has been spending only $134 per student per year, while countries such as Singapore and Japan have been spending $1,800 and $5,000, respectively, for each of their students.

Source: Newsinfo.inquirer.net

Customer Service operations have undergone some heavy changes in the last few years. To save money, many call centers have been moved offshore and self-service Websites allow users to tackle mundane tasks like ordering, paying bills and checking statements.
CrowdEngineering believe that the Social Web is bringing a new wave of disruption to the way customers get help. Their CrowdForce platform is already helping telecommunications companies to crowdsource assistance from distributed online communities and is delivering real value. In one year they raised 100k community members, managed over 500k support requests and reduced support costs by $3M.

Source : http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/02/beyond-call-center-community-customer-support.php

Yahoo's been busy in Nebraska.  This week, the company announced the opening of both a data center and a call center in the state, and apparently the celebration was a big deal, with Jerry Yang and several high(-ish) ranking politicians all showing up.
Indeed, according to a post on Yodel Anecdotal, Jerry Yang, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, La Vista Mayor Douglas Kindig, Attorney General Jon Bruning, and Nebraska Congressman Lee Terry made appearances.  That's not a bad turnout.

As for some more substantial details relating to development, the data center is located in 180,000-square foot building, and the building is located in a small city called La Vista (hence Kindig's involvement).  It's expected to employ about 50 people, and without giving away any trade secrets, Yahoo's implied that the data center's rather "green," environmentally speaking.

Not as much is known about the sales and customer support call center - it presumably took less time and money to set up, thereby attracting less attention - but it's located in Omaha, and should help a few people earn paychecks, too.

One possible interpretation of all this activity is that Yahoo's very optimistic about its future even as Microsoft's stepping in to influence the search and advertising side of things.

A support service for professional sales, delivery services unique to a business - it's like having a special assistant business whose sole concern is the success of the business in question. Consumers can find the products or services they want with ease when they agree to the literature, have an appointment with a sales professional or visit a website on the Internet, and business will benefit each After a query is converted into a sale.

When it comes to attracting potential customers, the company has the option to select which products or services are offered to consumers and to provide consumers with the products or services. A company may choose to advertise locally or can use a professional sales support team to reach a global audience. When it comes to business development activities of prospecting B2B service, the business owner remains in full control always.

The control that a business owner has when it comes to business development activities in B2B prospecting services, are also good when it comes to paying for those services. The owner of the company may set a limit on the number of potential customers that a professional sales service support received in a given period of time. This last fact means that the company can maintain control over the costs of exploring for B2B and not worry about going over budget. In terms of budget services B2B prospecting, generating many services are low cost and based on a per customer basis, the initiative generated and the complexity of the generation customers will ultimately determine the costs. Finally, the owner of a company can expect to pay an initial setup or membership fee to hire a company that provides B2B prospecting sometimes.

Re-edited :-

A support service for professional sales, delivery services unique to a business - it's like having a special assistant business whose sole concern is the success of the business in question. Consumers can find the products or services they want with ease when they agree to the literature, have an appointment with a sales professional or visit a website on the Internet, and business will benefit each after a query is converted into a sale.

When it comes to attracting potential customers, the company has the option to select which products or services are offered to consumers and to provide consumers with the products or services. A company may choose to advertise locally or can use a professional sales support team to reach a global audience. When it comes to business development activities of prospecting B2B service, the business owner remains in full control always.

The control that a business owner has when it comes to business development activities in B2B prospecting services, are also good when it comes to paying for those services. The owner of the company may set a limit on the number of potential customers that a professional sales service support received in a given period of time.

The Key activities for Professional Sales Support executive include:

    * Handling all correspondence and organizing contact among the sales executives and their customers;

    * Maintaining records of potential customer;

    * Keeping records of visits and sales;

    * Taking, progressing and monitoring orders;

    * Processing invoices and accounts;

    * Preparing estimates and quotations for customers;

    * Drawing up tender documents or contracts;

    * Keeping records of sales targets and actual figures and compiling them into reports for management.

This last fact means that the company can maintain control over the costs of exploring for B2B and not worry about going over budget. In terms of budget services B2B prospecting, generating many services are low cost and based on a per customer basis, the initiative generated and the complexity of the generation customers will ultimately determine the costs. Finally, the owner of a company can expect to pay an initial setup or membership fee to hire a company that provides B2B prospecting sometimes.

When the business sectors and markets are experiencing unprecedented boom and ever increasing range of offered products and services; setting pace with technology and influx of enquiry calls has become mandatory and incredibly difficult.  That’s where every company start feeling the need of deploying call center and their services for streamlining their administration, finance and back office operations.

A call center can be divided in two major parts on the basis of their working procedure that is – Inbound and Outgoing Call Centers. The working of inbound call centers basically revolve around answering the query calls people make in regard of certain product or service a company provide while outbound call center do sales process or telemarketing. All you need is UAN which is universal access number to get through one of the many call center agents present in a call center. The call centers route call via two processes - Automatic Call Distribution and Intelligence Voice Recognition.  ACD distributes incoming calls to specific agent terminals where as IVR records the information from customer beforehand and then transfer the call.

