Iowa Call Center Becomes First To Accept Texts To 911

Got a problem and dialing the phone is completely out of the question? You're in luck... if you live in Waterloo, Iowa, or its immediate vicinity. Starting yesterday, the 911 emergency facility there became the first call center in the country to begin accepting text messages for emergency situations -- and they'll reply via text, too, when appropriate.

While the move may seem frivolous and even foolish -- since typing a text invariably takes longer than making a voice call -- this is actually a really positive development. It's easy to imagine emergency situations where voice calls just won't work, whether the caller is unable either to speak or hear due to a medical condition or injury, or the emergency involves, say, an intruder in the house while the victim is hiding somewhere inside and doesn't want to be heard. Just hope you have a quiet keypad on your phone....

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Call Centers Should Improve Manpower, Expand Industry Base

Touted as the father of the Philippine call center industry, Senator Manuel 'Mar' A. Roxas II enumerated during the fifth Annual Call Center Conference & Expo, which is a yearly event of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (or CCAP), three challenges that the industry faces to navigate through the economic slowdown that currently grips the globe.

Touted as the father of the Philippine call center industry, Senator Manuel 'Mar' A. Roxas II enumerated during the fifth Annual Call Center Conference & Expo, which is a yearly event of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (or CCAP), three challenges that the industry faces to navigate through the economic slowdown that currently grips the globe.

Roxas initially pointed at the increasing cost of manpower, locally. "[Data indicates] there has been a 20% to 40% increase in the last three years in the cost of manpower. What used to be entry-level Php10,000 to Php12,000 per person, now, there is great competition and starting [pay] has to keep up with Php15,000 to Php20,000 per person simply to be able to access and secure the manpower," said the legislator who was the keynote speaker of the said event.

"It is in our interest not to price ourselves out of the market. If we do, we gain the reputation internationally among customers that we no longer offer value for money proposition. They will start shying away [because of this] and all the hundreds of thousands of potential jobs that could have come here have been put in peril," he warned.

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Call Center Revenues Reach $5b In ‘09

MANILA, Philippines – The Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) reported that its revenues has reached the $5 billion mark this year, beating last year’s $4.5 billion.

This year is by far the biggest growth the industry achieved since the CCAP was formed in 2001.

In his report during the recent Call Center Conference and Expo 2009, CCAP President Benedict Hernandez said call centers in the Philippines hired an additional 90,000 people in 2009, adding to the total of 275,000 employees.

The industry has a yearly hiring growth rate of 15 percent, according to CCAP. While the hiring rate remains at only eight percent, this is still nearly twice the acceptance rate from last year.

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Call Center Industry Seen To Generate More Employment

The Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) said some 275, 000 Filipinos are expected to get employed at the country's call center by the end of this year.

This was pointed out by by Benedict Hernandez, President of the CCAP during his call to Malacanang where he presented a plaque of appreciation to President Arroyo for her unwavering support to the growth of the Philippine call center industry in the past nine years.

The Malacanang press report disclosed that CCAP is the country's official trade group for outsource and in-house contact centers. It is composed of 55 companies representing about two thirds of the country's contact center seats.

In Iloilo alone some 3,435 Ilonggos are employed in various call centers established in Iloilo Province.

Per record of the Department of Trade and Industry-Iloilo Provincial Office, there are about seven (7) call centers; one medical transcription services; and four business process outsourcimg companies operating in the province.

It will be recalled that President Arroyo disclosed during the recent 9th e-services Global Sourcing Conference and Exhibition that "our BPO industry continues to boom as global cost-cutting is sent to outsourcing."

The Philippines is ranked among the most attractive off-shoring destinations in the world because of competitiveness and more importantly the country's highly trainable, English proficient, IT-enabled quality manpower.

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Cell phone industry is weathering recession

T-Mobile employs more than 700 people at its call center at 2525 N. Woodlawn in Wichita, Kansas. The center is still hiring because the mobile phone industry is still growing, even in the recession. Mobile phone companies recorded a good first quarter, even as the industry evolves: people continue to move to smart phones and pre-paid phones, and many people are cutting their traditional phone in favor of a mobile phone.

All of this is testament to how important mobile phones have become in everyday life, some experts say. They are no longer extras but the main form of communication for many people.

But some industry experts, citing recent polling of mobile phone users, question whether industry growth can continue in the short run as unemployment or the fear of unemployment puts the bite on more mobile phone users.

That trend wasn't apparent at the T-Mobile call center in Wichita last week.

It was busy with customer service representatives fielding questions and complaints.

