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

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

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

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

Remote call forwarding for enterprises with local business branches might become a thing of the past. Verizon Business, today, announced a new service called Verizon VoIP Inbound with Local Originations.

The new voice-over-Internet-protocol service from Verizon allows businesses to create a local face using a local phone number that can direct overflow calls as needed to off-site (centralized) call centers adding a new level of personalization to businesses handling customer calls. "Enterprises may want to demonstrate that they have a local presence even though they use contact centers," explained Alla Reznik, Director of Global Contact Centers for Verizon in an interview with FierceVoIP.

Generally prior to this new service, companies would use the same toll-free number for all their branches, and if a company wanted to have a local number presence they had to employ a work around using remote call forwarding to route to a toll-free number and call center. "Remote call forwarding has been used very widely, to the point where managers didn't realize how inefficient it is," said Reznik. With the old remote call forwarding, enterprise customers must design the route, pay for local calls, pay for the toll free charges as well as other charges.

Additionally, the new service integrates with Verizon IP Interactive Voice Response, can deliver customer calls to either traditional or IP-based contact centers, and by being a network solution it can stay up in the event of local network outages.

Although the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector is still growing briskly after 10 years, labor supply remains to be a big concern of the industry.

A Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) study shows call centers have an attrition rate of 19 percent, with an employee acceptance rate of just 5 percent. Increasing attrition rates, higher demand for complex skills, and industry growth have intensified the demand for more specialized training services.

“The demand for skilled workers has risen as the BPO industry has become increasingly complex. We have seen training become a key differentiator among BPOs, as it drives talent acquisition, retention, and development,” says Jon Kaplan President of TeleDevelopment Services (TDS).

“We believe that successful companies in the industry are characterized not just by their technology, service offerings, and clients, but also by the skills of their workforce. As a BPO support services firm, we recognize our role in the development of a qualified workforce,” he explained.

Source : Manila Bulletin