Recession Shifts Renewed Attention to U.S. Call Centers
3:55 AM
The recession is changing what companies want in outsourced customer care.
Retailers, telecom and cable TV companies and financial-services giants want more than just to save money by sending call-center work overseas. Now they’re asking outsourcing companies to generate revenue by getting callers to upgrade services or buy more of them.
The trend is leading outsourcing firms to grow aggressively again in the United States, after a decade in which call-center jobs migrated offshore by the thousands.
Instead of adding new call centers in low-cost cities and towns, clients are asking outsourcing companies to use “virtual” call centers employing older, more experienced operators working from home.
Englewood-based TeleTech (NASDAQ: TTEC) employs 45,000 people in 17 countries, but its fastest-growing hiring niche in recent months has been at-home work in the United States, Hand said.
That’s because client companies are more consciously targeting how their customer-care calls are handled during the recession, industry executives say.
High-value customers’ calls are increasingly staying in North America, where costs may be higher than offshore, but at-home operators can generate revenue. Simpler and lower-value tasks, which don’t present sales opportunities, are being routed to offshore operators in larger numbers than ever.
The transition has caused TeleTech some difficulty.
Its revenue declined 17 percent in the first three quarters of 2009 — from $1 billion in 2008 to $887 million this year. Most clients ended 2008 by demanding higher volumes of cheaper offshore services from TeleTech or, in some cases, reducing their outsourcing work. TeleTech laid off hundreds of people worldwide, including several at its headquarters, where more than 500 people work.
“As work moved offshore to lower-cost labor markets, we necessarily had to lower our costs,” Hand said.
TeleTech expects growth to return in coming months, she said.
That’s true elsewhere in the industry, and largely as a result of at-home services.
Denver-based StarTek Inc. (NYSE: SRT) will officially start at-home customer care using U.S. operators in the first quarter of 2010, CEO Larry Jones said. It’s been testing the service for months.
StarTek employs nearly 9,000 people, opened its first overseas call center in the Philippines a year ago, and since has opened a second offshore site in Costa Rica to meet the needs of cost-cutting clients in telecom and cable. It now offers services from 18 North American centers, plus its two offshore.
StarTek, like many other call-center companies, opened and closed call centers in rural areas regularly as it hopscotched around the United States and Canada, in a perpetual search for low-cost but able employees.
Jones believes the growth of domestic at-home call centers is a permanent shift away from that.
“StarTek may never again open a new brick-and-mortar call center in North America,” he said.
Clients want at-home services because that attracts operators who understand a caller’s needs and spot opportunities to make a sale — not just handle a scripted encounter, he said.
“It’s finding someone who can connect with a customer and close a deal,” Jones said. “Add a foreign accent or difficulty connecting personally because of a difference in cultures, and you’re not going to make a sale.”
Source : Bizjournals.com
Retailers, telecom and cable TV companies and financial-services giants want more than just to save money by sending call-center work overseas. Now they’re asking outsourcing companies to generate revenue by getting callers to upgrade services or buy more of them.
The trend is leading outsourcing firms to grow aggressively again in the United States, after a decade in which call-center jobs migrated offshore by the thousands.
Instead of adding new call centers in low-cost cities and towns, clients are asking outsourcing companies to use “virtual” call centers employing older, more experienced operators working from home.
Englewood-based TeleTech (NASDAQ: TTEC) employs 45,000 people in 17 countries, but its fastest-growing hiring niche in recent months has been at-home work in the United States, Hand said.
That’s because client companies are more consciously targeting how their customer-care calls are handled during the recession, industry executives say.
High-value customers’ calls are increasingly staying in North America, where costs may be higher than offshore, but at-home operators can generate revenue. Simpler and lower-value tasks, which don’t present sales opportunities, are being routed to offshore operators in larger numbers than ever.
The transition has caused TeleTech some difficulty.
Its revenue declined 17 percent in the first three quarters of 2009 — from $1 billion in 2008 to $887 million this year. Most clients ended 2008 by demanding higher volumes of cheaper offshore services from TeleTech or, in some cases, reducing their outsourcing work. TeleTech laid off hundreds of people worldwide, including several at its headquarters, where more than 500 people work.
“As work moved offshore to lower-cost labor markets, we necessarily had to lower our costs,” Hand said.
TeleTech expects growth to return in coming months, she said.
That’s true elsewhere in the industry, and largely as a result of at-home services.
Denver-based StarTek Inc. (NYSE: SRT) will officially start at-home customer care using U.S. operators in the first quarter of 2010, CEO Larry Jones said. It’s been testing the service for months.
StarTek employs nearly 9,000 people, opened its first overseas call center in the Philippines a year ago, and since has opened a second offshore site in Costa Rica to meet the needs of cost-cutting clients in telecom and cable. It now offers services from 18 North American centers, plus its two offshore.
StarTek, like many other call-center companies, opened and closed call centers in rural areas regularly as it hopscotched around the United States and Canada, in a perpetual search for low-cost but able employees.
Jones believes the growth of domestic at-home call centers is a permanent shift away from that.
“StarTek may never again open a new brick-and-mortar call center in North America,” he said.
Clients want at-home services because that attracts operators who understand a caller’s needs and spot opportunities to make a sale — not just handle a scripted encounter, he said.
“It’s finding someone who can connect with a customer and close a deal,” Jones said. “Add a foreign accent or difficulty connecting personally because of a difference in cultures, and you’re not going to make a sale.”
Source : Bizjournals.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Post a Comment