Contact Center Solutions: newer version of call centers

Contact center is a wider term used for the call center or it can be said that it's newer name given to the call center. In modern contact centers, work is no more restricted to call handling as e-mail, instant messaging and online communication is also a part of it now. To ensure the business success of clients, contact center solution assists the client in promotion and selling of products. Considering the importance of new sales opportunities, the solution providers give prompt response to customer’s inquiry.

To enhance sales challenges and improve market share, contact center solutions are incorporated with modern marketing tools that are offered by experts. Today, offering World-class customer relationship management services, contact center solution provide the buzzword for success.

To provide perfect business contact center solutions to its client, availability of efficient services is a must. Like video, voice and text are key requirements for successful operation. Considering the importance of productivity and profitability, renowned solution providers provide wide array of services to its client. Well, call center solution services are available around the clock to meet the essentials of international market. Call center makes efficient use of intelligence survey to promote product presence in the market tools that are offered by experts. Today, offering World-class customer relationship management services, contact center solution provide the buzzword for success.

To provide perfect business contact center solutions to its client, availability of efficient services is a must. Like video, voice and text are key requirements for successful operation. Considering the importance of productivity and profitability, renowned solution providers provide wide array of services to its client. Well, call center solution services are available around the clock to meet the essentials of international market. Call center makes efficient use of intelligence survey to promote product presence in the market.

With the contact center solutions, it helps to gain huge reduction in initial capital expenditure. Client can enjoy mobility and flexibility of operations with contact center solutions. These solutions act as a catalyst for growth of companies in different sectors such as health care, telecoms, insurance and financial services.

In the Contact centers, Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) plays an essential role to interact with agents more intimately. This is made possible through different types of endpoints devices like desktop phone, mobile phone or PC.

To know more about the services and solutions, visit: Contact Center Solutions including enhanced quality VoIP Solutions and VoIP Services.

Source: TMCnet

Call Center Project - Australian B2C Land line

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 19625870

Category : Call Center

Title : Australian B2C Land line.

Total Requirement: Looking for 20 seater call center.

Description :

We are Australia based and looking to outsource our requirement of B2C landline campaign. We have a Australian B2C Landline campaign and in that the centers will have to call Australian residential and selling Landline Service. We are looking for experienced call center with 20 seats. The pay out for this campaign is $40-$45 AUD which will be made weekly and the leads will be provided by us. Interested service providers are requested to contact us as soon as possible with their proposals.

Budget Estimate : $40-$45 AUD per sale.

Country : Australia

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Call Center Project - Reverse Mortgage Campaign

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 29891493

Category : Call Center

Title : Reverse Mortgage Campaign

Total Requirement : Looking for minimum 20 seats Call Center

Description :

We are Pakistan based and looking to outsource our requirement related to Call Center. We are looking to outsource reverse mortgage campaign to a center with at least 20 seats. Reverse mortgages are only applicable for senior citizens (above the age of 62). The centers have to generate leads with our pattern and fields. Recordings are also must with all the leads generated. We need at least 2 leads per agent per day and we have the capacity to take 1000 leads a day. The payout is 40-50 USD per lead and payments will be done twice a week as well depending upon volume of leads. Interested centers are requested to contact us as soon as possible with their quotes and proposals.

Budget Estimate : 40-50 USD Per Sale.

Country : Pakistan

Status : Closed

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Call Center Project - USA Long Distance Campaign

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 17143484

Category : Call Center

Title : USA Long Distance Campaign

Total Requirement : Call Center with 20 seats

Description :

We are Australia based and looking to outsource our requirement USA Long Distance. We are looking for the center with 20 seats that can do the calling for residential in USA and selling long distance product and offering unlimited call with in USA and 20 Countries. The payout of this project is 35 USD per sale which will be made weekly and the leads will be provided by us. Interested service providers are requested to contact us as soon as possible with their proposal.

Budget Estimate : 35 USD Per Sale.

