Inbound and Outbound Call Center Industry News

Call center employees donate 10,000 pounds of food

2010-11-19T01:15:00.000-08:00

Employees at a Valdosta call center donated thousands of pounds of goods to the food bank Wednesday.
What makes the donation even more special is the fact that some of the Fresh Beginnings employees could use the food themselves but instead they wanted to help others out.

When Johnique Grate isn't working at the busy Fresh Beginnings Call Center, the single mother is at home with her two children or at school to become a nurse. She said it was in her heart to donate food and she brought in 176 pounds of it.

"You get your blessings when you bless others, so mine are coming," said Grate.

The call center had a goal of 7,500 pounds for the drive and far exceeded it.

Two hundred seventy five employees here at the call center brought in 10,000 pounds of food.

"Everybody has rough spots in life and it's nice to help," said employee Max Hardy.

She brought in 40 pounds and she says many others there were bringing in the goods by the truck loads over the last three weeks.

"The special thing is I know what they make and I know the problems they face everyday and for them to come together and give their money in these hard times is truly amazing," said the Fresh Beginnings Call Center Director Damon Sefa.

Second Harvest of South Georgia tells us this is the largest single food drive from a private donor in the last year.

"It's just amazing," said Tamela Myers with Second Harvest. "They did this last year and now it's just totally unbelievable."

Johnique and the many employees here hope it'll help those who are hungry have a brighter holiday season.

This is the second annual Fresh Beginnings Call Center food drive. Last year, they donated about 6,400 pounds of food.

Bank of America to close Wichita call center

2010-11-19T01:02:00.000-08:00

Bank of America says it will close its Wichita call center and vacate the 50,000-square-foot building by July 30 of next year.

The center has 310 employees. KAKE-TV reports the company announced Wednesday it was exercising an early lease exit option on the facility.

Bank of America moved into the call center in October 2006 after spending $10 million to renovate the space. At the time it was the biggest of the company's three national call centers and replaced a smaller one in Wichita with fewer employees.

Bank of America signed a 10-year lease on the building and received numerous incentives from the state of Kansas for keeping the center in Wichita.

Company spokeswoman Diane Wagner says the closing will allow Bank of America to save money and consolidate work at other call centers.

Verizon To Open Call Center In Pittsburgh, Call Center Job Oppurtunity, Call Center Agents requirement

2010-11-10T01:22:00.000-08:00

Verizon is planning to open a new customer service center in downtown Pittsburgh.

According to company officials, that means more than 200 full-time jobs will be coming to area.A Verizon representative said a college degree is preferred but not required for the new jobs. Job seekers with a technical background will also have an advantage.The pay scale for the soon-to-be jobs ranges from $12 to $27 an hour based on education and experience.Workers at the center, which will sit along Seventh Avenue, will help customers using Verizon's fios Internet and television services."We thought this was a good place to put a center, where we can respond to our customers quickly, and the city will benefit from the success that fios has in Pennsylvania,” said Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynskil.The center is set to open in May.

NIKON Starts Call Center in India

2010-11-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

Nikon India will be setting up its first call center in India to be operated out of its head office in Gurgaon. The call center have been designed and equipped to handle services and queries of all D-SLR’s, NIKKOR Lenses, COOLPIX Compact Cameras, accessories and any other imaging products.

Speaking on the occasion Mr. Hiroshi Takashina, Managing Director, Nikon India, said, “For Nikon customer satisfaction is extremely important. Nikon has always strived towards providing its customers with world class products and services. Keeping this in mind we have set up the call center for our Indian customers as an extension of our focus towards providing our customers with quick response time.”

The call center is a part of Nikon’s initiative towards providing its customers with the best products and services for Indian customers. The executives at the call center are trained and are also be equipped with responses to solve all customer queries. In case of concerns regarding software or any specific query, the calls will be directed to the concerned department by the caller.

The center will be available from 9:30am to 6:00pm during weekdays while for Saturdays the time frame is 9:30am to 1:00pm only. The executives have been trained by Nikon in-house team on products and services Nikon will be offering. The new center will be equipped with all the queries regarding new product launches, price of the products, Nikon store in the country, lens servicing etc.

Ryla call center aims for more than 600-job target

2010-11-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Hiring at a fairly frantic pace, Ryla Inc. is nearly halfway toward reaching its goal of employing 600 people at its Lafayette operations.

And the 600 number might be surpassed, as the company gears up its call center facility that provides customer service.

"If we get the people, we have the jobs. If we get the applicant flow, we could do as much as 700," Mark Wilson, Ryla president and chief executive officer, said following a ribbon-cutting ceremony to welcome the company to the local business community.

"We're really excited about the reputation the community brings -- the work ethic. It puts us in a place where we feel comfortable."

Alorica Inc. opened the call center in August 2009 and acquired Ryla about eight months ago.

Greater Lafayette Commerce sponsored Monday's celebration of the name change of the facility to Ryla, which is holding a job fair this week for potential employees.

"We're always excited when a business comes to our community. Especially those that are hiring," said Resa Hodnett, membership program manager at Greater Lafayette Commerce.

Lafayette resident Lana Fleming was hired by the company during the initial wave of employment on Oct. 4.

"I'm really enjoying it. I just graduated from college and they hired me as an assistant to the trainers," Fleming said. "I'm getting to apply my education to my job."

Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski attended Monday's ceremony and said Ryla is helping the city, which had an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent in September, take a "wonderful step" forward.

"This is going to be a great company, a great place to work. As we work to compete in the global economy ... we have to show we have that work force for the future."

Immediate employment opportunities are available for qualified applicants.

"We have (jobs) available now. We're in a position to hire folks today," Wilson said. We'd like to get to 600-plus in the next 30 days. We're open for business and trying to create the 'best job you've ever had.' "

Sitel to lay off 300 at Erwin call center

2010-11-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

Sitel, the Nashville-based call center company that took over Corning Inc.'s photonics testing center in Erwin two years ago, will lay off about 300 workers by the end of the year.

Sitel's Vice President for Marketing Andrew Kokes said the job cuts were the result of the loss of one of the center's major customers. However, he would not identity the company.

All of the affected employees were given eight weeks' notice and the company is working with the state Labor Department and local employers to provide immediate employment and benefits assistance for workers who will lose their jobs.

"Notices were sent out (Tuesday) and the action is based on unforeseen circumstances," said Kokes. "We lost one of our clients and the reduction is not a reflection of the service delivered by the employees."

In a prepared statement, Joel Campos, director of Sitel's Erwin facility, also complimented the quality of the employees by saying the Corning community has provided the company with some of the best talent and skills across the customer care industry.

Sitel offers inbound call handling for customer service requests, technical support and order taking. The company also provides outbaound telemarketing, database and list-building services and direct response marketing.

In addition to call services, Sitel provides outsourcing services for a number of business functions, including order processing and payroll management.

The privately held company started operations in Painted Post in 2008 at 101 Canada Road. Corning Inc. retained ownership of the former telecommunications building and to help the company set up shop in the 45,000 square-foot two-story building, Empire State Development provided a $1.5 million grant, plus another $750,000 from the Governor's Office of Small Cities. Sitel spent about $4 million to renovate the building and intended to employ about 400 workers.

Sitel's downsizing plans come less than a month after another call center in downtown Elmira, American Customer Care, announced its plan to beef up its head count by adding up to 100 new jobs. American Customer Care employs about 140 people at the Iszard's building in downtown Elmira.

4More Appointments Launching Call Center in the Box Service for 2011

2010-11-03T06:35:00.001-07:00

4More Appointments, Inc. confirmed today their new marketing protocol for 2011 will be dubbed, "Call Center in the Box." The format is a compilation of call center services, email extraction and high volume e contacts for business owners. "We would love to thank our Swedish counterparts Anders Person and Ake Johansson for their commitment over the past few months. There were several stamps in the passports getting Call Center in the Box off the ground," said Richard Pamenius, executive VP, "but I think we have finally arrived at a solution that both maximizes penetration and provides a seamless CRM interface for our clients."

The marketing format is designed to run on a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) service and provide the user a real time interface with their prospective new clients. The service will be able to extract emails by the thousands, send these prospects a simple introductory e contact and be loaded into a predictive dialer for call routing. The simple format will allow clients to choose marketing campaigns on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. "The new upgrade will improve performance in almost every dimension of our client's business model, without raising our prices a dime," Pamenius was quoted.

Bharti Airtel announces African call centers

2010-10-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — India's largest telecom company said it plans to bring call center jobs to Africa, months after it bought out a major mobile phone network on the continent, the global CEO of Bharti Airtel announced Monday.

CEO Manoj Kohli and other officials with the world's fifth largest telecommunications company declined to put dollar figures to their plans. The company said it will create call centers with partners including IBM Corp., Tech Mahindra and SPANCO, with initial contracts of five years. The move comes as Indian outsourcing firms began hiring sprees this year to take advantage of job losses stemming from the global economic downturn.

"We are confident that Africa will revolutionize" the outsourcing sector, Kohli told journalists. "Today is only a germination."

The contracting companies declined to say what specific services they would provide to Bharti, which has 183.4 million customers across 19 countries.

Bharti announced in June it would invest $600 million in Nigeria's mobile phone market, but the company faces a fight in its hopes to expand in the nation of 150 million people. South Africa-based MTN already holds a 50 percent market share in the country while other networks also vie for customers.

However, Nigeria's state-run telephone company's fixed-line network sits in ruins, awaiting a potential privatization deal. Estimates suggest nearly 63 million mobile phones are used in the country.

Bharti faces challenges in its Indian market, as a price war has driven costs down to less than 1 cent a minute. The company's most recent quarterly report saw profits fall 32 percent to $361 million.

Kohli declined to say whether he anticipated a similar price war coming to Africa, as his company tries to make a name for itself in countries like Nigeria — where more than 80 percent of people earn less than $2 a day.

"We are here to create market," the CEO said.

Bharti's other holdings in Africa include networks in Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

1400 Call Center Jobs in USA: 1400 Jobs at Kennesaw Call Center, 400 Permanent

2010-10-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

KENNESAW, GA -- If you've got patience, are a good listener and have a positive attitude, you could land one of 1,000 seasonal jobs or one of 400 permanent ones in the Ryla Call Center in Kennesaw.

You'll be taking customer calls from top companies and helping resolve questions and complaints.

"With the growth that Ryla is undergoing right now, we feel really confident that a good majority of the individuals on seasonal who are interested will have an opportunity to stay on with us," said Karen Clay of Ryla.

For call center candidates, it's been a tough road looking for work.

"Really hard," said job candidate Cameron Sankey. "Looking for a job since January after my birthday. It was ugly. Everywhere I go they say 'We'll give you a call back.' I'm frustrated, very frustrated."

"I've been out of work since 2008," said another Ryla candidate Jazzsmine Howard. "I graduated from high school in May of 2008 and I worked a little while after I graduated, and I've been of work ever since then."

Both candidates got the jobs and will start training at once and start answering phones in about a week.

And whether it's on a phone call or in an interview, it's all about attitude.

"The person on the phone doesn't know you," said Ryla's Andre Malone who had been in the call center business for years. "How can you get upset about what they are upset about? Let them be upset and see if you can help them."

To apply visit www.Ryla.com

Verizon Hiring Call Center Staff For CDMA iPhone 4 Launch?

2010-10-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

With both Verizon and Apple are yet to officially confirm the arrival of the CDMA iPhone on Verizon early next year, it is left to tech bloggers and enthusiasts to look for clues that point towards either of these companies prepping themselves up for a launch.

Yesterday, there were reports about AT&T training its staff to handle queries related to other smartphones, which they have been concentrating on lately. This also points towards the possibilty of AT&T preparing itself to be less dependent on the iPhone as it might be losing its iPhone exclusivity.

Read More at http://www.iphonehacks.com/2010/10/verizon-hiring-call-center-staff-for-iphone-launch.html

Global Call Center Service Revenues to Reach US$189.3 Billion by 2015, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

2010-10-25T02:36:00.000-07:00

Bleeding corporate balance sheets, falling demand in the face of financial crisis, tight liquidity and customer budgets, fall in service tariffs, enterprise skepticism over infrastructure investments, high levels of unemployment, have thrown growth in call centers services off-course. Revenues of several companies in developed nations took a hit due to reduced demand of products and services in major markets and loss of key sales contracts in 2009. Call center service revenues fell from grace as a result of companies throwing outsourcing plans on the backburner, renegotiating existing contracts at lower prices with existing service providers and postponement of contract extensions, and renewals. Recession induced contract renegotiations have especially dented revenues in the industry. The recessionary pressures also bifurcated large contracts deals into smaller contracts of lower values, with shorter turn-around times.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/25/prwebprweb4688454.DTL

Call Center Job : Clovis Call Center Still Hiring, Job Oppurtunity at Call Center

2010-10-21T02:07:00.000-07:00

A Clovis call center is still in the process of hiring hundreds of workers.

Ryla, a company which specializes in customer service, held the first of several job fairs on Monday.
They plan to hire between 500 and 600 new workers.

Mark Wilson, Ryla’s CEO, says very little experience is needed. “We are not looking for anything more than folks who have a real pleasant, customer service focused personality. They do have to have some modest typing skills and a high school education.”

If you missed Monday's job fair, don't worry, the job fair continues into next week.
A recruitment open house will take place at 170 West Shaw Avenue in Clovis on the following dates:

Monday, October 18, 9:00am - 4:00pm
Tuesday, October 19, 9:00am - 7:00pm
Wednesday, October 20, 9:00am - 4:00pm
Thursday, October 21, 9:00am - 7:00pm
Friday, October 22, 9:00am - 4:00pm
Monday, October 25, 9:00am - 4:00pm
Tuesday, October 26, 9:00am - 7:00pm
Wednesday, October 27, 9:00am - 4:00pm

Job Requirements

Must be PC literate and pass a computer based pre-hire assessment
Inbound call center and excellent customer service experience a plus
High school diploma or equivalent required
Professional dress is required
Bring a copy of your resume and two forms of government-issued ID
Must not have any felonies or misdemeanors
Must be able to pass a drug screening and national background check

Sitel, SATMAP Announce Partnership for Call Center Routing

2010-10-21T01:09:00.000-07:00

Sitel, a global business process outsourcing provider, and SATMAP (News - Alert), which sells technology for matching customers to call center agents, have announced a partnership to offer clients “optimal call center routing based on customer and agent characteristics,” according to Sitel officials.

This collaboration is a part of Sitel’s investment in new call center technologies, “building on the company’s call center products to drive a better customer experience at a lower cost,” company officials say.
SATMAP gains intelligence by continually analyzing outcomes and updating agent information and performance after each unique customer interaction.

Working with neural networks and artificial intelligence technology used by the CIA and NSA, Sitel officials say, SATMAP pairs call center agents with customers through a list of more than 100 demographic, psychographic and geographic variables -- “Everything from gender and age to location and education are analyzed in billions of combinations to optimally connect calls with specific agents who are most likely to succeed with a specific customer.”

Amit Shankardass, chief global marketing officer of Sitel, said the company’s partnership with SATMAP “ensures that we are getting the right call to the right agent at the right time and building personal relationships for some of the world’s most renowned brands.”

Call center providers such as Sitel “know that a customer or an agent should never be randomly selected as the ‘next one in the queue,’ but handpicked and aligned to the best agent to effectively address the customer’s unique needs,” said Bruce Wolff, EVP of Business Development at SATMAP.

Earlier this week TMC (News - Alert) hadthenews that Sitel announced that it is actively expanding its customer care call center in the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The facility is expected to increase its staff by more than 140 associates with this recruitment drive.

Sitel is working closely with the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions and is hosting an on-site job fair on Wednesday, October 20, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. at 4420 the 25 Way, Albuquerque, NM 87109. The recruitment drive will support the continued expansion of Sitel's growing client portfolio including a digital satellite television provider, a hospitality holding corporation and a global coffee company that are outsorcing their calls to provide superior customer service.

Sitel's newly hired Albuquerque associates will provide inbound customer care support.

Source: Tmcnet.com

NOVO 1 call center hiring 60 on Tuesday

2010-10-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

The new NOVO 1 call center in Holland will be at Ottawa County Michigan Works from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday taking applications and resumes.

The call center is hiring 60 new customer service representatives.

Applicants are asked to wear business attire and will take a simple typing test. They will then hand in an application and resume. Interviews will be held separately by NOVO 1 at a different time.

Those interested in applying can go early to Michigan Works — 121 Clover St. in Holland — to update their resumes and prepare for the application process.

How To Keep Call Center Agents Safe On The Road

2010-10-19T01:09:00.000-07:00

Whenever there’s news about typhoons hitting the country, we have to make sure that our safety is our primary concern. Same thing goes with your call center as they also help their call center agents come to office or arrive home safely after work.

How do you keep yourselves safe on the road? Here are some tips:

    * Always listen to the latest news regarding the latest weather situation through company bulletins
    * Make sure to bring extra money, clothing, bottle of drinking water and food on your bag, you’ll never know when you’re going to need it
    * Enable your mobile phones to call, this means to charge your phone’s batteries and have enough credits to call someone in emergency situations
    * Also stash an umbrella (three folds is okay, but the longer umbrella is proved to last longer). This goes even if you have your car going to work (better to be safe than sorry)
    * Keep the number of your call center hotline or your immediate supervisor’s number to inform them if you will be late or absent or if you need some immediate help in nearby areas

So those are some helpful tips to remember to keep you, call center employees safe on the road. Can you add more to the list?

West wins new call-center business, Expanding San Antonio workforce

2010-10-19T00:35:00.000-07:00

West Corp. said Monday that it will hire 700 more full-time employees at its two San Antonio area call centers to support the needs of an existing wireless client and the expansion of West’s mortgage services business.

West would not divulge the identities of the clients, nor would it release financial details.

Omaha, Neb.-based West already employs 1,500 workers in Northwest San Antonio and 400 workers in Universal City. The new hires are in addition to West’s recent announcement back in September that it would separately hire 500 people in Universal City.

Once hiring goals are reached, West will have 3,100 employees in the San Antonio region.

West will host job fairs on Tuesday, Oct. 19, from noon to 7 p.m., and on Wednesday, Oct. 20, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Individuals may apply online at www.westemployment.com.

Does Providing Small Business Phone Answering Service Enhance Your Company Profile?

2010-10-13T05:43:00.000-07:00

A small business phone answering service or call center service can help you proactively manage your business and keep in constant contact with customers. You can focus on growing your business, while a team of professional agents acts as your full-time, peak-time or after-hours call center. A call center service provides 24-hour service, and helps you increase sales and improve customer loyalty. If you’d like your small business to improve sales and present a more impressive corporate image, sign up for a small business phone answering service or call center services.

Stay connected with your customers with a small business phone answering service or call center service. For a reasonable price, you’ll receive an individual phone answering solution to meet your business’ needs. The small business phone answering service or call center service will partner you with a team of agents who handle calls professionally, accurately and efficiently. You’ll be able to choose a customized greeting, and your team of agents will answer customers’ questions however you choose. A small business phone answering service or call center service will even act as your sales staff, taking and processing your orders; this takes the administrative task of answering phones away from your employees, freeing up time and saving you money.

Your customers will appreciate reaching a helpful, live person rather than an automated messaging system. Call agents gain a thorough understanding of your business, so they can provide customer support, take orders, qualify leads, schedule appointments, run surveys and more. They’ll handle emergency calls professionally, matching each call to the correct person. Agents will handle work-hours calls, taking over during your lunch break or whenever you’re busy. Call-answering services also handle bilingual calls and provide translation services. Agents will also handle after-hours calls—a small business phone answering service or call center service provides 24-hour phone answering service 365 days per year, so you can feel secure even on sick days or vacation days.

