Ryla call center aims for more than 600-job target
6:43 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
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.' "
Bharti Airtel announces African call centers
5:48 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
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.
Working in a Call Center: Benefits with Limitations
3:04 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
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.
Why to Choose Indian Call Center Services?
3:00 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
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.
Save Time to Generate Money
11:53 PM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
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.
Penney to Close VA Call Center
4:18 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
As its call center volume continues to dwindle, J.C. Penney is shuttering another facility. The general merchant will close its call center in Midlothian, VA, on March 26, according to company spokesperson Tim Lyons.
The Chesterfield County call center in employs 252 associates, who largely fill part-time positions, Lyons says. “Our call center network primarily handles incoming phone orders and customer service for our catalog business,” he says. “It's closing due to a continuing decline in call volume as customers continue to migrate to shopping online.”
J.C. Penney announced in November it will stop publishing its semiannual “big book” catalog. Instead, it plans to focus on specialty catalogs, and invest more in its Web store and digital services and social media.
Online orders already generate more sales volume than the paper catalogs, Lyons says. J.C. Penney’s online sales were about $1.5 billion in 2008.
The retailer shut down a catalog call center in Carmichael, CA, a year ago. It had closed a contact center in Scranton, PA, in 2008. Lyons says J.C. Penney has four other call centers--in Columbus, OH; Pittsburgh, PA; Grand Rapids, MI; Albuquerque, NM.
Spanish-Speaking Call Center Agents Abundant In Mindanao
3:33 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
After the native language Tagalog, fluency in English as a second language has been the edge of Filipino call center agents compared to other outsourcing destinations for voice-related services. In fact, in recent years more and more call center companies have found that moving operations to a Philippine site provided better value for the customers and increased the quality of their interactions with customers solely because Filipinos have a better understanding of American culture and more neutral-sounding accent compared to other nationalities. Because the Philippines had been a former commonwealth of the U.S., the English language has been integrated in the educational system and for a long time been the medium of instruction for schools.
The Spanish language, although still taught in some schools and universities, have become less popular and only taught as an elective subject. After centuries of colonial occupation by Spain, many Filipinos back in the early 20th century felt getting rid of the Spanish language in society is a great way to promote nationalism.
However, those centuries of Spanish rule made a lasting mark in the Filipino culture particularly in language and more specifically dialects in the Southern part of the Philippines. A Spanish-based creole language called Chavacano is still widely spoken by millions of Filipinos in the south particularly in the Zamboanga province which makes them a perfect destination for outsourcers looking for Spanish-speaking call center agents.
BPO and call center companies in Mindanao mainly in Davao city have steadily grown their business solely due to the fact that operational costs in the southern part of the Philippines are considerably lower compared to a more Metropolitan area like Manila. However, my gut instincts tell me only a handful to none of these organizations has taken advantage of the "Spanish" speaking talent pool of the Chavacanos.
Zamboanga City, a predominantly Christian province has its share of well-qualified college graduates who are tri-lingual (Tagalog, English and Chavacano) with focus being on the Chavacano language it is their local dialect. Apart from comparably lower cost to operate in this part of the world. The Chavacano language, with most of its dialect words derived from Spanish, should give Zamboanga call centers an edge in landing contracts with companies requiring a pool of Spanish-speaking call center agents.
Call Center Efficiency through Improved Customer Categorization
1:40 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
If you’re an inbound call center manager, you can probably relate to the following customer “types:”
There’s the “Pokey Peruser,” the person who dials into the call center all the time, but never buys anything. This customer poses a serious challenge for the call center because they tend to eat up gobs of agent time with trivial, sometimes even downright silly, questions -- or sometimes just to “chat” with someone -- yet there’s no way to determine whether they will eventually, one day, start buying and turn out to be a worthwhile customer.
Then there’s the “Sporadic Spender.” Like the “Pokey Peruser,” the “Sporadic Spender” also tends to dial in with a lot of questions – yet they only buy something once in a blue moon – raising the question, how much costly live service should be devoted to this customer?