The center was renovated and the in-line cubicles converted to pods. A game room for workers on break is under construction, and the center also has a cafeteria and a room where associates can go to find quiet.

It's aimed, at least in part, at improving the environment for employees, said Bill Jackson, the center's new manager. The company keeps trying to reduce turnover, now about 35 percent at the center.

"We continue to hire here at the Wichita call center," Jackson said. "Throughout the country we continue to increase positions that interact and focus on our customers."

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Is the Call Center Industry a Bright Spot for New Graduates?

In the face of record-high unemployment and uncertainty for new graduates who will soon enter the labor force, the Philippine government says that the call center industry poses great opportunities for Filipino workers—especially amid the global crisis when firms turn to outsourcing more to save costs. But is the industry indeed a sunshine sector for Filipinos seeking employment?

First, the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) sector is closely tied to the US economy, which is facing its worst recession in history. According to a study made by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the US was the largest market for IT-enabled services (composed of call centers, medical and legal transcription, animation, software development and other BPOs). The US accounted for 90% of total exports revenue, most of this generated by call centers. The US was also one of the largest sources of foreign investments in call centers, along with Australia and Europe, accounting for over 2/3 of total foreign equity.

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Jobless benefits call centers a growth industry

Inside one of Seattle's fastest-growing businesses, phone lines hum with 6,000 calls a week, 20 new employees a month train in a converted classroom, and economic projections indicate a continued expansion and additional backlog of customers.

How unfortunate, employee Candy Wetmore thinks. How sad.

But this is the nature of the state Employment Security Department's call center.

Wetmore understands its economic paradox better than most. She's been taking calls from the newly unemployed for seven years now, first on the front lines and now as a supervisor.

She knows how to cut a path through a thicket of benefit regulations. She knows how to talk down a newly laid-off carpenter with a mortgage. She knows how to tell a person he or she isn't eligible for a check while gracefully steering the person toward other, more promising possibilities. She knows how to strike a balance between personal empathy and professional distance.

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Stressed Indians leave call centres

A 23-year-old man, barely out of college, has been recovering from a heart attack in hospital. The doctor's diagnosis: modern lifestyle - stress and odd hours of work.

He works at a call centre in Mumbai

Alarmed?

His colleagues at the call centre where he works are. Says one of his best friends and colleague: "I'm leaving. Have been planning to for sometime.

"As soon as I get another job, even if it's less paying, I will leave this industry for good."

The youth of India seem to have fallen out of love with the call centre industry.

Even before the impact of the economic crisis could be felt on India's $11bn business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, which gets 70% of all the outsourced work from the US, it was in the grip of a crisis of its own.

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Call Center Industry Prepares for Major Boom

As two new bilingual call centers set up shop in Nicaragua's tax-free zones and a third outsourcing giant expresses interest in following suit, investment-promotion agency ProNicaragua is scrambling to update its database of English-speaking Nicaraguan workers, estimated to be around 10 percent of the country's working-age population.

In the agency's first two surveys in 2004 and 2007, some 6,500 English-speaking Nicaraguans registered. About two-thirds are considered “highly proficient” in the language, according to ProNicaragua investment promotion manager for contact centers María José Guerrero.

U.S. companies looking to cut costs by paying qualified workers in the developing world a fraction of what they would pay U.S. employees are showing a new interest in Nicaragua, as labor costs in neighboring Costa Rica and El Salvador – until now the region's main outsourcing hubs – rise amid a shortage of qualified English-speakers.

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90 Call Center employees in production, more expected

With 90 customer service agents working at a temporary call center and another 250 trainees anticipated to soon join their ranks, the prospect of being part of the labor force has created some excitement here.

The atmosphere at the Visitors Center–or the temporary site–is relaxed with just a hint of performance tension as the agents take calls from the mid west.

“It really is interesting to be a part of all this,” said Gloria Jacobo, a door-to door representative who processes calls from agents.

Jacobo has been with the center for about a month and said she is excited by what she does and the people she meets.

“There is always something to do and it’s fascinating to speak with people from another part of the country,” she said.

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Warning that Indian call centre bubble

INDIA'S burgeoning call centre industry, which has drawn thousands of jobs from Britain, is heading for contraction within the next two years, according to a new report published today.
The boom in outsourcing sales, customer services and other telephone work to low-paid, English-speaking Indians has generated competition that is driving down prices and pushing up pay, market analyst Datamonitor said in its study.