You’ll begin by letting the small business phone answering service or call center service gain an understanding of your business, and your goals for inbound calls. The small business phone answering service or call center service will work with you to develop scripts so agents will handle phone calls to appropriately meet your objectives. You’ll then receive call data to track how the service meets your goals. A small business phone answering service or call center service will provide you with call trends, source code data and conversion rates. A CSS, or Customer Service Specialist, will listen to all calls to track individual team member performance, so you can revise scripts as needed and keep track of progress.

Running Call Center Outsourcing Services? Checklist these Points for Better Conversion

2010-10-13T05:36:00.000-07:00

Call center outsourcing services offer round the clock services to the clients and their customers. They address the grievances of customers, take their feedback and answer the calls involving technical assistance and resolution of queries. A call center team is accountable for customer support, the deployed technology, and your business process they have undertaken.

Managing an outsourcing call center is not easy. There is so much to handle in terms of people, technology and infrastructure. For instance a call center management has to ensure that they meet the requirement of respective project of the company they have signed SLA with. They have to keep proficient agents handy as they are always running short of them because of attrition. Their technology should run to the last and have extra back-up just in case if something goes wrong and the list counts on.

The fundamentals of successful call center outsourcing are many. We have managed to narrow down the list to few which according to us, are the most important ones.

Streamlined Process

The Process Managers are the ones who could organize the process to the tip with all the requirement in place. They are the ones who can align the resources and manage the manpower in accordance with the requirement. They should have experience and expertise in varied domains and streams of industry. They should be well qualified and trained professionals.

Training

Call center agents should be trained and keep updated on the projects and products as their managers. After all, they are the ones who have to speak to customers. They should know about the particular product or services and competitors so that they would be able to answer any question or response coming along in the way. Staff is the true image of any company and a well trained staff can yield in good results and leads for the company resulting in good market reputation for the call center.

Infrastructure & Facilities

To have a well trained and dedicated team, as management you need to know what they want. A better and happy environment leads to more productivity in staff. Management should reward the workers with incentives and bonuses to show the appreciation towards their work. It should also be careful of their comfort and basic facilities such as clean work stations, cafeteria and transportation. Their should always be endeavors to motivate workers as well.

West Corp. to hire 250 at Rocky Mount call center

2010-10-13T05:32:00.000-07:00

Omaha, Neb.-based West Corporation plans to hire 250 people at its Rocky Mount call center.

The company says it needs more full-time personnel to keep up with increased business from three existing customers. The positions pay between $10 and $11 per hour.

The company will hold job fairs, with on-the-spot interviews, from 10 am to 6 pm on Oct. 18 and 19 at its call center at 1974 Stone Rose Drive in Rocky Mount.

West currently employs about 800 individuals at its Rocky Mount center.

Call Center Job: Afni Call Center, Huge Turn Out for Job Fair in Evans

2010-10-13T05:30:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of job-seekers lined the halls of the TriPointe building in Evans this morning hoping to land a position with Afni Inc., which plans a 500-person call center.

The company plans to hire 250 jobs initially, then another 250 by February.

Almost 250 people lined up within the first 40 minutes of today's job fair, which will run until 7 p.m. at TriPointe, 3001 8th Ave.

“This by far exceeds our expectations,” Dave Usrey, Afni's human resources director, said of the job fair turnout.

By comparison, about 500 people turned out at an all-day job fair for a recently opened Afni call center in Florida, Usrey said.

Most of the positions at the Evans facility are entry-level call representatives, starting at $9.50 an hour with incentive opportunities. Afni will also hire at least 25 front-line supervisors as well as positions in human resources, information technology, operations, instructors and quality control. The front-line positions will start, depending on experience, in the low $30,000 range, Usrey said.

Among the job seekers in line for management positions was Bob Boswell, Republican candidate for House District 50 in the state Legislature. Boswell has been unemployed since the restaurant he owned, Western Sizzlin', closed eight months ago after more than 20 years as an Evans institution.

“It's a godsend,” he said of call centers arrival. “It ought to lay to rest, too, some of the comments made about people who are on unemployment. The vast majority of people on unemployment weren't looking to get on unemployment. Obviously, there are hundreds of us out here that are doing our damndest to get off of it.”

Nebraska's first welfare call center opens in Lincoln

2010-10-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

Nebraska human services officials ushered in a new way of offering economic assistance services on Tuesday.

The celebration focused on the first customer service center, where Department of Health and Human Services staff members will do interviews, take customer changes and provide information and referral services over the telephone.

By 2012, the state will have four customer centers to process and approve requests for economic assistance including food stamps; Aid to Dependent Children; energy assistance; Kids Connection health insurance; Medicaid; assistance to elderly, blind or disabled people; child care; job training; education; meals; respite; transportation; and employment preparation.

"More than ever before, we're working to bring efficiencies to the people in our state," HHS CEO Kerry Winterer said in a news release. "That means doing our best to provide great customer service and make it easier for people who are eligible for our services."

Through ACCESSNebraska, people can apply for services online. The system also offers document scanning and economic assistance case file retrieval.

By 2012, these customer service centers will be open.

    * Lincoln: approximately 100 staff; to take calls in November

    * Fremont: 150 staff; the target date is February 2011

    * Lexington: 50 staff; fall 2011

    * Scottsbluff: 100 staff; January 2012.

Todd Reckling, director of the Division of Children and Family Services, said the centers are not designed to be open to the public. The focus is on customer service over the phone.

"However, I want to emphasize that people will continue to have the option of going to a local office and talking to someone in person even after all four centers are in place," he said.

The local offices are equipped with computer kiosks and telephones.

The Lincoln center will be the test site for a new universal case management system. Instead of having one assigned caseworker, clients will call an 800 number for assistance. They won't have to wait for workers who might be on vacation or home sick.

Texas co. opens Presque Isle Call Center : Call Center New Jobs Opportunity

2010-09-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

A Texas-based teleservice company has opened a branch in Presque Isle that could employ up to 100 people in the next year.

Balance BPO, an inbound customer service organization that handles technical support calls for Fortune 500 and other companies, has set up shop in the former MBNA and Connect North America space, according to the Bangor Daily News. It plans to share space with another company, payment processor TxVia, which also plans to hire about 100 people. Tim Lavin, co-founder, CEO and president of Balance BPO, is a native Presque Isler and wanted to open a branch in the city because of The County's strong work ethic, he told the paper. The Presque Isle office will be known as the Center of Excellence.

The company received funding and assistance from the Northern Maine Finance Corp. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development program, and is in the process of earning Pine Tree Zone certification, according to the paper.

Call Center Jobs : 21st Century Call Center Hiring 35 Call Center Agents

2010-09-21T04:05:00.000-07:00

The Phoenix Call Center for 21st Century Insurance and Financial Services is hiring 35 sales and service representatives with annual pay ranging from the high $20,000s to mid $30,000s.

The facility at 16001 N. 28th Ave. has about 500 employees, including the sales-service operation as well as the company’s claims unit. A member of Farmers Insurance Group, 21st Century will host a jobs fair Sept. 22 and 23 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the local offices. Applications also can be filled out online at www.farmers.com/careers.

The full-time call center openings include slots for people with bilingual skills. Customer service representatives respond to customer questions regarding auto insurance policies, while sales reps help generate new policies via inbound calls and outbound follow-up phone calls.

Effective Call Center Services: Lead Generation

2010-09-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

Lead generation is one aspect of call center services that is entrusted with the task of carrying a business forward. It is only through the help of qualified leads that a business firm can walk ahead and get a larger share of the market. But it's not always easy to get the leads. There are restrictions on the telemarketing calls that you can make. There is the perennial problem of the outbound call center agent failing to talk to the customers because they are not interested in purchasing. However, the primary problem for call center companies is that the generated leads do not always turn into sales. There is some leakage in the way things happen between the marketing team and the sales team. The list of leads handed over by the BPO agent doesn't churn out sales and then the blame comes on the call center. Let's check out how things can improve here.

The list prepared by the sales lead generation team has to contain qualified leads.

There is a difference between getting everyone onboard and getting only a selected group of people onboard. When the call center companies get everyone onboard, the problem of having too many to deal with vexes the call centers. Persuasive telemarketing may get these prospective consumers to consent to purchase but there is every chance that they make back out when the sales team calls to seal the deal. As a result of their denial, the conversion rate goes down to about 1%. That is a lose-lose situation. The call center services have already spent a lot of effort in generating those leads and without the right conversion percentage, their expenditures are not validated.

From the perspective of the business firm that has hired the call center, it's a loss, too. Call center companies charge the business firms on the basis of how many leads they get. When they receive leads that do not convert into sales, they are paying for nothing. If the conversion rate is very poor, they have doubts on the performance abilities of the call center services. The BPO units have to guard against that. They must provide only qualified leads to the clients. It does make sense to follow up on leads and check their availability before handing them over to the clients. Cold calling is something that the agents prefer, so following up removes that from the equation.

You can evaluate the lead generation performance of the call center companies by looking at the conversion rate. If you find that the conversion rate is as high as 40-50%, it automatically translates that the call center services have done a wonderful job. Also, the call center agents must be distinguished on the basis of their ability in marketing and sales. Some BPO agents may be good in clinching the sale while others may be good in influencing people and getting more leads. Utilize the resources that you have on hand to make the best of your sales lead generation campaign.

Etiquette Tips for Call Center Agents for Better Customer Services

2010-09-14T04:57:00.000-07:00

By any means, call center agents are at beck and call. Even with the advent of latest technology and resources in gamut, the burden and work pressures of agents have not reduced a bit. They have to maintain call center law and order and adhere to strict management guidelines. To help them out, we are suggesting some expert tips that can improve their calling etiquette, provide standard customer services and help them serve better.

1.Be Tone Wary: Be careful when you talk to your customers. Sound cheerful and extremely balanced but not overtly pleased with yourself or flattering. If some things is beyond your area of concern or you needs to escalate it, sound promising and positive about it. Remember that they have already been worried or annoyed because of the technical problem they have been facing or query they are unable to resolve and your insensitive or indifferent voice can really miff them.

2.Be Attentive: Listening to callers' problems or making calls to sell your products is your job. Nothing should come between it and callers should be given full attention. Do not interrupt them. Speak only when they are finished talking. Be mindful that they have got mind and they can detect when they do not have your full attention. Do not let their mind boggled up when you are trying to search for the requested information, ask relevant questions to show your concern.

3.Be Clear: Use of headphones or microphones is a big No-No as it can distort your voice. Your job is to speak and listen. Speak with neutral accent, clearly and slowly so that customers can understand everything.

4.Be Well Trained: Read the product manuals carefully and study its market. Along with that have at least decent knowledge of the competition. In case, if customer is confused about the products you can state the benefits of endorsed products by presenting a comparative analysis.

Agents are recommended to take training classes and customers seriously. Their sincere efforts towards customer services can boost the growth of call centers and in return, theirs.

U.S. Bank Cuts Ribbon On New Call Center

2010-09-09T05:37:00.000-07:00

With one snip of a ribbon more than 1,000 jobs will be coming to the metro.
On Wednesday, officials cut the ribbon on a new U.S. Bank 24-hour call center at 12800 Foster St. in Overland Park.

"We will be taking calls from customers for fraud detection and go into investigative mode," said U.S. Bank Chief Executive Officer Richard Davis.

Davis said the Overland Park site was chosen after a careful look across the country for a location.

"Three hundred were on the list," he said. "Then five. Then two. And we picked you."
"They found smart people that would work hard and humble people who didn't care about who got the credit," said Sen. Sam Brownback. "This is a key thing to take place."
The plan is to have 500 of the new jobs filled this year and close to 1,300 workers in place by 2013. Most of the jobs will be phone-based that will require on-site training.

What a Call Center Manager Do in Call Center?

2010-08-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

The role of a call center manager can hardly be understated. The responsibility of the call center services, along with the task of managing the workforce lies with the manager. The job of a manager in the BPO service units is not an enviable one, though it pays much better than almost any other industry. There are several factors that a manager has to keep a close tab on. It begins with the management of the resources at the disposal of call centers. Clients agree to hire the telemarketing services against a definite fee. They will not pay any extra amount should the costs go higher up the budget line. The manager is in charge to keep a check on the expenditure of resources.

Since the manager takes care of the call center resources, it follows logically that he/she does the job of planning the BPO processes. It is up to the manager to make sure that the telemarketing and lead generation agents are not sitting idle or are not overworked. The manager is responsible for the delegation of the employees in terms of shift timings. For example, the agents at the inbound call center team have to handle different call volumes at different times. If the manager doesn’t allocate the number of agents with judiciousness, the number of agents may be a problem. Too many answering service agents will mean that they will have less work to do and too less would mean they will be stretched. That is why our BPO service managers always plan in advance and then take the projects to the floor.

Call Center Will Stop Taking Flood Debris Requests

2010-08-25T02:37:00.001-07:00

The Department of Public Works’ Call Center will stop taking calls for flood debris collection on Friday.

So far, 10,570 calls have been received since the July 22 flood to collect debris. Crews will take piles of debris up to 2 cubic yards with the normally scheduled garbage pick up. Sanitation will resume the $50 charge for piles exceeding 2 cubic yards.

The City’s Self Help Centers, 3879 West Lincoln Avenue and 6660 North Industrial Road will be open to accept flood debris from residents. The centers are open every day but Wednesday from 9:00 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Call Are Different in Call Centers

2010-08-20T02:47:00.000-07:00

Call center processes can vary from one desk to another, even if they look very similar on a superficial level. Nowhere is the difference more pronounced than in the difference between outbound call center calls and inbound call center calls. The agents who are at the answering services desk supposedly lead better lives than the one who make lead generation calls. This also means that the later are more susceptible to greater stress, fatigue and burnout. Let’s take a closer look at how the different desks of a BPO firm differ thematically and conceptually.

Call center agents make outbound calls to prospective customers. There is no surety that the receiver will welcome such calls. In fact, it’s easier to believe the contrary. No one wants to receive telemarketing calls that have nothing to do with their needs and requirements. Since the lead generation agents don’t always get the right data or make the right interpretation of the data, they end up calling people who are probably in the wrong income group altogether. Now that is something that really drives a customer up the wall. Who would want to purchase some trip on a luxury liner when the person is actually looking for a debt consolidation agent? That’s something that the BPO agents have to contend with.

The outbound call center agents are often subjected to verbal assaults because of the nosy telemarketing calls that they make. I say they are nosy from the perspective of the receiver. Probably they were immersed in an important meeting when they receive a lead generation call. It is unwanted and there are every chances of the receiver giving the BPO agent a piece of his mind. The receiver is also likely to hang up without allowing the agent any shot at sales lead generation. The agents are working under targets that are steep, to say the least. Sales lead generation calls that don’t yield results often put immense pressure on the agents to get it right the next time round and so on. This takes a toll on their performance.

The situation is different in the inbound call center floor. Make no mistake – the agents here have to deal with irate callers too. However, the callers on the answering service call because they need help or information. Their attitude is more tolerant because their aim is to get the work done. That reflects in the way they deal with the call center agents. They are more courteous, more patient and certainly more willing to listen to what the BPO agent has to say. This makes life easier for the phone answering desk. There is less of friction and if the situation tends to get out of hand, the agent can pass the call to a superior or another agent. This takes the heat off and allows the aggressive caller to calm down. Though not particularly easy, it’s easier to be on this floor than making telemarketing calls at the outbound section. That explains why the more experienced BPO service agents are on the inbound team.

We offer ample opportunities to our inbound call center agents as well as outbound call center agents. We believe in trusting our call center agents and let them perform.

The Real Benefits - Call Centers Outsourcing Services

2010-08-20T02:23:00.000-07:00

Call centers provide companies a method of interacting with current and prospective customers to handle their telesales, telemarketing and customer service requirements.

With the advent of technology, call center service providers have more capabilities than ever before. Businesses are exploring ways to reduce expenses and overhead, maximize their profits, expand their capabilities by using it that specialize in specific areas, and focus on their core businesses. Therefore, the outsourcing has proven to be beneficial especially without having to sacrifice the quality of services provided.

The real benefits of call center outsourcing include the cost savings that can be derived from the reduction in overhead and labor costs required to host it in-house. It allows a business to reduce the labor and infrastructure costs of it and the associated expenses by contracting the work to a third party that specializes in activities. Labor cost reduction is by far the most significant benefit of using the outsourcing.

Another benefit for a business utilizing outsourcing is that it allows the business to take advantage of the new technologies that an outsourced it may provide. The growth of technologies that utilize the internet by many outsourced gives businesses a competitive edge over their competitors. The outsourced often use the latest customer relationship management tools to achieve the best in customer service. The new technologies provide better interaction between businesses and their customers and allow businesses to reach new customers and achieve greater market penetration.

Using call center outsourcing is a great benefit for a business that does not have the capability to provide an in-house. A small business can gain greater market share, reach a wider audience, and provide better services when employing an outsourced it. The use of the internet and other technologies helps to make this possible by the outsourced. For a new business using it outsourcing, it gives them an immediate entrée into the market and allows them to have a ready-made support staff.

Using call center outsourcing is a benefit for most business because it allows them to focus on their core business and reduces or eliminates the need to have it in-house. These businesses can devote their staff to performing the duties of the business and eliminate the need to deal with task such as commodity telesales, product troubleshooting, and customer service issues.

Call center outsourcing gives smart businesses the opportunity to utilize the that specialize in the areas that they need most. Whether it is telesales, telemarketing or customer service. Outsourced call centers can tailor their services to fit the needs of the business.

Telesales Services has over 30 years of industry experience in call center outsourcing. We find you the perfect match for your telesales and telemarketing requirements. Using outsourced call center services gives you access to skilled telephone professionals and superior technology, allowing you to concentrate on your core competencies.

How to Monitor Call Center Agents & Call Centers

2010-08-18T01:09:00.000-07:00

Monitoring You!!

If you run a call center or contact center, is it important to monitor your agents? If you agree that it is, how do you implement quality monitoring to drive results? To do so, you must balance the need to measure outcomes with the necessity of measuring the behaviors and activities that support, drive or even undermine those outcomes.

To take a closer look, let’s examine a quality white paper, The BPA Quality Builder – Monitoring.

Basic agent monitoring can be found in the Hawthorne Effect, which is an experimental effect in the direction expected but not for the reason expected. In other words, agents who were being monitored perform better just because they were being monitored, not because there was any other program put in place. This effective can be productive in the call center, but not if the only thing a manager ever does is listen. If the agent knows the manager will do nothing with the information gathered, there is no incentive to improve. Instead, you must implement a program that adheres to four key points:

1. It should be clear and to the point
2. It should integrate supervisors of the agents
3. It should have a clear definition of what agents should do
4. It should be consistent, fair, objective and accurate in feedback.

While it is important to measure the outcome of your activities, it is also important to measure and reinforce the activities that drive your organization.

First, you must examine critical activities – the activities can make or break your call center. Identify these critical activities so they can be of high focus with key measurements.

Second, identify the base job and scope of the work for which the agent has been hired.

Third, it is important to reinforce the agent’s success or failure to resolve the issue.

Fourth, examine soft skills and call handling. Agents need to know how to handle the call, be confident, polite and professional to the customers, while also being able to manage hold, transfer and dead air effectively and efficiently.

Fifth, it is important to drive customer relationships as customers want to feel like the agent and the company cares.

Finally, internal policy and procedure are essential elements as a failure to do so can lead to a significant failure in the overall customer interaction and the ability of the company to service the customer according to expectations. As important as these things are to the monitoring process, contact center management will be concerned with the return on investment for the monitoring solution. ROI can be realized through lower call volumes, lower call times, first call resolution, sales/retention effectiveness and customer satisfaction. To truly measure the effectiveness of the monitoring program is to examine its results. Are you able to use the monitoring program to improve the performance in the call or contact center? Is this improvement measurable and did it produce a rapid ROI? In answering these questions to the affirmative, you can be confident in the monitoring system.

5 Hives to Outsoure Call Center Services to India

2010-08-18T00:57:00.000-07:00

In present, call center is a great option to improve customer relations and expand customer bases in a cost effective way. India is a preferred destination for outsourcing for many countries, because a number of benefits that India offers.