Then there’s the “Surging Shopper.” This is the customer that buys occasionally, yet based on their demographic could potentially become a very good regular or “premium” customer. You want to provide this customer with prompt and knowledgeable service, because they could one day be one of your best customers.
Then there’s the “Champion Customer.” This is the loyal and satisfied customer who always comes back for more. Thus they deserve the highest quality customer service you can provide, so as to ensure they remain loyal.
read more......
How to Motivate Your Call Center Agents at a Low Cost
2:20 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
Working as a contact center agent can be highly demanding, challenging and dynamic. Hence call center stress is very common. Meeting strict deadlines and maintaining quality standards, handling enormous number of call volumes and satisfying angry and frustrated callers - yes, call center agents manage all of this and more. All of these job requirements also need to be met in real time and within the rules and confines of the call center.
So, now the question is how you keep your contact center employees motivated and happy. Workplace motivators include both monetary and non-monetary incentives. Both are equally important but in this article we talk about non-monetary incentives and how they can be used to reduce attrition and keep your call center agents happy and satisfied. It is a lot easier to motivate with money, but the motivation tips mentioned below are much longer lasting and can help transform the organization:
Mentoring and Coaching - It will be helpful to have a coaching plan in place for the employees. Spending time and coaching employees will make them feel more involved with the organization. It will help good employees, become better.
Praise in public- correct in private. Nothing in the world replaces genuine praise. We often carry a notion in which we believe that praising an employee might lead to distraction and over-confidence. Make praises behavior specific, sincere, timely and public (whenever possible)
Be a psychologist. Everyone in your team has different personalities - adapt accordingly. See things from their perspective and communicate freely. Be what you are and you will see agents open up to you.
Delegate and share responsibility. Give representatives an opportunity to supervise. By rewarding your employees with more responsibilities you will involve them in the organizational web and boost employee recognition.
360 form of evaluation. Allow employees to evaluate you as well.
Get the feedback from them and improvise on the points they mention. Make feedback and evaluation a two-way process. If you act to the feedbacks you receives, so will the employees. Set an example.
Increase Hierarchical Positions for Motivation. Stretch the organizational chart by adding more levels of management to your call center structure. Add up to 5 or may be 10 levels to effectively manage all agents. This will also encourage the process of promotion from one level to another.
In the rough times of economic crisis, you must keep your employees happy in order to maximize your companies return on investment and to reduce attrition or turnover rates. A combination of both monetary and non-monetary incentives will keep your call center agents motivated. More importantly, try concentrating on incentive programs such as recognition, appraisal, collaboration and promotion. It will make the employees happy and ultimately your organization will prosper.
How To Succeed In Setting Up A Contact Center?
3:29 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
Call centers Services are something outdated. In this consumer-driven market and with the convenience of high-speed Internet, the clients are no longer choosing call centers for solutions. They are impending for contact center solutions by means of email, texts, IM etc. Getting calls from clients and giving answers is no longer sufficient to keep your clients loyal to you, and it is time to be more pro-active in your dealings to maintain customer relationships and give solutions to their problems for making any sales deal.
The global community for giving contact center solutions is increasing furthermore offshore outsourcing to the India has manifested into a major globalization of this industry with considerable cut in prices. If you are thinking of building a prosperous business, you’ll require having the right location, the right people to man your center, the superb facilities, the capital to invest, and the right business intelligence software to make a good impact among your potential clients.
What You Need for Having Your Own Contact Center:-
People:-
In order to giving contact center solutions, this is the nearly all significant feature when you’re considering setting up your own offshore contact center. The necessary factors would be to decide the correct location and exploring the pool of workforce available there. You should also seem at the population in the area with the cause being that a location in Asia would provide you with the service with less labor or general pay expenses compared to the United States or any of the European countries. While you study to pool of workforce at hand, there, you should be considering the education level of the people available in that locale. India is a large country with accessible skilled people and also the Philippines.
Cultural Affinity:-
One of the vital reasons to decide locations in the Philippines and India is that most of the population in these two countries is good familiar with the English language, and these two countries also have cultural affinity being under British and American rule respectively in the earlier period. As long as spoken English is concerned, while mutually countries are well conversant with English there are some differences in the pronunciations with Indians swaying a bit towards the Continental side and the Filipinos are versed in American English and culture. This is crucial if you are in look for of giving contact center solutions from offshore points.