Country : Australia

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Call Center Project - United States Travel Outbound Process

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 10164405

Category : Call Center

Title : United States Travel Outbound Process

Total Requirement : Minimum 15 Seats

Description :

We are India based company and looking for experienced call center for our requirement of US travel outbound process. We need minimum 15 seats to start with, maximum no limit.Center needs to convenience the customer and need to do conference between customer and IVR to provider banking details on this system. Payout's for this process is 70 $ on every approved sale. Payment will be on weekly basis by western union money transfer or wire transfer. So interested providers are requested to contact us immediately as we want to start the process urgently. Data will be provided by us.

Budget Estimate : 70 USD pre approved sale

Country : India

Status : Closed

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Does Philippine Call Center Success Translate to BPO, Software Development, and ADM Success?

It’s no real secret that Call Centers have been taking off in the Philippines at an amazing rate. It is also well known that many companies have shifted their growth from, or are in the process of shutting down Call Centers in India in favor of Call Centers based in Manila and Cebu in the Philippines.

One key reason that Philippines based call centers do so well is that the call center agents have such a neutral accent. Many of us have been on the phone with a call center agent in the Philippines and did not even know. Frankly, that’s just how good many are. Recently, I had a technical support problem with a piece of computer networking equipment and called the technical support line for assistance. When I reached the agent, I was sure I was speaking to someone in the United States. If I had not lived in the Philippines myself, I probably would have missed a phrase that was spoken by the agent that is fairly unique to the Philippines. The expression was “for a while”, which in American colloquialism means “just a sec”.

Through a fairly detailed technical discussion, it was not obvious to me that I was speaking with someone outside of the country. To get through a conversation like that without me picking up on it is actually quite an achievement. As you and I know, but many call center companies seem to miss, conversation is more than just understanding and verbalizing the language. There are nuances and conversational styles and cultural clues embedded in a conversation.

The educational system in Philippines more closely mirrors that of the U.S., as it was a U.S. territory for more than forty years. My experience with quite a few India based call centers has not quite been the same. It is pretty much understood when I speak to someone in an India based call center that the person I speak with is reading a script. When I go off script, it is easy to tell that they are getting confused and hunting through other scripts trying to figure out what to say in response. When the centers first started in India, I could generally understand their accents. Now I have the advantage of having also lived in India for over four years so my understanding of various Indian accents is probably better than the average person on the end of a phone in the United States.

With that said, I must confess that even I have had difficulty understanding some call center agents in India. Additionally, I find that I have to repeat myself in order for them to understand me. Typically, my approach is to spend as little time as possible in this position and ask to speak to a supervisor pretty quickly. Generally, the supervisor has a somewhat better command of the language, which is what got them promoted in the first place.

When one considers other types of work being done offshore of late, it occurs to me that the experience with call centers should easily translate into other services having the potential to be delivered with a higher level of quality. For example, software development has been going on in India since the early nineties. It really took off for the Y2K work and has been successfully leveraged since then.

The most often cited reason for software project failures, even inside of the same building of the same company, is communication. Various experts with numerous studies place communication problems in the top three reasons for project failure anywhere from 60% to 90% of the time. If you or I can speak to a call center agent in the Philippines and not even know it, would it follow that a software team in the U.S. might have an easier time speaking with a software team in the Philippines?

This hypothesis of mine is something that had occurred to me a few years ago. Since then, I took a job living in Manila running a software development/application outsourcing company serving the U.S. market. My thought was that the easiest way to prove or disprove my theory was to walk the talk and try it for myself. What I can report is that the U.S. customer base we served almost never cited communications or misunderstanding of requirements as an issue. I am certainly not saying we never had issues, but communication and not being able to understand each other in phone discussion or email were not problems that came up.

Based on the examples that I have personally experienced, I would also venture to guess that BPO projects would also fair well in the Philippines. While India is still the number one outsourcing destination, and is working very hard to keep that ranking, other countries have benefits to offer. The Philippines is just one of them. I would encourage anyone considering diversifying their offshore strategy or looking to begin offshoring of call center, software application development/maintenance, or BPO to take a closer look at the Philippines.