Here are some reasons described why choose India for outsourcing:

Highly Skilled calling agents:

India has a large number of multilingual and dedicated professionals who give 100% efforts. Before attend to calls, agents are given extensive training on their voice, accent and communication. All agents are capable to handle any kind of customer in an efficient manner.

Wide range of services providers:

Call Center India have expertise in providing inbound, outbound, voice, chat, email support. India is a one stop solution by providing various call center services to various offshore outsourcing companies like financial firms, telecoms firms, medical and insurance firms, banking firms etc. By shaking hand with and Indian call center company, you can get large list of services and more.

Save expenses:

Choosing India for outsourcing call center projects, you can save more than half of its current operating expenses. By Outsourcing you can use your resources to increase your business productivity.

24 hours services a day:

The geographical position of India gives it the right time zone advantage. Call center companies based in India continues serve their services at 24 hours a day. Choose India for outsourcing and get 24/7 customer support.

Latest technology and vast infrastructure:

Outsourcing companies based at India are composed with the latest communication equipments and vast infrastructure. Outsourcing to India you can get numerous advantages of technological like 100% recording, best of breed communication infrastructure.

Why Call Center Customer Service Required to Attain Competitive Surrounding

2010-08-18T00:45:00.000-07:00

Customer service happens to include an in-depth meaning than just offering simple services. Call center customer service do not necessarily conclude with the given act of carrying forward any task that customers asked for. The potential and true customer service functions as an efficient market strategy, which can distinguish business into an exceptionally competitive environment.

An essential call center customer service can create a brand. By means of implementation, good customer support service can prove to be the right pathway to develop quality within any organization. This will be the right way that ultimately results into alluring the new consumers together with offering the superior customer retention.

In any successful business venture, call center customer service is usually constituted of a lot more actions. Usually, these services allow having a closer focus on customers and what customers actually needs through any given service.

Customer services offer a business the right prospect of looking at the services from the customer viewpoint. In turn it will also help administration sector to initiate the essential changes, if necessitated. It is needless to indicate that every company seeks for a brand name in the market.

Branding any organization is one intricate procedure where the name, services, products and the image of the company are put forward differently in minds of both existing and probable customers. It is not at all surprising that most customers select one business-based re-organization.

Time has changed and so is the preference of the customers. In the past, customers use to locate reliability and quality in terms of both services and products. Nonetheless, high-quality customer care services can enhance the company branding.

It is quite astonishing as to how businesses tend to lose customers just because of one employees operating in the call center was found having one bad day. Additionally, it is astonishing to find out how often the businesses confront breakdown in order to collect data from the valuable consumers. This can be used for up gradation to the current service levels.

Keep in mind that a customer do not forget his experience if treated badly or made to understand their needs are found to be insignificant. In fact, the poor customer experience will also be shared with family and friends. However, in a customer’s mind, the business linked with poor customer service gets rejected no matter how high grade the service or product delivers.

In the competitive surrounding, it will be important to have one well-established customer care unit that can play a key role to distinguish the company. For having the effective results, there should be customer care training so as to teach the staff members how to listen carefully to all the customer queries and seek out means to extract real customer needs. It is through right training that call center agents will be able to convert the customer needs into management information for the purpose of making decisions.

A customer-care center works as one on-going cycle that starts and ends with customers. In best times, a great deal of priority is forwarded to customer care that happens to be attractive feature for a business to lead to its continued existence.

Call Center Workers Becoming Cheaper in U.S.

2010-08-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

Due to high levels of unemployment, call center workers are becoming cheaper to hire in the U.S. According to the head of the country's largest business process outsourcing company, the wages in the country have come down to match the call center costs in India, reports James Lamont and Joe Leahy of FT.com.

High unemployment levels have driven down wages for some low-skilled outsourcing services in some parts of the U.S., particularly among the Hispanic population. But at the same time, wages in India's outsourcing sector have risen by 10 percent this year. Adding to it, senior outsourcing managers based in the country command salaries above global averages.

According to Pramod Bhasin, the Chief Executive of Genpact, the company is expected to treble its workforce in the US over the next two years, from about 1,500 employees. As people in the U.S. are ready to work at lower salaries, the company can hire some seasoned executives with experience in the U.S. for less money, said Bhasin.

According to Suresh Vaswani, joint Chief Executive of Wipro Technologies, half of the company's 110,000-strong workforce will be non-Indians in two years, from the current 39 percent.

The move to expand operations in the U.S. also comes as protectionist rhetoric against outsourcers rises in Washington. Since U.S. business had helped India's outsourcing industry back on its track, Indian outsourcers should also be sympathetic to the deep economic woes in the U.S.

Working in a Call Center: Benefits with Limitations

2010-08-16T03:04:00.000-07:00

Considering working in a call center? As with any job, there are things to be said in its favor, and things to be said against it.

But really one can’t say that all call center jobs have this advantage, and all call center jobs have that disadvantage, because the jobs that fall under this category vary enormously. There can be no simple breakdown of pros and cons to apply to all call center jobs.

So let’s approach the matter instead by looking at some of the ways these jobs can differ, and how that affects their benefits and limitations:

1. Will you be making outgoing calls, or receiving calls?
This is a key factor. Almost all call center jobs where you make outgoing calls are unpleasant, stressful jobs. Nearly every call you make will be to someone who absolutely does not want to talk to you.

Outgoing calls are sales calls, solicitations for contributions, bill collecting calls, etc. The kind of calls people resent.

Marginally less bad on average are polling calls. But even here, the majority of “polls” are really thinly disguised marketing calls, and many people have come to resent them as much as any other marketing calls.
So be prepared to be cursed at, hung up on, lied to, lectured on how what you’re doing is against the law (whether it is or not), threatened, and otherwise abused.

On the other hand, if your call center is receiving incoming calls, that’s more of a mixed bag. Some - like certain kinds of complaint lines - may be almost as unpleasant as telemarketing call centers. (“Almost,” because there’s still something extra distasteful about having to initiate an unpleasant call.) You’ll be dealing primarily with people who are unhappy with some situation, and insisting you fix something that often you cannot.

But at least with incoming calls, you know the people want to talk to you. Furthermore, they may just be grateful they got a human being, given that it’s so common nowadays for companies to automate as much as possible of their calls. (Then again, if in order to get to you at all, they had to endure interminable stalls by the computer trying to force them to use the automated system and hiding the live operators from them, they probably won’t be feeling so “grateful.”) And it’s not always about complaints or anything negative. You might be answering questions, providing directions, taking sales orders, etc. On those calls, it’s more the exception than the rule that people will berate you.

Again, would you rather cold call people and try to snow them into buying Wally’s Widgets, or receive calls from people already wanting to buy Wally’s Widgets and just needing to give you their address and credit card number?

2. Are you working in a call center in your own country, in your own culture, using your first language?
For most call centers, the bulk of the calls you’ll be making or receiving are to or from the United States. But of course not all call centers are in the United States; this is one of the more commonly outsourced jobs to countries with much cheaper labor costs.

There are a lot of important differences in the quality of your job, though, that depend on its location.
One is hours. In the United States you’ll nearly always have very conventional hours, especially for outgoing calls. People are needed on the phones during standard business hours, and when people are awake, not the middle of the night.

But what if you’re in India, or the Philippines? You’ll likely be working when the United States is awake and active, not when your country is. So get ready for the graveyard shift.

Furthermore, obviously communication is key in this line of work, and a native English speaking American has a huge leg up when dealing with Americans on the phone. From understanding slang and colloquialisms, to having a shared body of “common knowledge” one picks up from one’s culture, to being familiar with a wider array of proper names, to understanding accents and having one’s accent understood, it’s just a much tougher job for most non-Americans.

There’s also the hostility factor. As unpleasant as people can be when dealing with someone at a call center, an even higher percentage of them will be unpleasant if they are Americans dealing with a call center outside their country. To some extent just from generic anti-foreigner sentiment, but also because they may resent jobs leaving the country, or they might resent this added level of inconvenience of speaking to someone who is not fluent in English (even if the person is fluent in English, but they’re falsely assuming they aren’t due to the accent).

3. Will you be in a skilled position where you will exercise autonomy and individuality in your calls, or will you be reading from a script?
A fair number of call center jobs are very, very close to automated even though technically they’re human calls. But your job, in effect, is to be a machine, to say the same things in the same ways over and over and over again, because some marketing study has determined that saying these things in these ways “works” best. Often you will literally be reading from a script.

In some ways perhaps that’s less stressful, because you can completely zone out and emotionally detach from what you’re doing. But surely hours of that everyday does not make for a fulfilling job.

There are other call center jobs, though, that require something a lot more than mimicking a robo caller. Perhaps you are in the tech department of a company, taking calls from the public needing help figuring out what’s gone wrong with their software, or their oven, or their satellite TV. Or perhaps you are working some kind of crisis hotline, suicide prevention line, 911 line, etc. In jobs like that, there may be preliminary stages that are scripted or semi-scripted, but soon you’ll be a human being responding to a human being, not a machine. You likely will have received special training, and will need to call upon important skills to help people.

In all the intangible ways that workers can be disrespected - the way they’re addressed by supervisors, the way they’re rapidly churned through because it’s understood there is a huge pool of people willing and able to do their job, the way demeaning restrictions are put on them at work, etc. - call center jobs can be among the worst. But the closer you get to the robot end of the scale, the worse they are in this respect. If you have some degree of specialized medical knowledge, and you’re entrusted with taking calls from the public on a poison control line, you’re not going to be treated so much like an utterly disposable machine reading a script.

4. How ethically dubious will your job be?
Frankly call center jobs can require you to do really distasteful, unethical things. Though again this factor varies enormously from job to job. Treating people disrespectfully may be what you do your entire work day, or it might constitute less or no part of your job.

What unethical things? Well, let’s start with the scripted sales calls telemarketers make.
These are designed to be as manipulative as possible, to exploit any available human weakness. They make use of verbal tricks such as only asking questions that cannot be answered in a way that rejects what you’re selling. They withhold any and all relevant information that might make the sale less likely, unless absolutely required by law. This is the lowest form of hustling, the kind of thing that makes used car salesmen seem like genuine human beings.

If you’re working in a foreign call center, you might be expected to lie about something as simple as your name. Tell the caller you’re named “Jenny” so they’ll be more likely to think you’re American.
Some call center jobs make money based on how long you can keep people on the line. If you’re a sex line operator or a make-believe psychic, you’ll be using every trick you can to stall callers, to keep them hanging on for more and more expensive calls.

So the pros and cons of call center jobs are not uniform. There are a few more general things that can be said, though - things that if they don’t apply to literally every such job, at least apply to nearly all of them. These include:

* It’s sedentary work. That may be an advantage if you have certain disabilities or just prefer to be able to sit all day, but it’ll have all the usual health consequences of this kind of sedentary work.
* It’s usually not very high paying, yet somewhat higher paying than other jobs of roughly the same skill level, perhaps to offset how unpleasant these jobs mostly are.
* The work environment is typically a large number of people crammed fairly close together, each in a little cubicle or work station. So it’ll have that kind of noise and hubbub.
* You’ll be talking to many, many people over the course of the day. Depending on the job, in most cases this’ll be poor quality human interaction, but talking on the phone all day can be good or bad depending on if you’re an extrovert who feeds off even this level of human contact, or an introvert who’d rather be left alone. If you’re a “people person,” you may have a certain amount of leeway to alter the quality of the interaction. If you’re genuinely interested in people, like to ask them questions, like to kid around with them, etc., you may actually find some of your calls quite enjoyable (as will the people on the other end of the line who got you instead of a sourpuss that hates their job).
* You won’t be judged visually. Typically the people you’re interacting with won’t know or care if you’re attractive or unattractive, old or young, fat or thin, in a wheelchair, covered with tattoos, clean shaven, or what have you. Your workplace is unlikely to have any but the most lax rules on how you must dress for work.

Overall, call center jobs are bad jobs that people only take because they’re desperate and they aren’t able to land anything better. They tend to have high turnover and low job satisfaction.

Certainly these are not absolutes, however. Your experience will vary a great deal depending on the precise call center job, as well as the skills, values, attitudes, and expectations you bring to the job.

Medical Call Center? More than Just Answering Questions

2010-08-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

Medical Call Center

There are times that unlikely things happen to a person’s life that can pose as a minor threat to his health or none at all like cough, minor cuts and burns, difficulty of falling asleep, fever, migraine, abdominal pain, and bump in the head caused by fall, twisted ankle and other injuries and/or discomforts. All of these require attention but does not call for an immediate one. So, you don’t necessarily have to go to the emergency room just to have a nurse or doctor tend a minor cut or a fever, you can do that yourself. However, there are other ailments that require immediate medical attention and visit to the emergency such as asthma attack, BP spikes, and chest pain. But what if these people live in remote areas where access to hospital and healthcare is not available? This is the part where the Medical Call Center comes into play.

A medical call center is a place where your queries regarding disease processes, appropriate treatment for such disease, what first aid intervention to apply, and other medical stuff that you want to ask about that are not urgent are answered. A medical call center, also known as healthcare center, is very ideal in urgent cases where emergency rooms are hard to reach especially in remote areas. Why spend much money on doctor’s fees when help is just a phone call away? Why bother the long mile drive to seek consult when proficient nurses and physicians are easily reached through simple punches on your phone’s numbers?

Medical call centers are usually affiliated with your insurance company and functions in many ways. One of which is the telephone triage. The telephone triage is a means of prioritizing ailments starting with health issues that are life-threatening down to minor headache and answering health-related questions. Another service that medical call centers offer is the provision of information of more than a thousand over the counter drugs or non-prescription drugs and drug studies.

A typical medical call center is manned by skilled and competent Registered Nurses who are knowledgeable in their specialized field – OB nurses, pediatric nurses, medical-surgical nurses and geriatric nurses. Also called triage nurses, medical call center nurses are trained to cater to all members of the society and give advice according to one’s level of understanding. For example, you are put in a situation experiencing an abdominal pain, yet you don’t know what kind of pain it is and how to relive that pain. You could ask a triage nurse at the call center and present your case. Based on your presenting signs and symptoms, the nurse can narrow down the problem and identify whether it is a stabbing, gnawing or knife-like pain and offer you appropriate independent and dependent nursing interventions.

Hilton Reservations Call Center Closes, 325 Call Center Jobs Affected

2010-08-09T21:56:00.001-07:00

Hilton Reservations call center will close, not because the jobs will be going to Philippine Call Centers.

As per the issued news release from David Trumble, the spokesman for Hilton’s western operations, the expiration of the leased contract will end in October and that the company has decided to “to consolidate its western operations and to close the Hemet reservations center.”

But according to the news article, there are some few that were not released and were given offers but are not allowed to disclose to the media.

CSi Complete Announces Call Center Services Department

2010-08-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

CSi Complete, a provider of Customer Satisfaction Indexing (CSI), recently announced the opening of a new Call Center Services Department. The new team is dedicated to serving the automotive and insurance industries that are CSi Complete's focus.

"We have been providing these services for a number of years to our clients, but there are advantages to creating a separate business unit," said John Webb, senior vice president of CSi Complete. "For example, we now have management, training and quality control programs tailored to this group. They have their own unique performance standards and goals, reporting and financials."

Examples of what the Call Center Services Department offers include:

Inbound Help Desk

In this capacity, CSi Complete acts as a representative of your company to answer questions, field complaints and as an extension of your customer service strategy. In addition to the inbound call center aspect of the service, CSi Complete has the ability to build reporting tools so that customer issues can be quickly addressed in the field.

FNOL — First Notice of Loss

CSi Complete can work with insurance companies or TPAs (Third Party Administrators) to take first notice of loss calls from insureds and claimants. As the need to remain flexible and lean becomes more important, the ability to source work to a trusted partner with industry knowledge and experience can be a great resource, the company says.

Automotive Repair Scheduling

CSi Complete can schedule vehicles in for repairs or service. Many facilities only close 50-70 percent of all available work, CSi says. By calling the customer and scheduling their appointment, CSi says it can help shops increase this rate.

Kenya Airways opens modern call center

2010-07-28T05:49:00.001-07:00

Kenya Airways has set up a new ultra modern contact center at Embakasi to serve its growing customer base and improve efficiency in customer service.

The ultra modern facility is a 24 -hour seven -day -a- week one stop resource center for all KQ customers, including passengers, and cargo services.

Speaking at the official opening ceremony, Kenya Airways Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Titus Naikuni said that the airline had set up the center in line with its strategy to ensure seamless flow of information to customers through a one-stop point.

"Our customers come first. They deserve accurate and real time information delivered through the use of the best technology," he noted adding that the contact centre would complement the Website and E-Ticketing services. "Passengers will also be able to book flights through our new center and pay for their tickets through MPesa".

He said the latest development would improve services and give efficient and convenient traveling experiences to customers.

Dr. Naikuni pointed out that the advancement of information communication technology had necessitated the centralization of information services.

The new contact center he added will be equipped with the latest call center technology for best customer experience.

Call Center Analytics : Past, Present and Future

2010-07-27T00:12:00.000-07:00

Analyzing Data

Running an efficient call center requires having good data on how the work is being processed. Call center analytics give managers the tools to oversee and optimize staffing and workflow. Analytics can be used in three basic ways, and for best results planning should encompass all three.

The Past

Call center analytics provide reports on how the team has performed in previous time periods. This might be last quarter, last month, or even last shift. This information can be used to gauge performance of the department as a whole, or broken out to analyze each team. Which teams are meeting their goals? Which shifts are being overloaded and which don't have enough work to do?

Past reports can be used to recognize high achievers, creating incentives for all teams to work harder. They can also be used to spot trouble areas so managers can brainstorm solutions. The information can be used to justify staff increases by demonstrating how average call volume is rising. These kinds of metrics have been available for many years, but increases in information technology offer other perspectives to today's call center managers.

The Present

Real time analytics tell both managers and agents how call volume is being handled right now. It allows the center to adjust to changing volumes quickly so customers aren't frustrated by long hold times during heavy traffic, and employees aren't twiddling their thumbs during slow periods.

A center might set up teams assigned to different call volumes. Team A might be on the phones all the time. Team B has other duties but automatically moves to cover the phones once the electronic wallboard shows call volume at moderate levels, returning to their other tasks when volume drops. Team C could be an emergency group who works the phone only during periods of very high traffic. In addition, managers could monitor the call center metrics and react to changing call volumes in real time.

The Future

The real power of call center analytics come in predicting call volume before it happens. Managers get a feel for call patterns and can plan future staffing accordingly. As a company becomes more successful and call volumes rise, the center can be expanded in anticipation of future growth rather than trying to hire after employees have become overworked.

Flexible staffing solutions might be implemented to cover expected fluctuations in call volume. When analytics show that the center is always busiest on Mondays, or in the afternoon, or in the first week of the month they can bring on extra staff to cover those expected increases. Managers could bring on additional help right before new product launches or in response to positive or negative publicity. Proactive decisions are more powerful than reactive ones.

Health Tips for Call Center Agents

2010-07-22T03:46:00.000-07:00

Be Healthy !

Compared to most jobs nowadays, the job of a call center agent pays more money. Their body is being prone to many illnesses because of their lifestyle before they can receive their salary. Most call center agents sleep during daytime instead of having their sleep during the night.

The human body has been designed to sleep during the night and work during day time. And it is very difficult to go against the rule of nature. However, with proper adjustment of the body and also with some practice, this can be adapted by the body. But unfortunately, it would still be stressful for call center agents. The reason is that the whole night, they give uninterrupted services. It is still essential to take care of their health because it gives more success and income for the business. During work, they are being exposed to stress, continuous fatigue, and weakness.

You can think of health tips to stay healthy to shield our body from harmful illnesses and to remain fit. To be able to follow a healthy lifestyle, there is a need to take care of their diet. This is necessary for the call center agents to function productively in their work. 8 hours of sleep per day is still what the doctors suggest for call center agents. This would help you to recharge yourself and to unwind for the next working night.