Low Cost:-
For a contact center business the next most crucial part is cut-down price significantly. Building contact centers in the Philippines and India would certainly decrease staffing cost, and with the right business logic in place, you may be saving more cutting down on idle time of the agents. The supposed labor expenses and low salary in these two countries have fascinated several organizations to build up business in giving contact center solutions.
Call Center Definition
1:55 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
A call center or Call Center is from the standpoint of the company, a deal that effectively combines voice communications and data processing technology to enable an organization to implement critical business strategies or tactics for the purpose of reduce costs or increase revenues.
Physically, a call center is a place where a group of people manage large columns of incoming and outgoing calls for purposes of sales, marketing, customer service, technical support or other specialized business activity. The group of people are operators or agents, which are equipped with data terminals or telephone terminals and PCs from a private telephone exchange (PBX).
CCI, Call center Service company providing its quality services with the necessary elements for, with a centralized telephone, establish mutually beneficial relationships with customers, suppliers, etc.
Texting The Call Center
2:38 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
SMS is among the most ubiquitous communication tools on the planet-three billion users worldwide according to Portio Research-but banks are struggling with how to fold it into their operations. Today, many banks offer text-based alerts around account balances, but two-way interactions are generally limited to transactional information; and capabilities have not progressed much in the past year.
Now there are signs that consumers are growing disenchanted. A recent Javelin study forecasts a big slowdown in the number of new households receiving SMS alerts as they conclude that alerts fail to deliver timely information, are too generic and are too difficult to tailor. "Consumers are trying it and not finding it as helpful as they'd hoped. Customers want SMS, but they want it better," says Mark Schwanhausser, a research analyst at Javelin. For the institution to entice customers and make the most effective use of SMS, Schwanhausser and other analysts say banks need to transform texting into a two-way engagement.
Stepping into the SMS fray last month was SoundBite Communications, which unveiled a novel SMS platform that offers improved customer service by tying SMS to the call center. Rather than calling a customer support center, with SoundBite's Contact Center Text Messaging Solution a consumer can send a text message using a keyword and five digit telephone number, known as a short code. When the consumer sends a text message, the SoundBite Dialog Engine reviews the message using a set of predefined business rules. Based on the results, the solution automatically responds with a personalized text message. If the consumer's text message warrants special attention, the message can be routed to a customer support agent who can access the entire message history and respond using the SoundBite Agent Text Portal. The entire text message conversation can transition from agent to automation and vice-versa, depending on the consumer's most recent response.
Executives at SoundBite say that consumers may be frustrated with banks' current SMS capabilities, but texting remains their preferred means of communication. According to a survey commissioned by SoundBite through Chacha.com, 52 percent of respondents prefer customer support via texting, while 35 percent preferred voice. One big reason is that texting doesn't require a customer to wait on hold, says Alan Berrey, vp of market development at SoundBite.
George Peabody, director of Mercator Advisory Group's emerging technologies advisory service, agrees that SoundBite's offering is a potent new tool for organizations that want to leverage consumers' communications preferences and the ubiquity of the mobile phone. "They're taking the experience with Web chat and opening it up to a broader audience because of SMS's huge user base." Meanwhile, George Tubin, a senior research director at TowerGroup, says two-way SMS make enormous sense. "Alerts now are static but useful. But to take action I've got to go to the bank branch or make a call."
That said, SoundBite could have a tough go of it on two fronts. First, there are IT budget concerns. Second, SoundBite must muscle into a competitive field. ClairMail, Sybase, and M-Com are just some of the big players in the space. All three offer a mobile baking solution that integrates Web browser, applications and text messaging, and some analysts wonder if SoundBite's text-only approach is viable even if its customer service focus is unique. Schwanhausser says it's critical that banks integrate all three modalities into their mobile offering "because that's what customers demand." And Red Gillen, a senior analyst at Celent, adds that "the market is pretty saturated. If [SoundBite] is serious they need all three." However, Peabody is not so certain. While banks will need to offer all three modalities, he says it's not clear that they must get all three from the same vendor.