Source: http://www.transworldnews.com/

Call Center Project - Telemarketing for Nutritious Drink

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 80387601

Category : Call Center

Title : Telemarketing for Nutritious Drink

Total Requirement : 10 Seats Require

Description :

We are a US based company looking for center who can do telemarketing for our nutritious drink.Our drink is made of more than 19 body beneficial fruits – including the Brazilian acai berry - one of the nature’s top super foods.Our Budget for this is 40 USD per sale, will pay on weekly basis.and need at least 10 seats.Center need to use there own data.We need center with good profile and work experience. We invite center to contact us and submit their best quotations as soon as possible.

Budget Estimate : 40 USD per Sale

Country : United States

Status : Closed

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Call Center Project - Canadian Landline Process

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 19637679

Category : Call Center

Title : Canadian Landline Process

Total Requirement : Minimum 10 Seats Require

Description :

We are India based company looking for experienced call centers for our requirement of Canada Landline Process for ROGERS.We need Center's having executives with good communication skills and knowledge of English accent.Database will be provided by client . Calling script will be provided by us.We require minimum 10 seats.Pay out will be 25$ (Canadian Dollars) per installed sale and it will be on weekly basis.We want to start our process as soon as possible. So interested call centers please contact with their profile and proposals immediately.

Budget Estimate : $25 (Canadian Dollars) per installed sales

Country : India

Status : Closed

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Call Center Project - Upgrading Contribution Amount

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 13409595

Category : Call Center

Title : Upgrading Contribution Amount.

Total Requirement : 50,000 calls in 25 days.

Description :

We are India based and looking to outsource our requirement of Call Center. We are Non-Governmental Organization and we need to call our donors and ask them to upgrade their contribution amount. We are looking for the center that can make 50,000 calls in 25 days time; we will provide you with the training script as well as the leads. Interested service providers are requested to contact us as soon as possible with their quotes and proposal.

Budget Estimate : Looking for best proposal

Country : India

Status : Closed

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Call Center Projects - United States Travel Outbound Process

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 1016440

Category : Call Center

Title : United States Travel Outbound Process

Total Requirement : Minimum 15 Seats

Description :

We are India based company and looking for experienced call center for our requirement of US travel outbound process. We need minimum 15 seats to start with, maximum no limit.Center needs to convienence the customer and need to do conference between customer and IVR to provider banking details on this system. Payout's for this process is 70 $ on every approved sale. Payment will be on weekly basis by western union money transfer or wire transfer. So interested providers are requested to contact us immediately as we want to start the process urgently. Data will be provided by us.

Budget Estimate : 70 USD pre approved sale

Country : India

Status : Closed

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Call Center Metrics and Performance

It has been a week since I last posted, Call Center Operations and Schedule Adherence, and as I mentioned in my previous post, I am on a new assignment, looking at Schedule adherence and overall call center metrics.

Initially, I decided to focus on schedule adherence because I believed this would be the biggest opportunity, low-hanging fruit, if you will. My goal for last week was to set-up a real-time schedule adherence process.

I quickly discovered that the reporting function of the WFA software was not working correctly, resulting in lack of reporting.

Not having this data makes it tough to know your starting point as well as providing front-line employees with results to effectively coach.

How can you set-up a real-time schedule adherence exception process if you lack data?

I shifted my focus while the schedule adherence reporting was being fixed.

My focus then turned to productivity against several important data points.

Productivity for my model included all phone activities such as ACD, ACW, Available, Ring and Other. I used this data and compared it against staffed hours to get a baseline.

What I was looking for was a number as close as possible to 100%. What I found wasn’t too far off. Although, there are some areas of opportunity the number wasn’t that bad considering the call center has not paid special attention to this in the past.

I also looked at productivity (phone) against payroll hours to see how close the call center came to 100%. What I found there was also a pleasant surprise. Remember the best number to hit is 100%. Again, I found a number that was somewhat close.

Today I ran all the aux codes from our switch to see what % they were against the over all staffed hours produced. There I found some numbers that need to be addressed. It appears that some of the representatives are hiding their time within the aux codes.

As mentioned before the overall production time against staffed hours did not look too bad, however by improving the unproductive aux time we can increase the overall production hours.