There is a need to eat a balanced and healthy diet. If you consume foods which are greasy, oily, and overcooked it would make you sleepy. Foods which are nutritious are still needed by our body. It will make you to be active and awake. Overeating and also skipping meals would be dangerous to your health. If you do that your brain will become inactive and work slower. If you will not eat properly, you will have poor listening and speaking capabilities. Water is also essential in keeping our body healthy.

Since you are using your voice too much at work, it can strain your larynx and our throat. Also, you can consume liquids which are alcohol free. Call center agents has sedentary lifestyle and must always be remembered. To be fit and healthy it is necessary to have exercise. Lastly, sleep is not the only way to help your body relaxed. It is important to have a relaxation time. After a week of hard work, you can have a fun and enjoy in a trip or vacation.

Required Telemarketing Skills in Agents While Hiring BPO firm

2010-07-22T02:49:00.000-07:00

Checking Skills

Hiring a BPO firm to outsource telemarketing work involves planning. You need research to find out how your preferred call center destination conducts telemarketing. Does it follow the set standards of the answering service industry? Do they innovate? All these answers are needed to come at an informed decision.
You may say that if there is no need for you to look at these aspects because you are willing to trust the firm that you hire. That is very commendable, but you need to choose the right telemarketing service provider first. Here are some tricks that reputed call center services follow to interact with potential customers and sell the product or service. Knowing these will help you make an informed decision.

Being positive is the foremost quality of a call center agent. The agents working on your answering service wing need to radiate some sort of positive energy in their dealings with customers. They have to be confident about the product or service that they are trying to sell. Customers recognize this positive streak when they are talking to the call center agent.

They feel willing to listen and be persuaded only if the telemarketer talking to them knows the product or the service inside out. Your agent must answer to the point and never provide half-baked information. Concise information is always easy on the mind and so on the attention span. Since the potential customer is probably not writing down any information, it must be provided to him in a way that registers in his mind.

Research is the key for a BPO agent. Does the call center you have hired provide the agents with enough time and material to conduct research? You have to check that out. Without research, your answering service agents won't achieve much. Customers sometimes ask really tricky questions. They may talk about rival products and services and expect a comparative study to determine how your stuff is superior. If your business outsourcing agent cannot provide that, potential customers would be really disappointed.

More importantly, they will miss out on a nice opportunity to pitch in their sales. Knowing market trends and the buying patterns of the customers is also high on the list of pre-requisites. Expect potential customers to be confused, expect them not to know the technical details and probably they wouldn't even know exactly what they want. It's the agents who have to lead them towards your product shelves.

Smart answering service skills prove handy more often than not. Information overload, too much talking and various other technical glitches can push you out of contention sooner than you expected. Ensure your preferred BPO destination pays due attention to these seemingly smaller aspects. They make a huge difference in the long run. Allowing the customer to think is important, too.

No one would like to be bulldozed to make a decision or a judgment. They like their time to do so. Your call center agent has to respect that and give them time to roll your proposition in the mind and make a call. Instead of asking probing questions to help the sale, the agents should try to help the potential customer be informed on what he wants to know. It's always a good idea to listen actively. Sympathizing with the caller works but that should be strictly on a professional level. At the end of the day, your business needs effective agents, not just good human beings!

Call Center Jobs : Convergys is Hiring 3,600 more Workers in Philippines

2010-07-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

The rapid growth overseas comes as the company seeks to change the terms of its $52 million incentive agreement with the city of Cincinnati that requires it to keep at least 1,400 workers here.

The expansion in the Philippines will raise the company’s workforce in the Southeast Asian nation to 25,000 by the end of the year, reports said.

Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100719/BIZ01/307190112/Convergys-hiring-3-600-more-workers-in-Philippines

Job Description and Key Skills to possess for Call Center Agent

2010-07-15T03:52:00.000-07:00

Call center job description is highly volatile and depends upon company to company. The basic function of call center job is public dealing and selling of products. The job description requires excellent communication skills. The call centers are now dealing with multinational clients; hence the job demands proper language and accent control.

Depending upon the profile of company, the job description of call center can demand selling of products, troubleshooting and maintenance support or customer help desk. Selling of products requires you to have good marketing skills and a sharp memory. You should be spontaneous to address the customer queries. You should have the product names and specifications at finger tips; no one wants to keep holding the line while you search for the item. You should also have the ability of multitasking. On one time you may have to take the order and simultaneously type the order in the computer.

If you are handling the customer support section, you should have good reasoning skills. You should be technically versed with the problems faced by the customers and provide them with a satisfactory solution. This calls for good event handling techniques and excellent communication skills. You have to make the customer understand what you are speaking. Since here the customer base is varied you have to handle different type of customers with different backgrounds.

Excellent spoken communication skills, good typing speed, sharp memory, analytical reasoning, spontaneous are a few skills that are required for call center job. The salary has a wide range depending on experience, skills and location. Education qualification is not a major concern for call center jobs.

Coaching Call Center Agents: How to Keep It Positive

2010-07-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

Most customer service representatives in a call center environment dread call coaching. By turning call coaching into a positive experience for agents, supervisors and managers can relieve the anxiety that customer service representatives may feel about call coaching. Doing so may also increase the agent's willingness to approach a supervisor when questions about call handling arise, simplifying future call center coaching.

Tips to Make Call Center Coaching a Positive Experience

There are several things that supervisors can do to help their customer service representatives view call center coaching as a positive experience. Supervisors can help agents perceive the call coaching experience as positive by letting agents know what they're doing right, not just what they're doing wrong. Encouraging customer service representatives to deliver feedback to team leaders in the organization can help agents view call center coaching and other forms of feedback as a positive tool to improve job performance.

Don't Just Focus on the Negative in Call Center Coaching

Although there are always things that a customer service representative can do to improve his or her performance, those things shouldn't be the sole focus of a coaching session. If a customer service agent established great rapport with the customer during the call, he should be complimented and encouraged to continue doing so. If he did a great job of verifying customer information, paraphrasing the customers problem, or did anything that left the customer with the impression that the agent 'went the extra mile' in resolving his issue, these things can all be used as positives to let the agent know that the call coach appreciates the things that he is doing well.

When delivering a call coaching session to an agent, it's best to begin the session on a positive note, emphasizing the things that the agent is doing correctly, then move onto the things that the agent needs to improve upon. Call coaches should always try to include at least one positive item that the agent is handling correctly in each call center coaching session, and end each session with a word of encouragement.

Positive Feedback as Part of the Business Culture

Make positive feedback a part of the business culture. Encourage customer service representatives to provide feedback to team leaders on their peers or other members of the organization, be it kudos for something they see another agent doing well, or a suggestion to help another agent improve his performance. Stress to customer service representatives that feedback, when it involves suggestions for improvement, shouldn't be perceived as tattling.

Agents that provide team leaders with feedback that does seem to be tattling, snarky or vindictive should be educated on how to provide appropriate feedback. A one-on-one session with a call center coach on how to provide appropriate feedback should be enough for most agents to understand what feedback is meant to accomplish, and the spirit in which the organization provides it to agents.

Team meetings should be a time to share kudos that customer service representatives have received directly from customers or from other agents. This provides coaches with the opportunity to show customer service representatives how the feedback system actually works, and gives those agents that have received positive feedback for a job well done the opportunity to share with their peers tips and techniques that they are using to deliver outstanding customer service.

As agents begin to see feedback and call center coaching as the valuable tool that it is, they may show more willingness to seek the help of a coach or other senior member of the team when they have questions about call handling. When customer service representatives begin exhibiting these proactive behaviors, they should be heartily encouraged. The practice of approaching more senior team members or coaches with legitimate questions can help agents to improve their performance more quickly and vastly improve the quality of service being delivered to customers, before coaching on a problem area becomes necessary.

The Benefits of Positive Call Center Coaching

When call center coaching is delivered in a positive way, everyone benefits. Customers receive better service when customer service representatives continually strive to improve their skills, agents that see call center coaching in a positive way feel better about their work performance, even when suggestions are made for improvements, and coaches experience better relations with their agents when their suggestions are not perceived as a hostile critique of the agent's job performance.

What You 'Should Do' and 'Shouldn't Do' in Call Center

2010-07-12T02:33:00.000-07:00

Call center is a terrific job. Many young professionals work in call center because of higher chances of boosting their career to the maximum level. Customers are expanding their channel in contact in which call centers are on top of the list. It is a challenge to every contact center to integrate strategic planning in order to maintain its presence towards the global trend in this industry.

Working in call center is not only aiming to receive higher pay. There are dos and don’ts in order to set limitation to the workers. If you are one of the millions of people connected in customer service, you should know the guidelines to avoid committing violation. Call center companies always make sure to deliver efficient services to their clients worldwide as possible. Because call center is a promising industry, keeping the best employees and hiring more service representatives should always set part of expanding the business. Hiring the right people is very important. The call centers should provide ongoing training to the agents and employees; practice the transparency like communicating openly with the agents and managers, discovering the quality performance of the best people, investing to the state-of-the-art technology to increase customer satisfaction.

Any contact center should have a strong organization in achieving the long-term goal of the company. Making the call center dynamic and flexible can promote better output all the time. The call center management should always strengthen the relationship with the customer. Maintaining customer relationship is important above anything else.

There are many good things you can do to support the call center industry. Avoiding the don’ts in this industry can lessen the burden that may bring to the customers and the company you work for. The following are the don’ts that call center employees should do:

Avoid Tardiness

Time is precious. Never be late in your duty. Though you are one of the best agents in the company but with your constant tardiness will give you the honor to be recognized by your team leaders or supervisors. Also, you are not the asset of the company because call center is a fast paced regulated industry that time is important. Your tardiness can affect the operation of your company.

Don’t Slack Off

Do your job promptly. Slacking off the floor by letting other people do the job which is supposed to you is simply a bad impression to you not only as a person but to your job performance. Be productive always and serve as role model to your fellow agents. Show them the real you that you are happy with what you are doing. There are many call center agents who were terminated because of this bad impression despite several times of IR (incidental report) issued to them.

Avoid Obscene Behavior

Displaying your obscene behavior while you are inside your company’s premises is a big NO. When taking to the customer, talk with them with pleasure and with care. Never throw seducing words which sounds like you are doing phone sex to your customer. If caught, this may the end of your promising career in your in the call center. And worst, this may left bad wound in your previous job and to your co-workers.

Stop Horsing Around

Think of your responsibility as an employee of the company. While you are on duty, avoid playing around and horsing with other agents. Respect their privacy while they are on call and focusing on their job. This behavior can cause immediate violation because you are disturbing your co-workers instantly. Always put the fun in the right time. Implementing self-discipline is the best way to get rid of this disturbing behavior.

There are so many don’ts that you we need to implement. This can make the job easier if everybody is following the simple orders stated under the rules and regulations. It is important that the discipline must start on our own. Later on, other people who are new in the call center will learn the virtue that you showed. If you love your job then keep it.

The call center industry continues to give outstanding opportunity to everybody. It helps the economy prosper and lower the unemployment rate in the world.*

How Call Centers Can be an Advantage to Businesses

2010-07-07T04:07:00.000-07:00

"Advantage You"

Are you in charge of a business? If so, have you thought about adding or contracting with a call center? It can be a tremendous boost to you. By reading this article, you will learn how call centers can be an advantage to businesses.

The First Way they may be able to do this: They can be available to aid customers and answer any questions they have when regular businesses are closed. Many call centers are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week while many businesses open during the middle of the morning and close by late in the evening.

The Second Way they may be able to do this: They provide a huge convenience to customers in regard to not making them have to travel to get help. Instead of making a visit to the place where they made a purchase, they can stay home in their pajamas and simply make a phone call. This can be one of the biggest perks in existence.

The Third Way they may be able to do this: This can help companies by allowing them to have their employees do other things, mainly the duties that fit their job description. Anything that saves you time is something you should consider.

The Fourth Way they may be able to do this: They can help elevate your standing. Including them in your operations might lead your business to having a higher satisfaction ranking.

The Fifth Way they may be able to do this: They sometimes participate in the collections process. Do you sometimes have a few customers who fall behind in making their payments to you? If so, the representatives who operate the telephones can track them down for you.

The Sixth Way they may be able to do this: They can help you look better. Your image might be enhanced once it becomes known you go out of your way to help your customers.

The Seventh Way they may be able to do this: They can allow your clients to make their voices heard and subsequently receive extra service. For example, they can process the complaints customers have about a purchase they made.

You have learned how call centers can be an advantage to businesses. If you have not already done so, now is the time for you to open or start working with one in order to make your firm even more successful.

Call Center Opportunities – Why You Want to Go Into the Business?

2010-07-05T04:42:00.000-07:00

According to Gartner, the worldwide market for customer service outsourcing is set to grow from $8.4 billion in 2004 to $12.2 billion in 2007, but the offshore component will remain small. Despite the hype surrounding offshore call centers, offshore customer service outsourcing represents less than 2 percent of the worldwide market in 2005, increasing to less than 5 percent in 2007.

Gartner reports that by 2007, about 80 percent of organizations outsourcing customer service and support contact centers with the aim of reducing cost will fail.

Despite these gloomy predictions, other analysts are predicting rapid growth of call centers in Asia Pacific. Frost & Sullivan foresees the number of call centers in 2006 to exceed 26,000, supporting 1.9 million-strong workforce. By 2011, it will mushroom to 40,000 manned by nearly 3 million agents.

Who wants to hire a call center?

Historically, a call center is a competition-driven internal response to provide better service or generate new sales opportunities. As businesses streamline operations and identify core opportunities, call center functions are outsourced to external providers for a number of reasons such as better utilization of internal resources, reduction of per unit call cost, increased focus on core competency.

There are two main types of call centers: consumer transactional-based systems, which lend itself to a lower cost location (and therefore readily outsourced); and the more complex interaction contact centers such as those that provide technical helpdesk services, which are generally kept in-house.

However, as improvements in technologies and processes take shape, businesses are turning to external call centers to provide everything from over-the-phone technical helpdesk support to helping execute lead generation and tracking campaigns.

The primary sources of business for call centers are the US, Europe and Australian markets. Companies from these countries outsource to Asia because of the perceived lower labor cost, improved computing/communication infrastructure, and the high level of English-language competency.

China, Korea and Japan represent sizeable opportunities for Asia’s growing call center market. However, language will be the biggest hurdle in serving the domestic markets as traditional call centers leverage English-speaking staff.

Transformation trends

Executive level managers must understand that the call center operation is a strategic element of a business and that the amount of time a call center agent spends with customers is greater than customer interaction by any other member of the organization, including sales people. The call center is therefore a critical element to the strategic success of the company.

There is a technology shift toward self-help systems. This automated interaction, enabled by interactive voice response systems, is as important as a live interaction and requires just as much focus to ensure positive customer experience.

“For many enterprises, the customer experience is the basis of competitive differentiation and the call center is at the heart of that experience. Empowered by IP-based solutions, next generation customer service practices are expected to undergo significant changes in such areas as matching the level of service to the lifetime value of the customer,” says Tom Cheong, managing director, ASEAN, Avaya.

Focus

Certainly, technology plays an important role in ensuring that campaigns are executed on time, on schedule and within budget. However, the customer should always be the focal point, whether the point of contract is through the phone, by email or via the web.

According to market research firm Gallup, lack of customer engagement influences customer attrition. Disengaged call center agents cost organizations millions of dollars in lost opportunities. Where customers rated their experience as much worse than expected, this equated to a loss of 15 percent of customers or $4.5 million in revenue.

Continuous training

Staff retention is a never ending issue within the call center industry. Having a well-rounded training strategy and program is tantamount to survival and success.

Ed Saldajeno, managing director of Alva Pacific Franchise, a thriving call center operator Philippines, reminds aspiring call center entrepreneurs of the importance of training. “Continuous agent skills training and development are critical to ensuring customer satisfaction.”

Dynamic, flexible organization

It is often said that as an organization grows in size, it becomes less and less nimble in the way it executes strategies. In a business that thrives on understanding peculiarities of individual customers, flexibility is key to success.

Peter Chai, country Manager, Southeast Asia, BT, suggests that: “Successful call center businesses have a proven ability to seamlessly ramp technology and agents up or down. They have use flexible commercial models that include risk and reward sharing, as well as utility-based costing. As competition builds up, building vertical expertise on existing service offerings will ensure sustained business relationship with clients.”

Location, location, location

The core elements of a call center are its people, and availability of appropriate communications service. A rural location may be cheap but if you don’t have a stable broadband connection, how will you do your business?

“Having good telecommunications infrastructure is important in a call center business. A lot of places in Asia currently do not offer stable and robust IP network infrastructure to support reliable center business. It is therefore important to identify the right location when setting up a call center business,” says Junie Pama, country manager for Five9 Philippines.

Source: Opening a Small Business

Ensure Growth of Your Business in Affordable Way

2010-06-28T02:18:00.000-07:00

Growing Your Business

Call Center outsourcing has paved the way of innovation, implementation and complete utilization of resources in companies. It has made the work flow of companies a lot easier and more streamlined by increasing the productivity. Tracking of performance has made company owners in a comfortable position to assess the finances and situation of company in market place.

Running a business was never easy and in this competitive world, businesses have become globalized, extensive and expensive. At these times, call center outsourcing comes to rescue. It reduces the cost of operations and supports the growth of your business.

Companies prefer to take resort to BPO services. From small companies to corporate houses opt for outsourcing as they create a platform where best skills, qualified manpower and quality oriented services come together for the guaranteed results for your company.

When you choose to Outsourced Call Center services, you transfer the risks involved in the processes and financial burden to the third party vendor. You maintain the growth and prospects of the company in cost neutral environment.

BPO workers, agents and executives are trained to meet the varied demands of customers. You get in touch of your customers on 24/7 basis that enhances the growth of your business. You do not have to set up infrastructure or go overboard your finances to initiate the hiring or training process to accommodate your expanding needs. Also, managing huge numbers of employees and complicated infrastructure is grueling task. Coping up with daily changing technologies and training your employees for them can make any financially and intellectually rich company to run into sweat. Carrying out and putting up with various business process can be really exhaustive too.

Call centers take your stress of doing all that and help you to regain focus on what is expected from you. You get to centralize your thoughts on core business functionality.

Call Center Outsourcing is cost effective and professional simultaneously. Their agents are well versed, friendly and trained to take calls with patience irrespective of volume of calls and work flow. They ensure that quality is maintained throughout and in accordance with world class standards.

Discover an entire new way to save your costs and resources while expanding your business with Call Center Operations and Ella Greens is in charge of development process there. An eminent name in Outsourced Call Center Services, you can be rest assured of high-quality world class customer care services.

Call Center Drug Testing

2010-06-28T01:07:00.000-07:00

Do You Take Drugs?

How sure are you that you are safe in your call center offices during your shift?

I asked this because you have to be sure that you are working in a safe, secure call center environment. That is why most call centers now are asking their applicants to pass drug testing as part of their screening process.

They wanted to get rid of these call center applicants who are using illegal substance.

Also, in some call centers, random drug testing can also be done by the help of professionals (yes, this is still under the prerogative of the call center employers) who can deliver quick results using their drug testing kits. If you want to have an idea on the different illegal substances subject to their different tests, you can check out their UK based site online. They also have a section for exchanging questions and answers, that is really helpful to get direct answers from the professionals themselves. So no more time to get half baked and a little unsure information from peers. You can also purchase the drug testing kits securely online, and you can even recommend this one as a good resource to consider in getting the supplies for your office (if the need arises).

Personally, I would be thankful should companies begin doing all these random drug testing in their call center operations floor. It will give me the impression that the company is putting a premium on the safety of their employees whether inside or outside their office premises.