Some analysts also question the wisdom of linking SMS to the call center at all, arguing that text messaging will increase the costs of the call centers and reduce mobile banking's ROI. The purpose of mobile banking is to avoid the call center, says Nick Holland, a senior analyst at Aite Group. "The beauty of mobile banking is it disintermediates people. If anything call center text messaging is a step backward." Peabody again counters that banks should not think of communication channels in either/or terms. The goal is to communicate with the customer as effectively as possible.
Source : American Banker
What is Call Center?
4:28 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
The definition of Call center, usually targets the area of technology, ie, structure, design of hardware and software and the functionality that is provided through the systems. Specify what is a call center goes beyond a computer system or cutting-edge technology, although it is important to facilitate human work, does not predominate. The human being is the important element in the definition we propose.
Although our aim is to sensitize the definition of Call Center from the technological standpoint the humanistic point out some definitions raised by the companies that offer this service.
An important element, as we noted at the outset, is to be human. People who answer calls in a call center operator are called (a) or telemarketer, as carried out not only answer the calls, also have the ability to advise and address any concerns of users. Operator (a) is the term used for the service offered by the company and we want to avoid confusion with the person performing the service.
A Call Center is composed of human beings with feelings, thoughts and proposals to be heard and evaluated. Our customers should not be considered a cold statistic, your call goes beyond a question, complaint or grievance, is a vital input for development and strengthen the business.
Call Center Outsourcing for Today's Businesses
1:21 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
Many successful businesses today have found a way to improve customer service and reduce overall costs by having call center operations run through an outsourced provider.
Call center outsourcing helps businesses to better serve their customers with skilled agents that guarantee high service quality levels. Also, call center outsourcing, can be beneficial for businesses looking to succeed in Business 2.0.
outsourcing call center activities can help a company to “hold an edge in the market.” For example, the incorporation of social media networking has helped many companies today to improve their operations.
Also, with more and more consumers having wireless services, call centers can utilize the ability to connect with customers whenever needed to lower abandonment as well as increase call satisfaction.
In addition to addressing the new market, call center outsourcing via a hybrid approach allows even companies unwilling to push all of their customer contact outside to select calls to be handled in-house.
Frontier Airlines' New Mexico Call Center Closes
1:16 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
Frontier Airlines' call center in southern New Mexico is closing Tuesday and 11 of its workers are moving to Denver as the airline consolidates operations under its new ownership.
Frontier was acquired out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October by Indianapolis-based Republic Airways Holdings Inc., which also recently bought Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines.
The shutdown of the Frontier reservations center in Las Cruces, N.M., was announced Sept. 28. At the time, Frontier said the shutdown would "eliminate an operational duplication that exists with our Midwest Airlines partnership."
About 100 workers were still employed as of Tuesday at the Las Cruces center, which opened in 2000. That's down from a high of as many as 200.
"People have continued to work hard. We have a remarkable group of people," Ruben Servando Valdez, who has managed the facility since it opened, told the Las Cruces Sun-News. "I'm blessed to have worked with these people."
The Las Cruces employees were offered jobs elsewhere with the company. Eleven have accepted and will move to Denver, Servando Valdez told the Sun-News, but he said he plans to stay in the area.
Source : Bizjournals.com
12:33 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
Call centers services are must required support for any business. A call center is nothing but a collection of workers who handle inbound,outbound phone calls of your customers. In call center outsourcing, your phone calls will be managed by any other outsourcing organization who already has fully equipped set up and well qualified customer service representatives.
Call centers offer business services that typically include answering services, helpdesk support, customer care support, inbound/outbound call center services, order collection, sales lead qualification and more. Plus point is that most of the big call centers provide their services in multi-lingual way. The use of call centers can increase your productivity.
2:22 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
Call Center Outsourcing - Grow with New Heights of Success
Outsourcing means you hiring a person or company which can do your work as per your guidance and standards. Basically this situation comes when you are not able to handle that work or want quality services without spending your precious time in that work process.