More importantly, we need to provide our supervisors the data so they can coach their employees for improvement.

I am now moving into another area….

I have begun to pull the data to look at scheduled staffed hours by agent, by sup, to identify the delta between what we scheduled and what was actually produced.

In utilizing this data we may find that it is easier to hit call center service level with fewer people if we can increase their seat utilization.

Source : http://www.callcentercafe.com

Call Center Projects - B2C UK survey with per hour payout

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 94240995

Category : Call Center

Title : B2C UK survey with per hour payout

Total Requirement : Minimum 20 Seats

Description :

We are India based and looking for call centers with predictive dialers and minimum 20 seats for our process of B2C UK survey. Center has to call UK homes (1pm to 9pm GMT) Monday to Friday and ask questions to customer to complete a simple market research survey. Center has to use own calling data and script. We will provide you training materials for this process. Payout would be 3.5 to 6.75 GBP per hour per agent. Interested service providers are requested to contact us wit their profile as soon as possible.

Budget Estimate : 3.5 to 6.75 GBP per hour per agent

Country : India

Status : Closed

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Call Center Projects - Appointment Setting (Time Sharing)

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 37700450

Category : Call Center

Title : Appointment Setting (Time Sharing).

Total Requirement: Minimum 15 seats call center.

Description :

We are India based and looking to outsource our requirement of Appointment setting. We are looking for center with minimum 15 seats for appointment setting of sharing time with professionals in a seminar organized by J.W.Marriot. The payout will be approximately USD 100-USD 250 per appointment which will be paid weekly. Center will have to arrange their own leads. Interested service providers are requested to contact us as soon as possible with their quotes and proposals.

Budget Estimate : USD 100-USD 250 Per Appointment.

Country : India

Status : Closed

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Call Center Projects - UK Secured Loan Campaign

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 99598754

Category : Call Center

Title : UK Secured Loan Campaign

Total Requirement: 10 Pilot Batches.

Description :

We are India based company looking for only experienced call center in India for our UK secured loan campaign. We are looking for 10 pilot batches for our campaign. Center needs to arrange their own data. We need atleast 1 sale per day. Reporting will be online. And submission of the sale will be via e-mail.

Payout will be as per below:
1.> INR 3500 per Approve Sale of the Loan below 10000GBP to 26000GBP
2.> INR 4500 per Approve Sale of Loan Above 26000GBP
3.> INR 2400 per Approve Sale of Secure Loan Clean Credit 5000GBP to 9999GBP
4.> INR 2400 per Approve Sale of Remortgage (Sub Prime Lender Adverse/Clean Credit)
5.> INR 2000 per Approve Sale of Remortgage (Prime Lender /Clean Credit)
First invoice will be generated after 10 aprove sales. Than after weekly from our accounts.
We are paying on NET sale, whatever customer you sent to us should be genuine and we will provide you guide lines for that. Interested centers are requested to apply as soon as possible. We want to start off as quickly as possible.

Budget Estimate : INR 3500 to 4500 per Sale.

Country : India

Status : Closed

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Is customers wants call centers back to US?

The study found that customers who believed they were dealing with a call center outside the United States rated their overall satisfaction 26 points lower than those who believed the center was U.S.-based. In addition, callers to foreign centers were almost twice as likely to sever business relations with the company.

Call center industry could be a major benefactor of national companies rethinking the outsourcing of customer service. Next week, Tucson-based Contact One Call Center will begin handling after-hours calls for a California software company that previously contracted with a center in India.

::::Welcome Back::::
Courtney Holmes, operations manager for the El Dorado Hills, California based Forte Systems said customer complaints drove the decision to bring the call-center business back to the U.S. The company provides technical support to doctors and their staffs to use its medical-billing software.

About 16,000 Tucson-area residents work in approximately 40 local call centers, according to Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities (TREO), the local economic-development agency. Those employees make up 4 percent to 5 percent of the area's workforce.

The agency does not have data on companies pulling call-center services back from overseas but is aware of the trend anecdotally, said Laura Shaw, a spokesperson for TREO.