NCR Closing Springdale Call Center

2010-06-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

NCR is closing its Springdale call center, which employs 334, in August after spending about 40 years in the small Lexington County town near the Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

Midlands development officials said little could be done to keep one of Lexington County's largest private employers.

The call center work is being transferred to Georgia, where NCR recently relocated its corporate headquarters and opened new distribution and call centers and a manufacturing plant.

NCR has been poised to leave Lexington County before. The company planned to close its Springdale operations until it was swayed by state development officials, who pushed tax credits and job training.

The deal was finalized by then-Gov. Jim Hodges.

"They milked the state out of incentives for 20 years, and they're moving on," Lexington County Council vice chairman William Banning said.

Filipino Call Center Employees Are They Reliable?

2010-06-24T00:47:00.000-07:00

From the highest possible position to the lowest in the call center industry, Filipinos are in demand. But, are they reliable workers? Of course they are! If they weren’t then big institutions like Procter and Gamble, Ford, Intel, Nestle, etc., which are currently working with call center outsourcing companies in the country, would not be doing so. Likewise, no overseas Filipino workers would be hired by countless companies in other countries around the world.

It is a fact that the Philippines is the only Christian nation in Asia and Filipinos uphold Christian values, trust in God and integrity. Also, Filipinos value their family and have high respect for their elders as well as people in authority such as CEO’s, managers, supervisors, team leaders and the like. Aside from this, Filipinos value education so much that everyone is aiming to finish their studies and as much as possible, acquire a degree.

These values build up characteristics that the Filipinos possess; making them reliable and trusted workers.

The following are their character traits:-

* Due to the fact that Filipinos have a high standard of quality education, they are competitive and won’t settle for anything less or mediocre. They aim higher than where they are.
* Filipinos can easily be trained to perform a multitude of tasks. That’s what makes them capable and competent.
* Filipinos are actually very industrious. They do not mind if they work overtime without pay just as long as they can finish their job and acquire a sense of fulfillment after wards. In fact, this is seen as a plus in the call center outsourcing industry in the country.
* Filipinos love to think of better ways in order to solve an issue or complete a task effectively. They are indeed innovative, creating new ideas to enhance their work processes.
* Filipinos are innately jolly individuals. It is seen in them when greeted by their beautiful smiles. They are indeed very optimistic.

Additionally, we always reiterate that Filipinos are proficient in English and have good work ethics. Those above mentioned character traits are also manifested in every Filipino worker. So, if you are looking to outsource virtual assistance, outbound telemarketing, inbound customer service, lead generation, appointment setting, online marketing, web and graphics designing, transcription or bookkeeping, you can rely on Filipino workers to do these tasks.

StarTek Wins Best Outsourced Provider from 2010 Call Center Excellence Awards

2010-06-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

StarTek, a business process outsourcing company, announced it has won Best Outsourced Provider from the 2010 Call Center Excellence Awards.

The awards were announced June 16 at the 11th annual IQPC Call Center Week Conference in Las Vegas. The judging was done by a panel of call center experts and leaders assembled by IQPC who evaluated the entrants on their ability to deliver to customers.

"This was a great win for us," said Mary Beth Loesch, SVP of business development for StarTek. "This competition for the award was some of the top outsourcers in the world so a first place finish is even more of an accomplishment."

The 2010 Call Center Excellence Awards program was created by IQPC to honor, recognize and promote the most innovative call center solutions and individuals over the past year. With Awards given in 8 categories, the Call Center Excellence Awards are dedicated to recognizing creativity and execution across the full spectrum of call center functions.

Hosted Call Center Business Opportunities

2010-06-24T00:14:00.000-07:00

Multinational corporations are increasingly looking for leverage in every aspect of their business. Norbell's total hosted contact solutions bring intelligent distributed workforces closer to corporations. Now, it's easier than ever for corporations to bring the wold's talent to their customers.

Benefits of hosted call center business

Low Total Cost of Owner
Integrated Solution
On-Demand Hosted Call Center Model

Benefits of Hosted Call Center

No Capital Expenditure

Instead of large upfront purchases of capital equipment, enterprises are able to pay on a month-by-month basis, paying by the agent and the services they need.

Focus on Core Business, not on Running a Phone Company

Deployment and maintenance of call center equipment is complex and labor intensive, and large telecom and IT departments are required for the task. With today’s trend towards an ever-sharper focus on core competencies, businesses should focus on what they do best and not have to be in the business of building and running their own “phone company.”

Be a Multi-Channel “Contact Center”

There is dramatic change underfoot in the way customers want to contact the companies they do business with. Telephone communications are being augmented by web-based chat, e-mail, SMS and even voice and video over IP.

Manage Capacity Easily

Phone calls vs. web chat vs. e-mail vs. VoIP vs. video vs. voice mail—who can figure out the right amount of capital equipment for enterprises to buy in each of these areas? With our solution, customers pay for capacity as they go.Call centers may have capacity needs that vary seasonally, or in accordance with marketing promotions. Subscribers to our hosted service can quickly throttle capability as their needs change.

Control Multiple Sites

A single point of access—from any PC—can set up and adjust things like IVR scripts and recordings, call flows, agent skills, group assignments, quality of service targets and so forth.

Perfect for All Businesses

Call centers are becoming more essential to every business. With our IP-based contact center technology, small and medium sized contact centers can share the same quality of service as do large contact centers without the headache and financial burden of ownership.

Slash Communication Costs

With our VoIP gateways, we can slash your communication costs and increase call capacity without sacrificing qualtiy.

WDSGlobal Call Center Still Hiring Even Hired More Than 400 Workers

2010-06-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

The WDSGlobal call center here has hired more than 400 workers and hopes to hire close to 200 more within the next two weeks.

“We are getting very close to hitting our commitment for our next round of classes,” site director Jack Kozeny on Monday said. “We have hired over 400 employees already, and we only need to hire 195 more to reach our goal. It (hiring) has been real good. Last week, we offered jobs to roughly 100 people.”

Kozeny recommends that those wanting to work for the company should apply immediately. Interested persons should fill out the application online at www.wdsglobal.com/careers.

“We will have an open house and job fair on Saturday. We will do on-the-spot testing, interviewing and hiring at our location at I-44 and Airport Drive,” he explained. “If they are planning on coming to the job fair, it would be good for them to go ahead and apply online. It will save them some time.”

The open house and job fair will be from
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The company had received more than 1,200 applications by mid-May. More than 300 workers had been hired by early June.

The pay range, he said, starts at $8.15 per hour, and full- and part-time jobs are available. Part-time workers are required to work 24 hours a week.

The center held its first training session in May.

In an earlier Times Record News story, Kozeny said, “The WDSGlobal team is looking for self-motivated, goal-oriented people that are looking to work and grow in a fun, fast-paced environment.”

He said the center will work exclusively for a major wireless provider. It will be customer service only.

WDSGlobal is an international company.

The Wichita Falls location is in the former Avis/Budget call center facility.

How to Save With Call Center Outsourcing?

2010-06-23T00:12:00.000-07:00

Saving Expenditure

Call center services are labor intensive and costly, which is primarily why many businesses are outsourcing the function to call center services companies. Apart from saving costs, call center outsourcing frees up in-house resources to focus on reveune generating tasks. Experienced call center companies that have shared strong relationships with businesses bring in positive changes that enhance business productivity and efficiency.

The quality of an outsourced call center is very important as the telemarketing call center agents will be talking to your customers on your behalf. Their pofessionalism will go a long way in shaping your brand that will directly impact your business’ bottom line. The cost of hiring a professional call center may seem high initially, but the returns on this investment will be significant.

Call center outsourcing helps small and mid sized business save. Here’s how:

1. Reduced Employee Costs

By outsourcing call center services, the small and mid sized business does not have to recruit or train call center agents for customer service and support. No overhead costs such as health insurance and employee benefits to deal with. The business can direct its investments and resources towards other revenue generating and profit making initiatives.

2. Reduced Infrastructure Costs

In-house call center services involves the cost of procuring and maintaining communications equipment and network and office space. By outsourcing call center services, businesses tap into a pre-established organization that has the necessary infrastructure and skilled personnel. Typically, personnel use a hosted solution at the outsourced call center location. Many call center services use CRM solutions to manage customer service information and activities.

3. Call Center Agent Skills

Lack of call center agent training, especially in soft skills as well as technical know-how often leads to increase in customer complaints. Outsourced call center services recruit and train call center agents that have the required customer service skills to assist customers. Though some time is spent on training personnel to align them with your business’ strategies, the learning curve is short.


Performance Check

4. Scaling Up and Down

With call center outsoucing, businesses can meet their unexpected spikes and slumps in customer service calls. Call center services have several clients and they can manage the fluctuation in call volumes. This alleviates small and mid sized businesses from having to staff up or downsize based on seasonality of call volumes and still meet their customer service needs with affordable call center pricing.

5. Organizational Expertise

Outsourced call centers use techniques such as target analysis and scripts to improve the effect of telemarketing calls. Personnel are trained to respect the potential customer’s time and drive the conversation towards a resolution or sale. A survey across industries reveals that professional call center services have helped businesses improve profits through up-selling and cross-selling by 25%, reduced complaints and errors by 50%, and enhanced quality control and compliance practices significantly.

6. Improved Compliance

Outsourced call center services update their staff on the latest federal, state and regional laws governing telemarketing. Businesses that do not comply with these strict rules face severe penalties and can even have their license revoked. By having call center services take care of telemarketing, businesses protect themselves from possible fines or litigations.

Businesses that outsource call center services can improve bottom line by improving customer support services and marketing initiatives while keeping a cap on expenses. Professional telemarketing and call center services help organizations improve business practices for greater customer satisfaction and business growth.

Kingsville Call Center Closes

2010-06-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

Fifty-four employees will lose their jobs when Global Contact Services in Kingsville closes its doors this summer.
The call center on Brahma Boulevard is expected to run at normal capacity until Aug. 12, when it will close, according to a letter dated June 14 that was sent to the Texas Workforce Commission. Calls Tuesday to the North Carolina-based company were not returned.

Global Contact Services opened in 2006 and offered good employment for a segment of the community that has a hard time finding work, said Dick Messbarger, executive director of the Greater Kingsville Economic Development Council.

“Its employees were predominantly single females who were head of households,” Messbarger said. “But the economy has affected this industry as it has affected its clients, which were an impressive list. They included Bank of America and AIG.”

The 28,000-square-foot, 320-cubicle former King Bowl building, is owned by the city, which has a contract with Global Contact Services for about another year, Messbarger said. The building was vacant for a year after Calling Solutions closed in 2005.

How to Use Technology in Call Center to Benefit Business

2010-06-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

Every business operating in a business environment currently has call center must be met. What is small scale industry or business of Fortune 500 companies, almost all companies operating in this competition has several call centers or other requirements. Similarly, most call center companies slow to switch to digital software and super easy to use to link to the customer.

The level of communication strategies and work as follows in the call center to help business groups to link their clients to increase sales to customers. Patterns of the customer service center by chance the right time, effective and meaningful. This is specifically for each call handled by professionals and tailored to ensure that the developed approach. Unit customer service work at night and the table. This is to ensure that ongoing support continues to be the buyer. As customer needs, requirements and expectations are considered the main priority, images or service marks have to be improved. It will be something that leads to increased sales. Here is a need sophisticated software.

Today representatives or call center agents well versed cross selling and up selling. Customer Care Agents are responsible for profit and benefit from each product or discount. In addition, efficiently done through the management table and beat the machine in line. All this and much more clearly by using advanced software techniques and methods. Call Centre Technology Centre has been successful evolutionCall age is just a telemarketing and telecommunications service providers. customer service unit was created to be a driver of the roof to meet all business needs. Thus, telemarketing, customer care, back office, technical helpdesk support, discussion, research, software development, IT support, PUT, broadcast voice, call center are some of the most specialized services to ensure the best customer support.

Customer care services to improve the quality and value for all the services they offer. Some call center technology is the most popular are:-

1.Auto Dialer: This is one of the innovative techniques that enable customers to get the treatment agent through the list of potential buyers or potential with minimal time and resources. This method of helping all special agents to maintain their services and work processes efficiently.

2. Fine and computer telephone integration: Use of high-end database will help customer service agent that the water does not return to normal. It is an integrated contact information, agents can offer access to the right to request feedback in real time.

3. Automatic call distribution, and Efficient Call Center value the right of every call: In this case, the use of technology, there is no guarantee that the call is answered or returned to the process. All calls should be automatically distributed to agents who did not attend the call. Through the technology up-to-date in the call center, better response times and superior customer satisfaction is achieved.

4. Mapping Software Performance: gone are the days when agents must take the yellow pages or the manual for the identification of lead candidates. These days, most call center companies to switch to digital software and super easy to use to link to the customer. Using this software easily find potential buyers for the maintenance and management of the condition and performance sheets per order.

Working In A Call Center Also Requires EQ Not Only IQ

2010-06-17T04:55:00.000-07:00

In this era of customer empowerment, call center managers that focus on Emotional Intelligence (EI) find valuable aid in the selection, recruitment and development process. Emotional Intelligence is all about an individual’s ability to know emotions and act appropriately. Human resource (HR) managers find selection indicators such as intelligence, education, personality, and experience adequate in qualifying a candidate for a job, but it’s not enough to predict performance. The ability to know the behavioral patterns of call center candidates is essential to the human resources department. What has been recently learned is that communication – the key feature in relationship theories – is connected to Emotional Intelligence, a predictor that can be measured by what is termed as EQ or Emotional Quotient.

Emotionally intelligent call center workers are able to form strong relationships because they can communicate effectively and are able to cope well with stressful situations. EQ can also be strengthened and be developed over time, which is why the call center industry would be well served with EQ assessments. HR managers ought to use and integrate these instruments into their standards for selection and development. Plotting the succession of senior leadership is critical to a call center’s success, and selecting the right candidate to hire or promote becomes simpler. Furthermore, EQ helps to identify individual specific strengths and weaknesses so that training and coaching can be designed to develop skills that contribute to future leadership.

Handling calls efficiently may be one of the main tasks of call center agents. But, this includes the ability to listen, build a rapport with a customer, engage in a dialogue, and solve problems. The ability to handle odd timings, and work pressures, are areas where candidates need to excel and not get hijacked due to stressful emotional situations. Issues of self-control, self-esteem, and self-motivation are areas linked to the emotional quotient. Identifying and growing these effectiveness skills is essential. When call center agents, supervisors and managers can be profiled for EQ it makes it simpler for human resource managers to determine, coach, and develop “star performers”. Attrition rates are also significantly lowered in call centers that include EQ assessment as part of their recruitment process. Moreover, call centers need not worry about recruiting the incorrect candidate, resulting in a significant saving. With added pressure from clients to cut down on recruitment costs, exploring the implementation of EQ assessment has gained momentum in the industry.

Call centers are one of the main industries where the Emotional Intelligence factor comes into focus. Moreover, it is a excellent return on investment when it comes to the selection and retention of employees. Profiling candidates through EQ testing helps make a corporate culture imbibed with an atmosphere of teamwork and leadership. Call centers cannot afford to have customers complain about inadequate support due to the indifferent attitude of customer support agents. Irate customers too cannot be dismissed without a polite word and an attempt to solve their issues. In small, employees with a excellent EQ and the right coaching will be able to contribute significantly to the success and profits of any call center.

IQ test means Intelligence Quotient,with the help of IQ tests intelligence test you can measure your ability of your work in any field, if you get high IQ level in IQ intelligence test that means there is chances of highly complex jobs.

Youngstown OKs $2 Million Call Center Incentive

2010-06-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

The city is willing to lend $2 million to convince a call-center company to locate an expansion here that would create at least 500 new jobs downtown.

City council approved the $2 million loan, with an interest rate of 0.25 of a percent for up to 12 months, today with VXI Global Solutions.

VXI already employs about 500 to 600 on the fourth floor of the city-owned 20 Federal Place building.
A $2.7 million expansion would be on the building’s fifth floor. A VXI official said the deal could be finalized in a few days.

Also today, council declined to purchase the long-closed Paramount Theatre on West Federal Street for $80,000.

The deal isn’t dead, but council members said they don’t see why the city should buy the building now and assume the liability of the dilapidated structure.

U.S. Cellular Eliminating Some Jobs at Tulsa Center

2010-06-17T04:15:00.000-07:00

U.S. Cellular will dismiss 160 employees at its Tulsa call center in the next nine months and close its Tulsa Financial Services Center.

The jobs are moving to a call center in Madison, Wis., and to a contract partner in Houston.

The Chicago cell phone service provider confirmed the layoffs Wednesday after submitting a notice to the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.

“The company has made the strategic business decision to transition the credit and collection responsibilities of its Tulsa Financial Services Center to … Madison, Wis., and … Houston,” U.S. Cellular said in a statement Wednesday.

It cited lower costs as the reason for the changes.

The Financial Services Center is part of a larger U.S. Cellular complex with about 400 employees in eastern Tulsa.

The company will use the space to add 100 new jobs to its Tulsa Customer Care Center.

The fired employees will be eligible for those jobs, but they will have to reapply for the positions.

U.S. Cellular is offering a severance package of eight weeks pay and extended COBRA coverage to any employees who choose to stick around until the job cuts start next March.

The company will begin moving the positions this summer.

When finished, the changes will reduce employment at the Tulsa center to about 350 workers from about 400.

Lead Generation Problems in Outbound Call Centers

2010-06-14T01:58:00.000-07:00

Lead generation is a major service of outbound call center service. In simplified words, lead generation can be understood as calling up potential customers and convincing them for the product and services of client. If a customer makes his mind to try the product his name is send to the company to actualize the lead into sales. The in-house team, then take cares that the product are delivered on time.

This is lot more complex process that it seems from the face. It is a multilevel process. The biggest challenge and opposition call center agents face is the fear of lashing out from the customers as they call the potential leads without permission. They get numbers from random database. Though the process is entirely compliant to the Do not Disturb list but the agents by no means can know who are they calling up and what could be the most convenient time for them. Sometimes, this inconvenience comes in front as plain verbal assault, abusive language and aggressiveness. This can be very unsettling and depressive for the workers of call center. At this point their training proves to be great help to deal with the odd behavior of customers and tackle the situation to the benefit of company. The customer care executives are trained to overcome these hurdles as soon as the call is ended and call another person without getting affected.

The list of odds and problems for outbound call centers lead generation programs does not end here. An agent has to be hardcore marketer of the product. The challenge becomes more difficult because the entire deal is done through telephone. The agents also sell additional products and services in up selling and cross selling processes. Moreover, despite of new challenge every day, they have new target to meet!

The agents are the backbone of any call center. They work to evolve a product into a defined brand that is more visible and more popular with the customers. They are pivotal in promoting the growth of company. The training schedules and continuous odd working shifts put adverse affects on their health. They are deprived of their family work to give you a call for a product that may help you and facilitates your life style.

4 Call Center Agents in Philippine Get Suspension

2010-06-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Last week brought a lot of disgrace for the Philippine call center business. In a worst ever instance, 4 call center personnel working in a Philippine based firm was suspended following an incident. For the Philippine call center industry this incident is reported to bring about a massive blow to its growing reputation. The 4 accused call center professionals are awaiting for their final judgment as further investigation is yet to resume in a couple of days or so. The local authorities have probed for an investigation after the February 19 event.

What prompted this suspension?As per the news published in the New Zealand Herald, one of the well read daily in the country, it was an obscene SMS message that proved to be the main fault of the 4 professionals leading to their suspension from the job. The SMS message that was send from the service provider was directed to one of the customers of the firm’s New Zealand based client. What did the New Zealand Herald report?

On last Friday 19. 02. 10, the New Zealand Herald was found to report that Telecom, which is a telecommunications company based in New Zealand, has exposed the source of the obscene text messages that was received by some of its own customer at the beginning of the last week.