Residents of the Woodcreek Farms subdivision are worried about the impact Verizon's new call center will have on the community.  The telecommunications giant broke ground on the 145,000 square foot facility at Spears Creek Church Road and I-20 a couple months ago.

The call center is expected to bring 1,500 new jobs into the area. "There should be some traffic signals there, and some widening of the roads" says homeowner Todd Walter.  Walter says plans for the new call center were a "secret" between Richland County and Verizon.

Gone are the days when call centers were rare breeds and outsourcing their services were a luxury or an option -of no -choice -available at low or cheap costs. Now, when owing to globalization, the world has become one, so do the countries and businesses. The growth of business knows no borders or nationality. Because of this, the increasing influx of customer calls, the pressure to bolster your brand against others, technical functions gone awry or being at loggerheads with employees for non-adherence to schedules and so on has proved the salt of call centers.

Read More...

As businesses today evolve their operations to meet increasing demands from customers and to cut costs, call center outsourcing has become an important way to better serve customers without “sacrificing the fiscal and human resources necessary to host these tasks in-house.”

“The concept is simple - give customers a reason to interact by providing convenience and value with every contact,” the article notes.

One area making headway in this field is the use of social media networking. To ensure that a business is partnering with an outsourcing provider that’s up to speed, the VendorSeek.com article recommends that decision makers understand the role call center outsourcing can play in Business 2.0 as well as define specific criteria for their strategic planning phase.

As an alternative to a fully outsourced call center, companies can also take on a hybrid approach if they’re hesitant about having all of their call center operations handled by an outsourced provider. Using this method can still be beneficial as first-level calls can be handled in-house while marketing calls can be passed over to outsourced agents. Not only will this help increase the number of calls being handled and the amount of resolutions, but it’s also an opportunity to utilize outsourced providers to optimize lead-gen for marketing campaigns.

In the US, Mountain West Research Center has announced a reduction in its workforce at its Idaho phone center, which it says is ‘temporary’ and blames on a ‘volatile’ research climate and slow economic recovery.

Based in Pocatello, Idaho, the firm has been collecting primary data for market research organizations since 1995. Its specialities include concept testing, customer and employee satisfaction research, brand awareness, product usage measurement and political and opinion polling.

Its call center employs about 50 staff, and according to reports, some of the laid-off workers were told the company intends to retain about 20 employees.

A company statement said: ‘Ongoing variability in market research activities stemming from the economic downturn and nascent recovery have necessitated a short term workforce realignment.’

Director Jesse Reinhold says the company will work to try and restore the lost positions as soon as possible, and that in the meantime the reduced staff will continue to service existing clients.

Mountain West is an affiliate of Western Wats Center, which was fined $552k last year for employing minors to conduct market research and political surveys from its call centers.

In a move that could shake the foundations of India's IT services industry, US President, Mr Barack Obama, on Thursday said he will end tax breaks to American firms that ship out jobs abroad.


"To encourage ... businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America," he said in his first State of Union address.

"Now, the House has passed a jobs bill that includes some of these steps. As the first order of business this year, I urge the Senate to do the same... People are out of work.

They're hurting. They need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay," he said. India, which has earned the name 'world's back-office', could suffer the most by this move.

According to software services industry body NASSCOM, IT sector's revenue accounted for 5.8 per cent of India's gross domestic product in 2008-09, up from 1.2 per cent in 1997-98.

American companies primarily move jobs abroad to save costs, with no dent on services as countries like India boast of an English-educated workforce -- be it IT engineers or for jobs that had to be done over phone.

"But the truth is, these steps won't make up for the seven million jobs that we've lost over the last two years," Mr Obama said. - PTI

The director for a call center in Pocatello says the business is laying off part of its staff.

In a press release Jesse Reinhold, director for Mountain West Research Center, says there will be a "reduction in force" and a "short term workforce realignment...stemming from the economic downturn." When Local News 8 asked him how many people were being laid off, he would only say a full force consists of 75 people.

In the release Reinhold says the reduced staff will continue to service existing clients and he hopes it will be short lived. Mountain West Research Center has been in Pocatello since 1995.

Utah-based Teleperformance, a Pensacola call center will begin laying off some of its 176 employees this month and close permanently by May 31, according to a company spokesman.

Teleperformance Executive Vice President Mark Pfeiffer said the decision was the result of a “strategic move designed to better align and utilize existing resources and capacity.

The Heinberg Street call center provides customer care services for several of Teleperformance’s major clients in a number of business sectors, Pfeiffer said.

By noon on Tuesday the main door to the company’s lobby were locked, and several employees gathered in the parking lot refused to comment on the announcement.

The company said it is working with local officials to help the affected staff find employment as their jobs are phased out.

West Corp. plans to close its call center in Hampton by March 31, putting 450 people out of work. The Omaha-based company announced the closing yesterday, citing a drop in business by companies that use the center to handle customer calls as the reason behind the closure. Some of the workers will be invited to apply for positions at the company’s 47 other call centers. The Hampton operation opened in 1996. City officials are offering to help displaced workers find new jobs in the communications industry or to assist them in job training for new employment.