::::Complaints About Foreign Customer Service::::
Wood said that in the past few months she has received multiple inquires from companies responding to customer complaints about foreign customer service. "A lot of these (overseas call centers) offer very good service at the first- and second-tier labor pool," Wood said. "But so many companies have outsourced, they're down to the third- or fourth-level-tier labor pool."

Companies are realizing that lower wages overseas can cost them in lost customers, said Alan Angelo, marketing manager for Afni, which operates three call centers in Tucson.

"We saw a lot of companies chase the low dollar overseas," he said. "But they weren't seeing the level of customer service that Americans have come to expect. Now top companies are looking to bring things back to the U.S."

A report released this summer by CFI Group in Ann Arbor, Mich., questioned the wisdom of contracting out call-center operations to foreign countries.

The study found that customers who believed they were dealing with a call center outside the United States rated their overall satisfaction 26 points lower than those who believed the center was U.S.-based. In addition, callers to foreign centers were almost twice as likely to sever business relations with the company.

::::Industry on the Rise::::
Despite the cost savings, "There is concern that customers will be turned off both by the loss of American jobs and by the lower level of service," the report said.

That companies are responding to customers' frustration is a good thing, said Brad Cleveland, president of the International Customer Management Institute in Maryland.

"It's positive that more companies are realizing, 'We've got to get caller contact right,'" he said. "They're not off the hook just because they bring the service in-house. Ultimately, we want to see customers being well-served."

Cleveland said $485 billion is spent worldwide running call centers -- $180 billion is spent by U.S. companies, but he did not have an estimate of how much is spent at home versus overseas.

He said call-center jobs in India and the Philippines continue to grow at a rate of more than 15 percent a year.

"Companies are running into mixed results out there," Cleveland said. "There's a cross-current with a number of companies bringing services back in-house, but the overall pie continues to grow."

Source: http://www.callcentersindia.com/

Call Center Projects - Home Owners Lead Collection.

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 71368652

Category : Call Center,Data Research and Analytics

Title : Home Owners Lead Collection.

Total Requirement: 20 Seat Call Center

Description : We are UK based and looking to outsource our Lead Generation process. We are looking to collect the leads of the distressed homeowners in the UK. The Criteria is - Those who are facing repossession going through divorce or just require a quick home sale. So the service provider has to collect the following information from them.

1. Name:
2. Email:
3. Address:
4. Town:
5. County:
6. Post Code:
7. Phone:
8. Mobile:
9. Is property listed with estate agent?
10. Will you accept up to 85% of the market value to achieve a certain sale?:
11. Outstanding Mortgage?
12. Outstanding Loans / Charges?
13. Reason for sale:
14. Property value:
15. Property type:
16. Number of bedrooms:
17. Condition: Excellent
18. Sale required within:
    

The payout will be 20 USD per lead. We are looking for the call center or any Internet Researcher who can collect this information for us. The payment will be done only after the confirmation of the lead. Interested service providers are requested to contact us as soon as possible with their proposal and profile.

Budget Estimate : 20 USD per Lead.

Country : United Kingdom

Status : Closed

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Call Center Projects - Australian Wireless.

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 21316548

Category : Call Center

Title : Australian Wireless.

Total Requirement: 20 Seat Call Center

Description :

We are Australia based and looking to outsource our Call Center requirement. We are looking for some experienced call center service providers for our Australian B2C Customer and selling Mobile Phone campaign. We will provide the center with the leads and the pay out for this process will be USD 175 per sale. We are looking for 20 seat call center for this process with a weekly payout. Interested service providers are requested to contact us as soon as possible.

Budget Estimate : USD 175 per sale.