When did such incident occur?It was last Wednesday 17. 02. 10, when a woman belonging to the Whanganui District is to be reported to have told the authorities that she had received a text message saying “ F*** you”. After receiving such abusive message, she filed a complaint against the customer service cell of the Telecom. It has been reported that she has been a customer of this telecom company and has been facing problems of delays in the SMS service of the service provider. Suddenly, when she got this SMS message, she was annoyed by her service provider and decided to file complaint and part ways with the same. About the investigation:The offensive messages that some of the customers of the New Zealand based telecommunication company received were lastly traced to the Manila based office of the Sitel.

Now Sitel is the name of the multinational business process outsourcing (BPO) company of which the Telecom was a reputed client. Step taken by SitelCurrently, Sitel occupies a prestigious name in the Philippine BPO market. After this particular incident, industry leaders feel that this particular act will really bring about a lot of discredit for the company. See what the general manager had to say:The general manager of Sitel customer services- Trish Keith said that the company includes more than 1,500 team members in New Zealand and in Manila it includes 800. This incident will certainly be a massive disappointment for the entire workforce. On the part of the company, there have been repeated apologies made by the company officials. However, as per the GMA News. TV news, the company has chosen not to disclose the name of the all four accused call center personnel who have been responsible for messaging such abusive message.

5 Ways To Make Your Call Center Performance More Efficient

2010-06-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

VoIP technologies are indispensable for the contact center efficiency enhancement as you can move to a distributed contact center or employ at-home agents to
* reduce facility expenses and salary rates;
* overcome the language barrier and cultural differences;
* smooth out peak load periods and develop a reliable business contingency plan.

As TechTarget research data shows, at-home agents:
”* have a 10% attrition rate, which is significantly lower than for on-site staff;
* are 25% more productive.
* cost $11 less/hour.”

But no matter whether you choose a distributed model or a local one, to get maximum benefits from your VoIP contact center, you need special software that is described below.

1. Automate Call Processing and Release Your Staff for More Complicated Tasks

If you need to
* ensure that your clients timely get the information that they are looking for;
* release your staff for tasks that require their experience and expertise,
provide your clients with a self-serving facility with a voice portal or interactive voice response (IVR) applications.

2. Overcome Call Peak Loads and Cut the Waiting Time

Generally, people hate to waste time searching for an “appropriate employee” to answer their questions. To decrease this waiting time and smooth out call peak load hours you can use
* skill-based routing (SBR) software, integrated with your CRM and ERP software that will automatically route calls to:
** a manager who usually works with a calling client or
** an operator with demanded skills that is defined from information about a calling client (such as his/her previous requests or his/her location and language he/she speaks) and operator’s product expertise, overall skill-level and language capability;
* virtual queuing software, with which your clients will just leave their contact information and return to their business, while an operator will automatically call them back.

Note that integration of telephony and CRM software accelerates client request processing also by providing your staff with information about the calling client retrieved from your databases.

3. Save Your Time and Effort by Getting All Requests from a Single Inbox

Would you like to save your time on checking client messages from different sources (phone, fax, email, website etc.) and timely service all requests?
With unified messaging and voice mail service, you can collect messages from all sources in a single mailbox available 24×7 from both your e-mail client and phone, and thus guarantee your clients get a timely response to all their questions, regardless of where they sent them from.

4. Get a Single Solution to Improve Call Processing at All Company Offices

If you look for a powerful tool that is able to streamline call processing at all company sites and support at-home operators, pay attention to software-based attendant consoles.

With a software-based console, your operator, regardless of his/her location, can:
* get incoming calls from several phone lines and route them to appropriate employees;
* find quickly an employee/a phone number;
* send a text/voice message;
* record a call.

This software also supports intelligent call queuing.

5. Enhance Your Call Center Staff Productivity

Today, almost all large and mid-sized companies deploy call accounting software to control/reduce employee telecom costs. However, you can do much more with it!

Advanced call-accounting software provides you with various reports, built on the base of call detail records (CDRs) received from your IP PBX that you can use to:
* determine peak phone network hours and compose an appropriate call plan;
* track unanswered calls and control, if your employees return calls in a timely manner;
* track employee “friends & family” calls and set special rules to limit and even deny such communications at peak load hours.
Conclusion
To do the most of your VoIP call-center, you need just to choose appropriate software:
* a voice portal or IVR applications to automate processing of up to 80% of incoming calls and release your staff for complicated tasks;
* skill-based routing or virtual queuing software to smooth out call peak loads and cut down the waiting time;
* unified messaging and voice mail service to save your time and effort by getting all requests from a single inbox with;
* a software-based attendant console to get a single solution to improve call processing at all your sites, regardless of their location;
* call-accounting software to decrease telecom costs, control your staff daily activities and enhance employee productivity.

Call Centre Jobs : Cellphone Call Center to Open, Hire 100

2010-06-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

Call Center Hiring

Consumer Cellular, a provider of wireless phones and services mostly for seniors, opened its second U.S.-based call center in the Valley, and the company plans to staff it with about 100 employees by the fall.
Employees at the 8181 S. 48th St. center in Phoenix will provide sales and support for the company's customers from a 39,000 square-foot building. The company said there are 24 new employees on the job and another 80 will be hired by September.

Consumer Cellular also has a customer service facility at its headquarters in Portland, Ore.
"Our Phoenix expansion allows us to meet the demands of our expanding customer base by providing additional time zone coverage, increased data security, and emergency back-up customer support when needed," said John Marick, CEO of Consumer Cellular, in a statement. "We chose to locate the new call center in Phoenix because of its excellent talent pool and business-friendly environment."

Consumer Cellular's Valley expansion comes six months after the company celebrated double-digit annual revenue growth from nearly $65 million in 2008 to more than $100 million in 2009.

Founded in 1995, the privately-held company is the exclusive wireless provider for AARP members. Its niche is basic cell phone service for seniors.

Bank of America Call Center Worker Pleads Guilty to Data Theft

2010-06-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

A Bank of America call center employee has pleaded guilty to charges that he stole sensitive client information and then tried to sell it for cash.

Brian Matty Hagen pleaded guilty last week to one count of bank fraud. According to court filings he allegedly recorded customer account information when BofA customers called him for technical support at the Florida call center where he worked.

Prosecutors say he focused on high net-worth customers and then unwittingly sold their information to an undercover U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. Allegedly, he thought that he was going to collect a percentage of the profits from what's known as a credit bust-out scam -- meaning that the information would be used to fraudulently line up new credit with other banks.

Hagen allegedly logged account holders' names, birth dates, addresses and account histories between September 2009 and April 2010. He was supposed to get a 25 percent stake of the profits, court filings state.

One of the customers had his information stolen after calling Hagen to have Netflix automatic payments suspended from his account, prosecutors say. That customer's BofA account contained more than US$444,000.

Hagen allegedly told the FBI agent "that he could get similar information for other BofA customers 'pretty quick,' but would not bother with any account that had less than $100,000 in it," court records state.
It's not clear how many BofA accounts were compromised -- the FBI found details of just a handful of accounts in his possession, prosecutors say.

Neither BofA nor its customers were harmed by Hagen's actions, said his attorney, federal public defender Adam Allen. "Mr Hagen has worked in the banking industry since he was 17 years old and the conduct in this case constitutes an isolated incident for which Brian deeply regrets," he said via e-mail.

The Bank of America could not be reached for comment.

Hagen faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine on the charges, but with his guilty plea, he is likely to face a much softer sentence.

Your Call Center Trainings Are Your Real Needs

2010-06-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

Training is the key for any business success, as it prepares you to take-on the challenges with a lot more skill and belief and when its matter of creating good impression on the customer who is of other nationality, other culture and creed, the role of training gets even more pivotal.

Call centre training is the most crucial part to make the experience of your caller rewarding and to get repeat on sales, otherwise, you won’t get a second chance to create your first impression. The key areas which need strenuous training are product knowledge, technology and speaking soft with skill.

Special soft skills trainings would be highly required for your call center team before handling international customers. Starting with the accent, make the heavy and localized accent affordable for the US or other developed nation caller, who are money rich and time-poor, they do not want to take too longer in understanding the alien accents. You will need to train your call center team through accent-neutralization and by arranging lacoste shoes smooth and easy to adopt monikers. With this you can overcome the challenges faced by your call center with your international customers.

The difference in cultures, should be highly considered as it is the most difficult challenge call center team might come across. Customers always have high expectations on the customer service representatives. They are in some sort of problem while they are calling, some credit card payment issue, discrepancy on a bill, want to get assistance for computer problem or are seeking delay in their already bookings for airlines, they are all calling you with high level of frustration and the agent ahs to be trained to handle such situations with cool head and a lot of common sense.

These already offended callers are not ready to relieve anyone who is mens lacoste shoes short of words, solutions and way-out for their everyday problems, all the agents should go strenuous in-house training before they are exposed to callers that how compliance can be achieved. US based customers expects the rep to offer a certain level of empathy, put thoughtful questions across, use relevant cheap lacoste shoes words and get hold of the problem smartly. Whereas, reps of under developed countries show sympathy which is offending for the callers who are expecting sincere support.

Training can give customer service raps more word choice and way forward to lead the conversation ahead, they can present a confident gesture about offering sincere responses in the manner that echoes with your customer base. The more technology savvy your customer service reps are, the more their chances of converting a call into long-term relationship exist. Train the reps with all the innovative technologies to make them feel good about everything. This will improve their confidence and they will show better performance.

As a crux, the rep should be given adequate knowledge of the content they are supposed to handle, they should be given ample training in receiving calls in safe-simulated environment to get confidence and skills, a detailed perspective of the country which has most potential prospects for the call centre and last but not the least, an ongoing coaching to make their skill, their excellence.

Call Center Jobs : Call Center Opening by Australian Debt Collection Agency

2010-06-07T00:06:00.000-07:00

NRG Global Solutions Pty. Ltd., an Australian debt management company servicing multinationals in the telecommunications, banking and finance industries, opened yesterday a new, 150-seat call center at the Eastwood City Cyberpark in Quezon City.

The firm’s local call center operation, which started on Aug. 8, 2008 with only five seats, plans to expand operations in the Philippines by adding clients from Australia.

"NRG is the first Australian collection company to establish a presence in the Philippines. The company chose the Philippines for its agent talent pool, infrastructure, and readily available vendors and suppliers focused on supporting the international call center sector," the company said.

NRG recently incorporated a Philippine subsidiary, NRG Global Solutions (Philippines), Inc., to serve the firm’s Australian client base.

"The company has gone through measured growth from its Brisbane-based call center, opening with only five seats in a Manila business process outsourcing (BPO) center in August 2008. We are excited with this new phase of growth in the company, as it exponentially increases our presence from five seats to 150 seats," Laurence Barlow, co-founder and chairman of NRG, said in a statement yesterday.

He added: "It made business sense for us to move a portion of our call center operations offshore as the Filipino government encourages foreign investors to set up here in the Philippines with its conducive business environment, incentives, and special economic zones. We also want to capitalize on the abundant talent pool and redundant infrastructure available in the Philippines.

Call Center Solutions by Call Centers

2010-06-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

It is a common notion that call centers only handle calling for companies. But as the outsourcing industry develops, call centers have also evolved themselves and have diversified their services. Call centers in India and around the world are not only handling inbound and outbound calls, but they are literally working as a back office for companies.

Let’s have a look at the call center solutions available these days:

1. 24×7 live Email Support: Most companies allow their customers to contact them via email. People send emails to companies for various reasons like filing a complaint, requesting a change in their services, ordering products and services etc. Through 24×7 live email support, a company can send reply to all such mail within minutes of their arrival. Specially designated professionals can handle the queries, complaints and comments in the emails and provide appropriate response to the sender without much delay.
Email support is extremely useful when a person needs written records of the conversation for present or future needs. The company can send written manuals, required documents and proof of transactions via email support.

2. 24×7 live Chat Support: Other than email, instant messaging is also a widely used method of communication on the Internet. The companies know this and that’s why they provide the option of live chat support to their customers. They can simply contact a call center representative and discuss their queries or file their complaints. Call centers provide this solution to enhance the customer support and credibility of the company.

Live chat support is very useful in places where the caller cannot use a phone. It allows the customer to have a conversation which is similar to a phone conversation, but only in written.

3. Inbound calling: Handling calls from the customers is one of the most basic and important call center solutions. A trained professional who has been given all the information about the company, answers call and provides assistance to customers. These days, inbound calls of all kinds of companies, from technology to retail, from automobile to education, are being outsourced to offshore call centers.

These call centers provide cheap and efficient inbound calling solutions for companies who want to provide 24×7 support to their customers and want to assure them that the company is ready to help them as and when they need it.

Call center solutions have been constantly changing and evolving, with time. If you are also planning to hire a call center to get one or more of these solutions for your company, then consider the following points before you do that:

1. Choose the solution that suits your requirements.

2. Choose a reliable call center that has fully trained professionals.

3. Ensure that your customers are aware of the customer support options.

Call centers provide multiple solutions for companies and enhance their market value and credibility by ensuring that every customer that calls them for help, finds a solution to his or her problem.

Springfield Call Center Adds 140 New Jobs

2010-06-03T03:19:00.000-07:00

One hundred and forty new jobs are soon coming to Springfield. KSMU's Ryan Welch reports.
Gold Mountain Communications, a relatively new company in the Springfield area, is more than tripling its employee count from just three months ago.

The call centre began operations in April of 2009, and made its first official call in June, 2009 with 15 employees on staff.

Hank Seevers, president of Gold Mountain Communications, says this expansion was all part of the plan.
"It was kind of the vision when we started the company a little over a year ago in our small downtown office. We kind of envisioned this coming along at some point, and it really came along on schedule as we had planned…which is sometimes surprising,” Seevers said.

To accommodate this rapid growth, the company is investing nearly one million dollars and has moved from its downtown location to West Sunshine Street.

Seevers also says the Economic Development Team at the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce has helped his company apply for state tax credits.

“Having those tax credits prompted us to move a little bit sooner than we would’ve, and we’re very happy to have them,” he said.

The Missouri Department of Economic Development approved nearly 400 thousand dollars in state tax credits for Gold Mountain Communications under the Enhanced Enterprise Zone, because the company is creating jobs and making investments within the specified zone.

Home Based Inbound Call Center Services

2010-06-03T01:39:00.000-07:00

Why waste your spare time if you can earn money with it. A home inbound call center agent is one of the growing businesses nowadays, although it is not that popular but this kind of home based business already exists for quite long now. An inbound call center is one that solely or predominately handles inbound calls.

Companies are hiring home inbound call center agent because the company do not have to pay the regular wage that they pay to the company based agents but they get the same quality work. The company do not have to offer benefits like holiday pay, insurance or even pensions in short the company can save money by hiring an outsider call center agent.

This is a great opportunity to those people want to work at home. There are a lot of companies who offer the same kind of work. All you need is to search in the internet for different companies that are outsourcing their work as they may have opportunities for inbound call center agents.

There are some requirements that you need to have in order to start a home based call center. You will need a computer with a Windows operating system and a processor of at least 300 MHz as well as an adequate amount of hard drive space. You will need internet access. Obviously you cannot do the task if you do not have an internet connection it is because you will need to have an email address since most of the actual call center work and communication will be done on the computer. There are some instances that company require you may also be required to download an instant messenger.

Another is telephone, this is very important because you can not receive call if you do not have telephone. Companies prefer the corded telephone. Much better if you can afford to buy an avaya phone. Avaya phones are IP telephones that are used by call center companies. Good thing about using this kind of telephone because it can be connected in your computer in which you can trace the incoming calls.

Most important thing is the good telephone etiquette. In order to be an effective customer service representative, you should be aware and sensitive to your customer. All you need is a lot of patience, adequate knowledge about the company you are representing, and a passion to give a helping hand to your valued clients.

Foreign Call Center Tax and Rein in Outsourcing of Call Center Jobs to Foreign Countries US Bill Proposed by Schumer

2010-06-01T03:05:00.000-07:00

How many times have you made your way through the telephone maze to a customer service help desk, only to figure out you’re talking to somebody on the other side of the world? Now there’s a lawmaker who thinks there ought to be a law to change that.

In an effort to slow the outsourcing of American jobs, New York Senator Charles Schumer is proposing a tax on companies that transfer calls with U.S. area codes to foreign call centers. His proposed legislation would tax companies 25 cents for each customer service phone call that is outsourced to a foreign call center. Schumer also wants to make companies inform customers when their calls are being transferred outside the U.S. and to which country.

“This bill will not only serve to maintain call center jobs currently in the United States, but also provide a reason for companies that have already outsourced jobs to bring them back,” said Sen. Schumer in a statement.

Under Schumer’s proposed bill, companies would also be required to report their total number of customer service calls and the amount rerouted to foreign call centers.

Many American companies place call centers overseas to save costs. India, Indonesia, Ireland, Canada, the Philippines and South Africa are among the countries that U.S. companies use to outsource call centers.

Inbound Call Center Services Give Benefit Support to Your Business

2010-06-01T02:19:00.000-07:00

It mаy bе tһаt yοur business һаѕ reached tο a point wһеrе yοu аrе finding іt hard tο handle tһе customer requests. Tһіѕ іѕ tһе time wһеn yοu саn seek essential һеlр frοm аn inbound call center. An inbound team іѕ basically comprised οf a group οf well-trained individual’s wһο wіLL bе answering tο аLL tһе phone calls, wһісһ comes tο yοur work station. Wһеn tһе contract і ѕ established between tһе inbound call center аnd business, tһе call center agents wіll bе responsible fοr handling tһе customer calls.

Tһе inbound team саn bе conveniently used each hour οf a day. In addition, businesses саn аƖѕο сһοοѕе tο uѕе tһе service аftеr tһе usual business hours аѕ well. Mοѕt businesses using inbound services throughout tһе day аrе basically tһе ones tһаt аrе found tο bе tοο busy іn handling сеrtаіn phone calls οf tһеіr customers.

Apart frοm taking calls, tһе inbound call center саn bе used tο schedule οr set appointments, provide tһе technical support οr recall data οn diverse services οr products аnd processing tһе sale orders. Wіtһ a variety οf services οn offer, mοѕt businesses wοuƖd bе аbƖе tο reap maximum advantages frοm аn inbound customer service center.

Lеt’s take a look аt ѕοmе οf tһе industrial sectors аnd businesses tһаt саn take full advantage frοm аn inbound customer care unit. Starting first wіtһ tһе property managers, tһеy happen tο bе one οf those individuals wһο саn take tһе benefit frοm аny inbound call centre. Wіtһ һugе number οf growing shopping malls, apartment complexes аnd others, tһеrе wіLL naturally bе ѕοmе inquiry calls. Now calls mаdе wіLL come frοm those individuals wһο аrе interested іn renting οr buying a retail store οr аn apartment. Tһеѕе аrе calls tһаt саn come several times іn аn hour аnd wһеrе аn inbound call center саn prove tο bе a unique way tο supervise аLL tһе calls.

Tһе government agencies саn bе another group wһο саn take tһе full benefit frοm inbound customer services. Tһеrе аrе several programs run by tһе government agencies, Ɩіkе food stamps аnd medi-care. Tһеѕе аrе ѕοmе programs tһаt οftеn generate a few hundred calls еνеry day frοm those individuals wһο аrе seeking fοr һеƖр οr һаνе аny queries tο solve. Aѕ mοѕt government officials аrе busy tһеy mаy nοt gеt time tο actually converse wіtһ tһе callers аnd hence tһеy tend tο depend οn tһе inbound services tο listen tο tһе customer queries.

Lіkе tһе government agencies аnd tһе property managers, tһе satellite аnd cable television providers аrе mοѕt ƖіkеƖy tο look fοr inbound services. Wһy? According tο reports, a major half οf tһе American households include cable οr satellite television. Wіtһ tһе passing days, more аnd more people іn America аrе applying fοr tһе same. Tһіѕ аƖѕο means tһаt number οf calls wіLL gеt placed tο tһе service providers аnd οn a regular basis. Mοѕt οf tһеѕе calls аrе found tο include changing οf tһе package οr іn tһе ordering service. Wіtһ tһе exact technique аnd equipments іn рƖасе, tһе call centre agents wіLL bе аbƖе tο ѕtаrt up wіtһ tһе process.