Outsourcing is popular in west countries, by this you will get two benefits first one is you don't have to expense that much amount of money and second one is you are not require to spend time to checklist the activities and the work will be done in best quality.
B2C Telemarketing and Generation of Money
3:11 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
There are several ways to generate money. Your company may employ telemarketers (this is internal generation of money). Their job will be contacting potential and qualify leads so your sales agents can take over. Going this route costs money, you may need to pay benefits, have a supervisor of lead generation and pay employees if they are generating leads or not.
A second possibility is to outsource their work to a lead generation call center. Call now focuses on large contract home workers to make this work on a contract basis. Generally, the contractor is paid only for leads generated. These contractors are experienced and often receive additional training of call center as well.
The systems that make modern day can generate many leads in a short period. More efficiency means more savings for your business. You can stop the campaign and resume as needed, which eliminates having to hire and to fire employees. Another advantage of outsourcing your lead generation is that it allows their employees to focus on other aspects of their work instead of training new employees. Some call centers will give a certain number of time value of the work for free to let him see for yourself what he can do for your company. You can be sure they will do a good job, and want to keep your business.
Call Center, Temporary work in Fashion
3:00 AM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
"The benefits that are more attractive to many people: do not need work experience, working time and can earn extra money with commissions from sales. But not everything that glitters is gold. Among the disadvantages are the pressure achieve a goal of selling, dealing with the aggression of the people they call, perform a monotonous task, take time to relax or be controlled to the bathroom and in some cases have come to a hearing by the use of headphones to work. "
These and other concepts arising from the repetition of "bias" in reference to the practice as in call centers, at any rank you want to analyze.
As in previous occasions, I am not saying that all call centers are perfect and respectful of the value and conditions of the people they employ, but I think there is a tendency to abuse a stereotypical, old and far from the reality of call centers today. Strong signal that we are working in this industry still have much to learn to better communicate our strengths and demonstrate to society (and the press) that the industry provides employment to touch all generations, in good working conditions climate, respect and according to international quality standards, among many other benefits.
Benefits of Call Centers
10:31 PM
Posted by CCI - Call Centers India
Call center is a phone center which provides help desk, customer support, lead generation, emergency response, and telephone answering service, inbound response and outbound telemarketing services for a company and in mean time its a much needed part.
The market of Call centers as increased rapidly in recent years, in whole world. As a result of the same competition is also increased. By providing customer services, tele calling, backend, technical support, transactional process etc. Call Centers help the company to get maximum target. These services help to tune quality programs to promote higher and steady levels of customer satisfaction
Benefits of Call Center Services :-
* CallCenters not only can keep existing clients satisifed, but they are also capable to generate new clients for company.
* The major benefit is that clients can speak to a person directly at first time without any hold. Since everyone hates having to be placed on hold or told to call back. Satisfaction of clients greatly increase because of call centers services.
* There are many copanies all who do the business with clients all around the world. Many Call Center representatives are multilingual. They may be able to help new foreign clients. It is also possible to have a 24-hour Call Center service to support clients that are from different regions of the world and in different time zones. So another benefit of having a Call Center Service for business is that they could increase the number and type of clients.
* Call centers have range of relevant equipment so they are able to provide the required equipment to their call center operater thus cost will reduce by this way.
* Make the most out of your investment and get a nice return by investing in your time wisely. Call Center services will hopefully free up more for you to focus on the work you like and take more time for marketing and advertising, to improve sales and projects.
* Call centers representative are capable to answer the calls professionaly by their intelligence and they can provide required information to callers easily.
* Call Centers can provide the status and all data of calls such as percentage of hang-ups on answering machines is significantly greater than a live answering service. And they also record all the calls as well.
* Some companies managed Call Center services based on the Cisco solution. CISCO provide great features to call centers and they can trace more and more data by using CISCO. IP-based customer interaction networks are enabling companies to measurably improve response time and increase customer satisfaction while at the same time reducing agent costs and improving network efficiency.
These above-mentioned benefits can show up summary about the importance of Call Centers. Call Center services are more beneficial and profitable for all type of business.