Country : Australia

Status : Closed

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Call Center Projects - SMS Chat services in French and English

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Projects Details:

Type : Project

Id : 28301364

Category : Call Center

Title : SMS Chat services in French and English

Description :

We are Mauritius based company and looking for centers for our requirement of SMS Chat services in French and English language. Center will have to process around 1,800,000 SMS per month. Our SMS service is a dating service and the operator will have to reply to the user, it is a one to one discussion. The operator must be good at writing French and English, have a good knowledge of French and American culture. we will provide information, training manuals and all the training by supervisors from France. SMS will be received and sent by the web interface and has to be sent to the US and France and each SMS will be around 160 characters. The minimum requirement for the Internet connection would be 512Kbps upload and download. This would be for about 20PC connected to the network and Internet speed should be increased by another 512Kbps for every additional 10 computers. Center can also have an ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) line but this is not recommended. It would be an advantage for the center to have an IPVPN (Internet Protocol Virtual Private Networks), IPoFR (IP over Frame Relay) or IPLC (international private leased circuit) internet connection to connect to our main server. Payout would be Euro 0.025 per message and payment would be made on monthly basis. Interested centers are requested to contact us with their as soon as possible.

Budget Estimate : Approx budget 2,509,812 INR

Country : Mauritius

Status : Closed

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Don't call or email - phone and internet users are locking out advertisers

BY THE end of November 2 million Australians will have logged their phone numbers with the Do Not Call Register, blocking any commercial telemarketing efforts.

It's an impressive number for just six months work from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which launched the register in May.

With the help of some Federal Government funding, the authority has tripled the number of Do Not Call registrations the industry body, the Australian Direct Marketing Associationhad on its books until May. To be fair, though, the association's annual budget of $20,000 to manage 600,000 names is laughable compared to the $30 million allocated to the bureaucrats to do the same job.

Read More Article...

Germany (east) another destination for Call Centre

The call centre industry in Germany saw a 10 times growth in last 10 years. This industry employed more then 400,000 people. The boom has been felt most in the formerly communist east, where low rents, state subsidies, high unemployment and low wages, despite a relatively well educated workforce, have helped convince call centre companies to set up shop.

Local authorities and politicians are enthusiastic and have positive vibes for this industry and growth of it. The economics minister of the eastern state of Brandenburg turned up in person when Walter Services opened its call centre in Frankfurt an der Oder in 2005. Unemployment is running at around 18 per cent in this city on the Polish border. By the end of this year, the company will employ 1,000 staff. It already has 2,000 workers on its books in Magdeburg in the neighbouring state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Others speak of intense pressure, close monitoring of their calls, rude clients and respondents irritated at receiving unsolicited calls, these are the common types of situations and gestures which an employee must be used to of it. Sociologist Karen Shire has been researching the sector for the past four years, funded by Germany's powerful trade union movement. Call-centre companies are treating the impoverished eastern states as a kind of "testing ground," Shire believes.

Call-centre workers feel their jobs are insecure. They often do not have fixed contracts. In her book, written jointly with Ursula Holtgrewe, Shire writes that a full-time call-centre employee in the east of the country earns on average 17,469 euros (24,940 dollars) a year, by contrast with 22,618 euros in the west.

But most important thing is the sector continues to expand in the east, profiting from Germany's continuing economic upswing that has slashed unemployment across the country. By contrast, growth in the call-centre sector has come to a halt in south-western Germany. In this prosperous region, where unemployment is running at a little under 5 per cent, wages are too high for call-centre jobs to be attractive.

Source: http://www.callcentersindia.com/

Customer service standards have improved over the last five years

Charter UK, a provider of enterprise complaint and feedback management software, today releases new research showing that customer service standards have improved over the last five years. The research project, which polled 200 employees across all sectors, found that 55 per cent believed that customer services standards had improved. Furthermore, 65 per cent of this sample believed that the improvement was down to the application of technology.

Paul Clark, Charter UK’s chief executive, comments, “The efficient handling of customer complaints is currently very high on the corporate agenda. There have been many high profile cases of poor management of customer complaints recently within the utility sector, public sector and across financial services. However, it is refreshing to hear that the general consensus is that customer service standards have increased and this is an opinion that I subscribe to. Nevertheless, there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on handling complaints and companies need to wake up to the benefits that this type of information can provide their business.”

Additional information obtained from the survey highlighted the fact that 41 per cent of respondents thought that understanding customers is the single biggest challenge for the UK customer service industry and 41 per cent also thought that understanding the customer is the key to great customer service.