18 Metrics to Test for Call Center Performance

2010-05-28T03:18:00.000-07:00

We, here in this article will talk about how a simple inbound call center evolves into a multi dimensional outsourcing service provider and so does its performance management problem as well. With advanced technology and brightest minds, call centers expand and upgrade themselves to the next level of services and quality. But we need to understand that as call centers, their services and outsourcing trend have changed; their performance management techniques need to be changed as well. To determine the standards and quality of working, we are presenting 18 performance measures in terms of services, quality of work, efficiency and profitability of their services and impact of their support on a business and its growth.
We are analyzing these mentioned performance measures in two aspects of work levels: one for ordinary call center and another contact for multi level support provider contact center.

Performance Management in terms of Service

The most important measures of performance are those associated with service. Some of these measures are the same for both a Outsourced Call Center and contact center, while some will need to change slightly to reflect the new types of transactions.

1. Blocks and Hurdles

Blocks and hurdles are indicated as time when customers are not able to get through the network due to insufficient facilities at work. The busy signal, dropped calls and other situations can be count as such. These obstruct the speed of performance and have adverse affect on quality of services. Also, it has negative effect on customer satisfaction.

Solution: Increase the server capacity. To estimate how many network facilities to be needed by you so that it does not get overloaded.

2. Abandon Ratio

The dropped calls do impact the retention and revenue generation of call centers. They understand that making your customer wait in queue to receive a call is not going to take you anywhere. Nonetheless, it cannot be eliminated properly. There are number of factors that affect this factor such as caller’s patience, the time of call and other alternatives of getting in touch like email or dropping a number to call back.

3. Self-Service

Now, when market is expanding and customer base of organizations are growing, their partner call centers are adopting new measures to attend them. Most of them are adapting self-service facilities that help customers to choose their operations and help menu by themselves.

In a contact center, the performance can be tracked by observing how many times help menu was accessed and how many times a live agent was called upon?

4. Service Level

Service level consists of determining the most average speed of processing a request. Some of Call Center Outsourcing Services and contact centers measure the response time taken by the customers as well.

5. Maximum Delay in Queue

Another measure of speed is to calculate the longest time a customer was made to wait. This is also referred as worst case.

Quality Measures

6. First Resolution Rate

The first call resolution is called one and done in call centers which is very critical and significant for the performance levels of a call center. The factors contributing in this performance measure are the team that handled the query, time of call and nature of query.

7. Rate of Transfer

The seamless nature of a process of a call center can be determined by the rate of transfer. How much part of the work was handled over or transferred to another team or person, also counts.

8. Communications Skills

How well versed customer support executives are and how they behave with customer can either bog down your reputation or soar it above the clouds. This quality measure can be monitored through observance, reviewing the performance and proper reporting channels.

10. Procedures Adherence

This helps to integrate value and customer satisfaction together. Your agents should be willing to stick to workflow and shifting of process. Also, they should feel obliged to call scripts because they are trademark of your call center and brand awareness tactic for your client.

Efficiency Performance Measures

11. Agent Occupancy

Agent occupancy is the time that an agent takes to attend the customer as compared to the times he is not taking the calls. This is an important measure to check and oversee how your agents are utilizing the working hours.

12. Staff Attrition

It is the time when your staff is not present to handle the flow of calls. It could be due to meeting times, break times or other non productive issues. It is an important measure as you can easily calculate that how many people you will need in a session so that no call would go missed.

13. Efficiency of Schedule

It is about just hitting the mark. Not less and not more, just the right number of people working for you. Understaffing or overstaffing both is extremely dangerous curves for an organization.

14. Adherence to Schedule

This performance measure is a calculation of number of working hours per schedule. It ascertains the productivity of a team and its agents.

15. System Availability

An agent is incapable of doing anything if his system is slow. The overall performance of an agent can be marred by a slow system. For instance, IVR is much used and coveted technique of every call center. It eases down the workload of agents by 50 percent, in case IVR is not functioning properly, an agent would have to devote time to understand the nature of the query and answering it accordingly.

Profitability Measures

16. Rate of Conversion

The success of call center depends on the growth of organization they work for. How many of leads have been translated into sales, is the measure of their real success and actual performance.

17. Up-Selling and Cross-Selling

How much value has you agents added to your clients. This value added services adds as an advantage along with generated revenue in the kitty of your client.

18. Costing as per one Call

This is a critical and bottom line measure to calculate the efficiency and workload stamina of a call center. How much effort, facility, money and labor you have put in one call and what you are getting back out of it can be a real eye opener shot for any call center which boasts about success.

Stay Healthy, Tips for Night Shift Working Call Center Agents

2010-05-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

When call centers boast of uninterrupted services we may not realize at the moment that the credit goes to the hard work, sleepless nights and efforts put in by call center agents. The results may be success and growth for your business, but for them they output in stress, weakness and continuous fatigue as human body structure doesn’t allow one to go against the rule of nature that is to work in nights and sleep in day. The habit of working at nights can be adapted and acclimatized to with some practice, however can be really distressed for agents. To be attentive, vigilant and focused on the work it is necessary that agents should take care of their diet and follow a healthy lifestyle. Some of the necessary points are mentioned below:-
1. Sleeping Beauty: – Get enough sleep. Doctors say that sound sleep of six to seven hours have the potential to distress you naturally. Also, it helps you to unwind and recharges you for the work of next night.

2. See while you eat: – Greasy, oily and overcooked food will make you sleepy and inactive. You need balanced diet to keep yourself awake and aware. Skipping meals or overeating is dangerous when your supervisors want your mind on high alert. If you won’t eat, you will feel inactive and your listening and speaking capabilities will suffer. You won’t sound cheerful to the customers.

3. Water Power: – On calls and during the duty, you speak a lot which causes strain on your larynx and throat. To relax them, you are advised to take lots of water and alcohol free fluids.

4. Exercise to Stay Fit: – Call center jobs are sedentary. You should be fit physically too. Being physically fit enhances the confidence of a person and increases the mental stamina as well.

5. Friends Forever: – Be friends with the peer members. Share your happiness and sorrows with the. They could be biggest motivator for you.

6. Sins and Virtues: – Caffeine and nicotine do help you to keep awake during long hours but as it goes, excess of everything is bad.

7. Relax and Reboot: – It is okay to sometimes to not take work seriously. To take some days off and roll a joint with friends at some hill station or near a beach side.

Working is good but joining work after two days of much needed vacation is fun!

Customer Management – A Crucial and Basic Job of Call Center

2010-05-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

Customers form to be the spirit of all business companies to grow and prosper. If you are engaged in selling any service or product then you would obviously want to reach your prospective customers. With the aim to increase the number of customers, most companies seek for the inbound call center help. Mainly, this is done to take best care of the customer management program.

If you’re in business and want to increase sales then you have to let all your potential customers know about your existence. Additionally, if some consumers are already using your service or product, then they might be experiencing some kinds of problem. In order to offer a fair idea of the product and to solve customer queries if any, the importance of an inbound call center service comes into picture.

Services catered by the inbound call centers are greatly recommended if you want to encourage the growth of your organization. It is the essential inbound services that can cut costs without affecting the management and the output adversely.

Often considered as a third-party service provider, the inbound call centers function as an offshore vendor. However, these service providers offer onshore quality job that enhances the base of business conversion. With the assured work at place, quality inbound services offer you the maximum return on the investment.

When will you have inbound call center services?

Each and every aspect of a business service like during, before and after purchase activities are skillfully handled by the third party vendors. If you want to sell a new service or product to your targeted customers, choose inbound services to increase overall sales. Let all your potential customers learn about you. If your existing consumers are using your service or product then they may have queries. In this regard, it will be important to handle after and during purchase services from an experienced team. For both situations, an inbound call center service is given utmost importance.

Services on offer to ensure best customer support

Inbound call centers provide great variety of services including product information, customer inquiries, order taking, complaints handling, technical help desk and more. Together with these, most companies also offer the toll-free hotlines and the online answering services. These services also include remote receptionist and secretary functions.

With the assured work at place, the inbound call centers offer you great return on the investments made. With the range of the customer care services, an inbound call center also handles call inflow effectively. From phone answering services like suggestions, feedback, complaints to messaging customer services, an inbound call center offer a quality-oriented customer support program. This is how it strengthens customer-company relationship.

Inbound services handle the growing frequency of the customer calls. These contact centers are also found to deploy the Customer Relationship Management Software. The CRM software not only handles the call volumes but it also tracks the output.

With the use of the inbound call center services, you will be in a position to supervise the negative and the positive response. This will also add to the efficiency of the customer care program. With improved complain handling and appropriate communication, you will be able to increase your customer base. On the whole, you will not only make your service or product popular but you will also ensure a competitive edge over the increasing competition.

Call Center Company to Pay $2 Million in Back Wages

2010-05-21T03:18:00.000-07:00

Teleperformance USA, a Salt Lake City-based call center company, has agreed to pay almost $2 million in back overtime wages to employees in Utah and nine other states.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced the settlement Wednesday following an investigation conducted by its wage and hour division in Salt Lake City. According to settlement provisions, back wages totaling $1,978,147 will be paid to 15,862 workers in the 10 states where Teleperformance agents provided over-the-telephone customer service for clients that include Sprint Communications, Verizon Wireless and Dell Computers.

In Utah, Teleperformance has a call center in Lindon and had one in Clearfield.

Labor Department spokesman Rich Kulchewski said the overtime violations stemmed from employees not being compensated for breaks that were less than 30 minutes and for time spent waiting for work areas to become available, even through their shifts already had started.

A few cases, he added, involved workers improperly classified as salaried employees exempt from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The act requires employers to pay time-and-a-half to workers who exceed 40 hours in a single week. It also sets the federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour.

Kulchewski said Teleperformance USA "cooperated fully and worked quickly and effectively to resolve all issues identified."

5 Reasons To Use Call Center Services

2010-05-18T04:42:00.000-07:00

Do you know what needs to be ensured to run your business efficiently? Don’t just get into details of answering phones. Using call center services help to keep yourself connected to your prospects. This allows 24/7 freedom at work, with increased emphasis on the other essential aspects of your growing business. However, a contact center is not all about answering calls. Watch out for the 5 great reasons to use call center services.

Bi-lingual customer service: Call center services help you communicate easily with the callers who may speak other languages other than English. Our bi-lingual customer services include all forms of traditional answering service applications and bi-lingual chat services.

Dedicated Customer Service: Call center services ensure all calls to be recorded during peak and off-peak periods to support customers in offering a variety of services.

Answering Services: The general call answering services help to assist business during afterhours as well as during business hours. Call center companies also offer call screening and offer employee wake-up calls and log-in services.

Outbound Call Handling: A call center follows-up leads, sets appointments and places follow-up survey calls to maintain quality assistance.

Staying Connected: Today’s call center services include email and chat support. These are services that ensure instant response to the emails and supervision of the customer inquiries and website forms. Companies offer documented tracking system and real-time notification of message delivery and its confirmation.

Disaster Information Call Center Got Activated by Minot Red Cross in South America

2010-05-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

The American Red Cross call center in Minot has been busy this month, helping handle calls from people affected by severe weather in the South.

The center operated by volunteers was activated in response to flooding in Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama, along with tornadoes in Kentucky and Oklahoma. Two local volunteers also have gone to Tennessee to help out.

The call center run by the Mid-Dakota Chapter of the American Red Cross is one of several around the country that handle calls during disasters. In recent years the Minot center has helped out during Hurricane Katrina, Southern California wildfires and the Haiti earthquake.

Why to Choose Indian Call Center Services?

2010-05-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

Indian call center organizations have developed as a potential outsourcing hub in all over the world. As more companies understand the growing importance of stressing on their core competencies, they are slowly turning to the Indian offshore call center service providers. This is one strategy that has helped companies to boost up the brands by targeting the customers.

The Indian call center organizations provide a wide variety of services that meet the diverse customer requirements. Whether you look for offshore customer inquiry calls or you are seeking for the technical desk support, the Indian call center organizations can offer you the best solution which takes good care of your individual needs.

With the main focus on specialized customer service, the Indian call center service providers have emerged as a front-runner in this competitive global outsourcing scene. Today, Indian firms are chosen for their extensive knowledge and experience of working with different customers evolving from different industrial sectors. Most corporate giants in the Europe, United States, Japan and the United Kingdom are leveraging on the proven expertise of the Indian service providers to minimize costs without even compromising on their quality standards.

Offshore call center outsourcing to the Indian firms brings about a range of benefits. Some of the most common advantages that companies offer are as follows.

Massive English –speaking manpower:

India includes a huge talent pool. The country has the largest pool of English speaking population that can offer first-time and speedy resolution for the customer calls.

Time zone advantages:

The difference in the time zones between Indian and the other countries like the United Kingdom and the United States makes India a viable option for most organizations looking to offer customers the 24/7 customer support and the help desk services.

Useful communication networks:

Due to privatization and the reduction in tariffs of the basic Internet services, cellular and telecom, India benefits from infrastructural advantages. It’s on the global companies to take full advantage out of it.

Favorable Government Policies:

Indian government policies offer favorable environment that have supported the growth of the ITES industry. Some positive steps taken by the call center firms are found to underline a commitment to offer quality service. These include:

Advanced resource allocation:

Leveraging upon the expertise of the Indian offshore call centers will help an organization to shift focus from the transactional activities and reporting. This will ensure the value-added business analysis.

Better access to the leading practices:

The Indian offshore call center service providers include the capability to offer a range of the offshore call center services as they offer exposure to work with the clients in several industries. They can offer companies the access to expert knowledge base.

Access to the leading practices:

The Indian offshore call center service providers include the capability to offer a variety of offshore call center services as they offer exposure to work with clients coming from diverse industries. They can offer companies the access to a dedicated knowledge base.

Value of Assessment Tools in Call Center Operations

2010-05-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

The quality and pace of Call Center Operations are dominated and threatened by two visible hindrances which are agent turnover and agent productivity. The reasons for such challenges in a call center are poor handling of the resources and lack of skills for specific job positions.

The realm of call center operation is a specialized management field with its own hypothesis assessments and terminology. A complete and well- bred understanding of these tools is necessary to satisfy customers and to accomplish organizational objectives.

Selection criterions and performance screening tools can be vital tools to reroute the performance map of a call center on the track of success. These tools directly correlate to productivity, performance and agent retention within the organization.

These measure the performance on the basis of candidate data such as:

1) What is their hidden potential?
2) What they have accomplished?
3) What are their professional plans for future?

According to their present capabilities and natural abilities, assessments and responsibilities are designed for every job applicant. For instance, a Call Center Outsource agent should be quick and extrovert while for a back office job in contact centers, an applicant should be sincere and meticulous. This unique assessment can predict the future capabilities of an applicant and can decide if the candidate willing to a long term commitment with the organization.

The assessments tools track the previous experiences, professional behavior, education or training, and work culture stimulation and project accomplishments. Resumes are screened out on the scores of education, work relevancy and experience. On the time of personal interview, the call centers management can add behavior-oriented interview questions to have an idea that how the applicant has handled a specific situation in the past and to analyze his skills. If a candidate wants to switch over to another job profile, this behavior questions based on past experience could be useful to determine his interests, preferences and other aspirations. These assessments tools can also decide whether the candidate is job fit or not. This helps the BPO industry to cut down the attrition rate and increase the level of performance by enhancing the job satisfaction.

Management of offshore call center should take a realistic trip down their premises and provide accurate job preview to the candidates so that they could decide about the offer carefully. The administration of contact centers should apply these assessment tips accurately otherwise badly crafted and poorly executed inappropriate application of assessments can draw negative impact on work atmosphere and results.

Moreover, a call center should emphasis on Can do and Will like to do along with technical and cognitive abilities.

Precis of Inbound Call Center

2010-05-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

An inbound call center deals with calls made by the consumer to obtain information, report an issue, or request for technical assistance. For inbound services, the subscriber or vendor typically provides a toll free number (800 or 888) prefix so the caller does not get charged in his/her calls. These types of services are crucial to most major businesses, such as utility companies and mail-order catalog firms, but entail a great deal of maintenance and cost for the business.

Call Centers India’s professionals undergo an intensive training program to provide world class customer support in the inbound framework. Some of the services CCI professionals successfully accomplish are:

Customer Services: An integral part of a company’s value proposition, these involve activities that enhance your customer’s level of satisfaction, with the aim of going beyond their expectations in fulfilling the customers’ technical and non-technical issues.

Order-taking: Order taking call center services let you maximize your resources by allowing customers to call a number to speak to a live person and ask questions. Our agents are well trained for handling such calls, taking orders and can additionally even up-sell or cross-sell in the process.

Sales and up-sells: Our agents are trained to market and sell additional products and services with higher value levels than those currently being purchased or subscribed to by the customer.

Save Time to Generate Money

2010-05-02T23:53:00.000-07:00

Expect the unexpected. We've heard it so many times but in today's competitive climate they're words to live by. Keep your business on point by call center outsourcing to get live operators. Examples of the unexpected could present with a surge in business or an unfortunate emergency. Good or not so good, live operators are the experts that you want in your corner.

You're juggling projects, deadlines, quotas and new hires. It's a maze of multi-tasking. Call center operators combine their telephone experience with their people skills to help you manage it all. When there's too much noise and clutter to effectively focus on important matters you have only to send your business calls forward to a call center operator service that gives the space you need at a moment's notice. With increased focus you achieve a task well done.

With the time you save by routing telephone calls to a call center operator service you are able to more easily manage pressing project deadlines. When an urgent situation arises you can't afford to drop the ball. You've spent months preparing for this meeting, and don’t want sudden problems demanding immediate attention.

Outsourcing to an inbound call center with live operators allows you to continue with your planned schedule of production meetings. The services of business call center operators strives to lend a sense of ease and manageability to your jam-packed agenda.

Outsourcing to live operators at a business call center is the equivalent of having an insurance policy for events that could spell disaster for you, your client, your company. In any case, something that is within your control to minimize. With a small investment, one that pays for itself the first time you avert an unwanted occurrence, call center operators become 24/7 members of your remote team of business call handlers. Strictly supervised call center operators, also available for bi-lingual callers, add to the value of your company's account package. To ensure uninterrupted service the call center operator system you seek should have a back up system as well as a back up generator to protect your data against any loss.

Don't let surprises stop you in your tracks. Using call center operators extends the practical experience and good business sense that brought you to your current success. Call center operators support and further your ongoing business endeavors promising professional stature and delivery.

Salida Call Center Shutdown Puts 147 Out of Work

2010-04-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

Almost 150 workers soon will join the ranks of the unemployed after a call center announced it would close June 1.

Stellar Relay operates the state-funded relay center, which helps the deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired communicate over the phone.

It has filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act with the California Employment Development Department saying it will close and lay off its 147 Salida workers.

The impending closure isn't surprising.

In February, the state awarded a new contract for the relay service to another vendor. And last month, a Stellar Relay spokeswoman said the call center would close if her company could not find new business opportunities by June.

These layoffs won't help Stanislaus County's unemployment rate, which was 19.2 percent in March, the most recent month for which statistics are available.

But the call center workers have skills that employers want, said Jeff Rowe, director of the Alliance Worknet, which is part of the Stanislaus Economic Development and Workforce Alliance.

Free Guide for Call Center Telemarketing

2010-04-28T03:33:00.000-07:00

Finding a job in a decision center is better than you actually would feel. Nowa positions experience such a top turnover that it makes it straightforward for someone armed with a tiny knowledge to get into one. Once you get that job, most agents will be ready to stay for life if they choose to. Because I said, turnover caters to be high so a decision center agent who sticks around generally gets promoted to call center supervisor or manager quicker than in most industries. Here also are three rapid guidelines for finding a great decision center job.