Clark continues, “The old adage of the ‘customer is always right’ is still true today. By taking a proactive approach to customer complaints and targeting the pain points of customers, companies can attain a real understanding of their business and take the necessary measures to ensure customer retention and indeed gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. In my opinion there is no more important a viewpoint than that of a customer with a complaint.”

Source: http://www.callcentre.co.uk/

Call centers even for small businesses

CALL CENTERS are all the rage for large companies that want to maximize their opportunities while reducing costs by outsourcing some of their operations to external service providers.

But what about smaller companies that want to take advantage of the outsourcing trend?

For the most part, outsourcing has remained prohibitive and daunting to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), many of which are unable to realize greater operational efficiencies because most business process outsourcing (BPO) firms continue to focus on top-tier corporations.

Enter ePLDT and its Unified Contact Center Plus--a pre-integrated suite of cost-efficient call center applications that are meant to be easy to install and maintain.

The value proposition of the service is that it is oriented toward smaller businesses which need smaller contact center services than those normally offered by multinational BPO firms.

Read More Article...

Call centre employees more dangerous than phishers

Couple of years ago, the biggest security issue was phishing for JP Morgan Chase's customers. Today, the company is far more worried about the people manning its call centres. Staff has been caught stealing customer information using mobile phones, cameras and USB drives, said Iain Johnston, fraud specialist at JP Morgan Chase Asia Pacific.

Banks are fighting to keep their call centres free from criminals that pose as -- or become -- call centre staff in order to steal customer details.

Speaking at a Financial Times event called Securing the Bank last Thursday in Sydney, he said: "We have found incidences where screenshots have been taken by mobile phone or where people are writing texts at incredible speed under their desks". He told the conference that the bank has tightened its hiring policies for call centres located in India, the Philippines, Indonesia and Ethiopia but monthly staff intakes of between 200 to 600 recruits makes the task challenging.

While the Indian Government has established a national database of call centre employees to help prevent crime, police corruption in Indonesia makes reporting breaches difficult. Identity theft is the fastest growing type of fraud -- in Australia alone fraud costs AU$6 billion per year, according to Dr Clive Summerfield, deputy director of the University of Canberra's National Centre for Biometric Studies.

Although staff at offshore call centres is accused of higher rates of criminality, the real problems with offshore call centres is the flow of data across borders and differing privacy legislation.

"If your identity is ripped off overseas -- whilst local organisations may have back-to-back contracts with outsourcers -- there's a long chain of events to acting on that," Summerfield told ZDNet Australia.

:::::: Voice biometrics a solution? ::::::
A University of Canberra developed voice-based biometric authentication system may offer a solution, said Summerfield.

"One of the things that it does is to authenticate the caller without the need for a call centre to see your personal information. Because you authenticate the caller within the system, when you get transferred to an operator for a transaction there is no need for them to know your address or date of birth. All that appears on screen is how sure your computer is the account holder is same as person [as the caller]," said Summerfield.

He explained that this kind of authentication means organisations that hold sensitive information are able to retain the authentication process within the customer's country of origin -- therefore resolving the problem of cross-border data flows.

Source: http://www.callcentersindia.com/

Indian BPO Wins The CCF European Call Centre Award

24/7 Customer, a global provider of business process outsourcing services has won the CCF Award for Best Non European Call Centre 2007. The award instituted by CCF European Call Centre Awards recognizes professional excellence in the contact centre industry across Europe, Middle East and Africa. The CCF European Call Centre Awards instituted for over a decade is also closely associated with the leading UK contact centre magazine – CCF (Call Centre Focus).

“24/7 Customer has always maintained an uncompromising attitude towards achieving excellence in the delivery of our services, surpassing customer expectations, meeting and exceeding our employees’ needs. We are honored to receive this prestigious award. This achievement is a proof of our constant commitment to outperform client expectations and the contribution of our employees at our delivery centers, worldwide," said Mr. P V Kannan, Co-Founder and CEO, 24/7 Customer.

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