It is recommended that people visit and contact several providers before creating the final decision. The charge for call center outsourcing, decision center management, decision center software and other call center services differ according to the suppliers. It's very advisble to clearly understand the conditions and constraints of the agreements.

One of the most important aspects of a decision center is training and presentation. Such decision center management services provide help during getting the most suitable practices for such training, including studies of positioning, organizational aspects, technology issues, tool spread, individuals difficulties, and a process approach.

One of the most important aspects of a decision center is training and presentation. Such decision center management services provide help during getting the most suitable practices for such training, including studies of positioning, organizational aspects, technology issues, tool spread, individuals difficulties, and a process approach.

Call Center Furniture Beyond the 'Bullpen'

2010-04-22T05:22:00.000-07:00

When managers think about call center furniture they tend to think first in terms of the cubicles that the agents sit at when taking calls, also known as the "bullpen."

While the bullpen is the largest and arguably most critical component in any call center furniture "ecosystem," it certainly is not the only one - there are also supervisor stations, training rooms, break rooms, reception areas and executive offices to consider as well. Typically most companies coordinate the design of these areas with the design of the main call center floor.

When a company establishes a new call center, managers tend to think of the size of the bullpen first (in addition to any growth considerations). This, in turn, often drives the decision as to which building or facility will be leased. Beyond that there is the design of the bullpen itself: How many work stations and which configuration is going to work best?

Hire Expert Call Center for Your Business Needs

2010-04-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

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CallCentersindia.com will help you to get best and appropriate services to meet your entire business needs. We have experienced and qualified call center agents and they provide reliable, time bound, accurate, best quality call center services:

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4 Steps To Produce Good Results from Call Center Agents

2010-04-19T03:05:00.000-07:00

The atmosphere of call centers is directly proportionate to the productivity level of employees. Ignore this, and you can see the falling of your enterprise in front of your eyes. To keep the levels of adrenaline levels high and morale boosting, motivating your call center agents is mandatory.

The high level of positivity and motivation in call centre environment can bring an increase in productivity levels and customer focus. The agents work vigorously in more satisfied working ambiance because that means more happy workers which eventually lead to efficient working and results. The circle of work gets more streamlined and focused.

So, to increase the motivational level across the processes of your call centres and immune your organization against headaches of call centres such as attrition and retention, following steps are recommended:

1) Understanding the Reasons: As a manager, try to delve deeper into the problem. Being a supervisor in a contact center is not a sea side walk or bed of roses. Managing an assortment of various talents, different IQs and behaviors is tough. For instance, some of your agents can be overwhelmingly happy upon receiving compliments from clients and all teary eyes after some words with a harsh client. You cannot decide who would be your next caller but you can be an attentive and encouraging boss.

2) Understanding the Nature: Everyone has different capabilities, different nature and potentials. Understanding the core strength of your team can be of great help for your company.

3) Boosting Bonuses: Some kind of incentives on the basis of weekly or monthly performance can done wonder for your organization. This scheme can help you to induce the feeling of healthy competition among the team members. You can also give bonuses to members who work beyond the office hours without complaining.

4) Recognizing and Appreciation: Try to be in touch with your call centre team employees and develop bond with them. Talking to them nicely or a small 'hello' with their names can bring miraculous results for you. Generate a positive feedback for your team or occasionally drop some words of appreciation in their mailbox, results would surely come in.

In conclusion, motivating agents is the only way with you can bring results and money on board. The above mentioned points won't cost you penny but will sure guarantee maximized ROI not only for you but your clients as well.

Call Centers Doing Their Part To Make Every Day Earth Day

2010-04-13T00:34:00.000-07:00

Contact centers could be the key enabler in corporations' efforts to reduce the environmental impact of business, according to the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), now in its 25th year.

No doubt, green is red hot. Unfortunately, all the noise that individuals and businesses are making about their half-hearted efforts to be environmentally friendly is its own form of pollution. Going green seems to be more about "look at me" than "look what we need to do." True, some individuals and corporations do a lot in the way of conserving resources and energy, and those efforts are deserving of some recognition; but the truth is, all the measures that people and businesses are now taking - or, in many cases, merely say they are taking - to reduce their carbon footprint are the sort of measures that we should have been taking (and have been advised to take by environmental experts) for decades.

Experts agree that it's time to move beyond the politics and PR of environmentalism, and get down to what can and needs to be done. As a contact center professional, you may be thinking that a green initiative should be led by C-level execs. Or perhaps you are thinking that since the contact center doesn't pump out pollution or consume energy like manufacturing plants do, going green doesn't really pertain to your area of the business. But going green is everybody's responsibility, and there are myriad things a contact center can do in that regard.

Call Center is to Open by Bosch Group in RP

2010-04-13T00:08:00.000-07:00

GERMAN technology firm Bosch Group has invested 500,000 euros in the Philippines to put up a call center that will centralize help desk services for its Asia Pacific units, a spokesperson said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

The automotive and industrial electronics firm formed a new subsidiary--Robert Bosch Communication Center, Inc.--to run an information technology (IT) help desk starting January and should have as much as 200 seats by yearend.

The call center in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City will provide computer and network troubleshooting to some 30,000 Bosch associates in the region.

Leading Factors Why Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Projects Fail

2010-04-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

It can be said with confidence, we have found no one unique aspect is abundant enough to significantly increase the probability of a very successful CRM implementation; to achieve a solid return on investment; companies must do a thorough job on numerous fronts. The difference between victory and failure of a CRM system project is not divine intervention, but preferably a consequence of the way a corporation approaches the effort. The key to success is placed in the understanding and ability you and your implementation team brings to the project. If you know what genuine issues you are trying to solve, what potential mistakes you can make and how to avoid them, what technology can and cannot do to help you, you are much more likely to be a success.

A CRM implementation's disappointment to achieve a few goals may constitute an overall failure in some people's estimations, when as a whole, the implementation works as planned. The lesson here is clear: When establishing the objectives of a Customer Relationship Management package, companies need to be practical with a phased approach. Companies also need to order their Customer Relationship Management goals so that the crucial features indeed get completed.

Another important feature by far is when the new Contact Management Software system lacking a customer-focused Customer Relationship Management system strategy. Pick up almost any business, sales, or technical publication today and it is easy to see that there is a Customer Relationship Management system mad dash the purchase these systems. And as well there should be. In practically each and every industry, companies who are focusing on optimizing their sales process are recognizing the significant advantages of doing so. They are outselling their competitors by 60% or more, they are reducing their selling cycle time by as much as half, there sales methods are changing into more customer oriented processes, there sales teams are working more successfully across inter-enterprise and intra-enterprise boundaries, and they are performing all this at a dramatically lower cost.

In the modern business conditions, business managers when making plans about the direction of their company, have a lot more demands because of the hi-tech world we live in. The goal for making new investments in their firm is to hold on to that edge they have over the competition. As a result, some decisions may be rushed into which, possibly, may become poor decisions. That's concisely what may happen when speeding to put a new CRM system in place. So how do you prevent the wrong decision from being made? It's easy; ask your customer what "they" need in your new CRM system before you purchase.

Up front, a glaring disconnect for many organizations is a tendency to over-focus on "what and how" they want to sell. To get the new CRM system perfect, they really need to obtain a closer understanding of "what, why and how" their customers need to work with them, and even more important, how they what to buy from them.

Develop a customer-centric mindset: "The company's focus must be to have a far better understanding of the gap connecting their customer's/prospect's current state of how they do business with us and their targeted future state of how they want to do business with us."

The real reality of the situation is the customer is paying for the new Web-based Contact Management Software system, so the understandable end point is; develop the new CRM system to match the customer's requests.

Everybody Got a Hungry Heart

2010-04-06T04:55:00.000-07:00

India has lately become known for its high tech, call center, Bollywood movie and car industries. It draws the likes of Lindsay Lohan and used to draw the Beatles to its shores. If there is some sort of thing that requires brain power, it has been outsourced to India. Only a tiny fraction of the Indian population can have the opportunities that come form working in these well-paying jobs. The rest of the millions toil away in poverty, often unable to feed themselves on a regular basis. Because of not being able to feed themselves, they will never have the opportunity to seek out jobs that India is now famous. In fact, they will likely suffer another generation of stunted growth and development.

My graduate work at Cornell University was on the right to food, so this topic is of special interest to me. So, what prompted me to write this blog note that one of the largest English-language newspapers in India, the Hindustan Times is running a series on hunger in India called the “Hunger Project“. The aim is to use the investigative resources of the paper to highlight what is fast becoming a hidden problem especially in the elite and rarefied English language world that the media occupy. There are major problems with the articles so far on attempting the shock the reader with specific cases of severe malnourishment. But, it goes so much deeper than that when one-half of all children in India have some form of micronutrient deficiency stemming not from diet choices made in the country, but instead from a lack of access to safe and nutritious food. This lack of access to food is, according to General Comment 14 of the United Nations is a human rights violation. If you want to learn more of hunger worldwide, visit IFPRI or Grain, both non-governmental organizations doing great work around the right to food and its complex politics.

Legislative comm. OKs call center rules

2010-03-29T05:40:00.001-07:00

Unions and their allies in the General Assembly have cleared a first hurdle for legislation setting new rules for how telephone call centers are staffed.

The legislation, which tries to halt job losses, was denounced by phone companies that as an attempt to micromanage their business.

The legislation would require telephone company employees to identify the city, state and country where they work when they call customers for repairs or services or when they are called.

If the employee is not in Connecticut, the customer can be transferred to a call center in the state when possible.

In addition, the state Department of Information Technology, when buying products or services, would be required to give preference to telecommunications companies with a high percentage of service calls directed to in-state call centers.

Call Centers - Advantages to Businesses

2010-03-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

Call centers have become a known name to every industry. Be it customer service or appointment scheduling, surveying the response of latest product launch or a take on the products of your competitors, BPO industry have mastered each and every aspect very well. Their expertise, skills and IT techniques take care of all the needs of clients and their businesses. Their services make their clients stand apart in the clustered market of "me-too".

Call centres work as a centralized base. Their process is mediator free and streamlined to maximize the performance level and increase the quality across the process. They work as a platform for customers and your company and bring together the best of skills, manpower and expertise to handle the inbound and outbound call centre services. They are fully managed and fully equipped customer support unit qualifying in customer services.

Outsourcing call centre services can help you to leverage your business and save your time to concentrate on core business strategies and implement them to gain advantage in market. You do not have to handle documents management, hire a fully fledged in-house team and worry about their finances or set up infrastructure to accommodate them. You save your time for real business issue and in making up new plans to expand. Moreover, you can be in touch with your existing and potential customer base twenty-four hours and 7 days in a week!

Call center's customer service agents handle calls adeptly and satisfy every query by an appropriate response regardless of the inflow of the calls. They are well trained according to your product's specifications and are well aware of the market's trends. They can direct the simple conversation into a meaningful business talk and re-route your diverging consumer base to the loyal segment.

Every organization expects maximum return on investment to ensure profits and its smooth functioning in long run. These third party service providers offer you service at your convenience within your time and budget with enhanced quality and increased productivity. They work on three aspects namely function, location and volume. They could operate in-house for your or set their remote server which can be accessed from the desktop of your organization to track the performance. They meet customer service demands, fulfill information requests and provide technical aid to increase benefits and bring in on maximum return on investments.

Lifestyle of Woking People at Call Center

2010-03-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

Call centers have become a craze among youngsters. One could find a teenager to mid level professional working at call centers but as they say, all that glitters is not gold, call centre jobs could be lucrative and cumbersome at the same time.

The business process outsourcing industry mostly caters solution to numerous service related sectors such as airlines, pharmaceuticals, credit card companies, dentists, cellular service companies and cable and internet providers. Call centre could provide inbound call center services or outbound. In outbound process, an agent has to call a potential customer and inform him about the know how of a product whereas inbound services deal with incoming calls, emails or SMS services related to a product or services. An outbound call centre job could be tediously repetitious owing to the nature of job. The life at inbound BPO is challenging and demands much more attention and presence of mind. An agent has no idea of question; query or feedback a caller would talk about next. The process timings of contact centers are 24/7. Calling people with the same script, resolving their issues regarding a product and working at a 12 hours gap can drain out a person mentally, socially and physically. Therefore, a time to time rigorous training is conducted for them by their supervisors. Motivation camps, entertainment games, fun meetings are scheduled on a regular basis by the management.

BPO industry is known for their hospitality towards their employees and clients. For clients they save labor, costs and time while providing each and every facility to their staffs. Be it free lunch, a pick and drop facility, internal promotions on performance levels, in house gym or other entertainment facilities. Even if you are working as back office staff or an agent or in IT department of call centres, this job requires sitting and speaking for long hours and schedules. Moreover, customers can be really unpredictable. One needs to be really patient and polite while answering them.

The good news is that call centers hires people who are fresh, inexperienced and good in English. The starting salaries may vary but agents get hike very quickly on the basis of their performance. The compensation per project is also very hefty. So, with a job as an agent, one could be assure of financial security.

What's New in BPO and ITES Industry?

2010-03-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

Call Centers India gives you one roof BPOs and ITES industry solutions and related news. Call Centers India is a well known name in the ITES industry and offer you the best of result oriented services within your budget and timelines. Since our inception, we have done commendable job for clients, job seekers and entrepreneurs located across the globe. The website www.callcentersindia.com acts as a platform for Indian call center and offshore call center industries. This site aims to provide solutions to all business needs under one portal.

In the news section, you can find all the recent -do, updates and happenings related to call center industry. News related to new developments, findings, new businesses joining the industry is fully covered by Call Centers India. CCI acts as a discussion forum and provide call centers an opportunity to participate and interact.

Directory service of Call centers India offers accurate information about outsourcing industry on a single click. Under the call center category, you can find valuable information like Call centers equipment manufacturers, TASP, Call centers training centers.

We are better than the best in terms of technology and have successfully launched India's one and only end to end CISCO based IP network call center - Call Centers India which is based in a suburb of national capital territory region. This center has all the modern facilities and is situated in a huge campus spanning more than 11000 sq. ft and is proudly expanding at an exponential growth rate of 15% quarter over quarter.

Why 'India=Outsourcing'?

2010-03-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

Paeans have been written by experts and people who chose to outsource services. For the latecomers, let's add on more to this ever expanding and steadily growing outsourcing industry and backing up the kudos with relevant data.

Outsourcing is about delegating work responsibilities from back office, consumer support to software development to a third company under an agreement. Among the countries, which are famous as popular call center outsourcing hub, India has been named as the most reliable quality service provider. As per a recent survey, 28.1 percent of skilled and proficient man power resides in India. No wonder, that India hosts more than 41 percent of total outsourcing jobs and has become a power supplier of the services to suit diverse customer needs. India has got various national and geographical bonus points which add to its benefits:

1) Time: The time gap between India and west is optimum 12 hours. Indian call centers can adopt a 24 X7 schedule with more flexibility and easily.

2) Spoken English: India is home of vast multitudes of English speaking people. This helps them to understand their Western clients better and with an inherent ease.

3) Easy Policies: India Government deploys favorable and lenient policies to encourage the outsource business in India. The ministry of Information technology has set up an entire new division to cater the outsourcing IT implementation. State of the art Software Technology Parks and IP facilities have been set up. They emphasis on 'Single Window Clearance' to deal with compliance issues. Unlike other outsourcing hubs, Indian Government has allowed 100 percent foreign ownership in business process enterprises.

4) Better Communication: In comparison to other countries, basic facilities in India such as telecom, cellular, and internet services have lower tariff.

5) Better Resources: State of the art infrastructure, sharpest mind powers and technical prowess at reduced rates allow you and your company to grow and explore new horizons.

6) Leader in Practices: India has the experience, exposure and skills to tackle the demand of call centers services spanning various industry verticals.

With these advantages, strap on the Indian outsourcing ride as it guarantees to hurtle you through the roads of success. You get all range of services without compromising on quality and within your budget and allocated time.

Improving the Call Centers

2010-03-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

Call centers deserve all the praise and kudos to create almost a utopian state for organizations. Media, insurance, finance, accounting, healthcare etc. every sphere of industry has gained from the expertise and technology of BPO. They have saved time, enhanced the quality of customer service and increased the productivity when deployed.

Outsourcing has become a household name for everyone now. Call center operates on the basis of function, location and volume. The set up can be either in house or based at the remote server of service provider which can be accessed from your desktop. Call center leaves no stone unturned to meet customer service demands, information requests and technical aid which results in increased benefits and maximum return on investments. You save extra costs to hire a full team in house, to train them and setting up a complete infrastructure for them. You do not have to focus your energies and concentration on least important management issues. You spare efforts, time and money for real issues related to your business.

Large, small or medium businesses are taking help of contact centers to enhance the efficiency of services and getting in touch with their customer base. The nature of call centers business
is highly specialized and skillful. Be it for promotional product, service, business development or lead generation, call centers are better than the best method to take the route to advancement and success for any business and industry specific sphere. The employees of contact centers are highly skillful and proficient in English. Language, time and geographical boundaries cease to exist when it comes to call center services.

Generally contact centers can be classified in two major parts- Inbound and Outbound. Inbound call center specialize in answering responses related to product or services. Their services can minimize the need of skilled manpower with the help of technical support. The services provided by inbound centers are telephone communication, live chat, instant messaging, email and faxing. An outbound call center takes care of reach of your product through telemarketing. The advanced features such as Predictive Dialer, Call Tracking & Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Call Detail Record (CDR) Reporting, Call Detail Record (CDR) Reporting and Real Time Telemetry help to maintain the quality of services provided by offshore call centers.

Call Centers : Movitation at Work Atmosphere

2010-03-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

Call Center industry has been on an exponential growth rate and expanding from mere offering customers oriented support to much more comprehensive strategic restructuring service providers. From wide array of services, quality technology, infrastructure; call center outsourcing has evolved in a larger than life way but the only thing which has remained in- situ is their backbone that is their customer representatives. Call center deploys highly qualified and skilled manpower to ensure seamless operations. Strict schedules, rigorous disciplines and pressurized atmosphere lead to the attrition of agents. Keep them motivated and dedicated long enough is what call centers struggle about most.

To keep your workforce on the wheels and motivated try these sure shots success formulas:
1) Give them their due recognition for their work. This will help them to improve their work and develop a healthy competition. A pat on back or just two words ‘Well done’ can make them loyal worker. A face to face approach or personal ‘Thank You’ has magical aura around it.

2) A candid atmosphere and freewheeling no holds barred conversation between supervisors and agents can vent up work frustrations and negative feelings. Timely sports camps can also be good getaways for your agents.

3) Call centers offer great compensations and salary to the employees. To prevent the job hopping tendency, your invested money and efforts, you should develop a framework of consistent quality approach. Cultivate their skills and give them opportunities to grow professionally.

4) Improve and fill the gaping holes the communication between management and agents. Try to implement a communication draft where problems, issues and tiffs should be addressed and solutions encouraged. Make team meetings regular and fun things.

5) A supervisor should know the positive and negative traits of his team. He should try to bring the strengths more strongly. They should be part of annual management surveys and goals.

6) The last but the most important part is to deal with your always unmotivated staff members who can ruin the overall efforts you have done. Try to talk to them and figure out the key problems. Force them to make a decision about a project. This can help them to realize the responsibility a work place holds.

Convergys Laying Off Hundreds of Call Center Employees

2010-03-08T01:39:00.000-08:00

An American call center company located in Ottawa is slowly laying off hundreds of workers.

Convergys tells CTV News, 600 employees remain but another 400 will be cut by April 18th.

The company is moving the work to the Philippines.

Operations manager Paul Carr says there is no sign of a new contract in Ottawa to provide work for their employees.

They have been holding job fairs at their Heron Road offices where other call center companies have come to see who they might hire.

The city of Ottawa recently passed a motion urging city staff to see what could be done to keep the jobs in Ottawa.