The report says newcomers to the market are aggressively discounting to grab a share of the £255 million business, resulting in shrinking margins and raising questions as to who will survive.

Datamonitor said a "shake-out" is inevitable within two or three years, and its report predicted this it will largely be driven by consulting companies exiting the market, and either spinning off their contact centre operations or turning over the management of their customer care services to third parties.

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Punjab to set up toll free call centre for NRIs

Chandigarh: Punjab government would setup a 24-hour toll free call centre to redress of problems and grievances of the Punjab origin NRIs.

The call centre, a bilingual facility in Punjabi and English, comes as a follow-up to the decisions taken during the NRI Sammelan held in Chandigarh and Jalandhar in January this year. Disclosing this, Harcharan Bains, Media Advisor to the Punjab Chief Minister, said that in addition to the call centre, the NRI-specific official website of the state government would also function as a logistic back-up for increased facilitation of government-to-NRI interaction.

It may be mentioned here that about 70 lakh NRIs of Punjabi Origin are settled in different parts of the world, with Canada U.K., U.S.A, Malaysia, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain and some countries in the middle-east being the favoured destinations. Meanwhile, the Punjab Government today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in the Government of India for putting in place a structured mechanism for the welfare of Punjabis going to or already settled in different countries across the world. The MOU was signed in the presence of the Punajb Chief Minister with Chief Secretary Ramesh Inder Singh and K Mohan Das, Secretary, Ministry of Overseas India Affairs representing the State and the Union governments respectively.

Source : http://sify.com/

Editorial: Region must secure its own 211 call center

Since its introduction in 1968 the 911 emergency phone system has always faced a balancing act: Although it's cheaper to run a system shared by a number of communities, the best service is usually local -- from people who know the community, know local conditions, know whom to call.

The same can probably be said for 211. Under the 211 system, individuals can call a single number and get information on a host of services -- where to get food or shelter or more -- from all kinds of sources: churches, state or local agencies, private foundations.

Though the service is little known here, seven out of 10 Michigan residents -- including the entire Upper Peninsula -- already have access to 211. But a turf dispute has blocked creation of a Grand Traverse-based 211 system that could include as many as 20 (or as few as five) counties in northern Lower Michigan, including the Grand Traverse area. Officials say a resolution could be years away.

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Call centers cashing in on U.S. connection

Dominicans hope cultural and familial ties to the United States bring the island a bigger share of the call center industry.

Popular American dance music is playing, phones are ringing and sounds of ''thank you for holding'' fill the call center at an office park in the outskirts of this bustling city.

''Did you unplug everything from the radio?'' the Dominican customer service agent asked her American client, with just the ever-slightest touch of an accent. As the Dominican Republic taps into its returning immigrant population to become the Caribbean's leader in the call center industry, few would notice her inflection. And that's the idea.

The Dominican Republic has embarked on an aggressive campaign to ditch its tropical tourism image in favor of one that's a bit more technological. The country is banking on both its proximity and family ties to the United States to snatch up growing call center commerce as more and more industries seek business operations closer to home -- and more Americans are frustrated with customer service operators with accents from Asia.

The government in Santo Domingo is offering incentives, sending thousands of young people to English immersion school and clearing out failed textile factories to make room for one of the biggest trends in telecommunications: the Caribbean. The number of agents in the Caribbean increased fivefold in six years.

The Dominican Republic is not alone. Call centers -- even one for AOL -- have spread in St. Lucia, Barbados, Trinidad and Dominica, with an economic impact of at least $2.5 billion in the Caribbean alone, analysts say. Other countries in Latin America that have become magnets for call centers are Costa Rica and Panama.

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Call center operated by the visually challenged in Mumbai

Mumbai boasts of a business process outsourcing unit that is predominantly run by the visually challenged.

The call centre named "Drishti', which translated from Hindi to English means 'Vision', is the only call centre in India that has put in its faith in the visually impaired.

Officials claim that in just eight operating months, the number of employees has almost tripled, and for all those working happily at the call centre, being sightless is no barrier to earning a decent livelihood.

"This is my first job and I really like it. I thought it would be tough working in call centers but it took me eight days during the training. Initially I faced some problems but now it's fine," said Mangesh Indulkar, a visually impaired employee.

While many feel proud about their achievements, others are basking in the joys of self-confidence and self-reliance.

"It is a challenging work but we can work independently, without taking help from anyone else, So, we are feeling good while working here," said Aruna Shinde, another visually impaired employee.

Reena Chaddha, the project manager, says that 'special' people are no different from the normal people in working.

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Seven ways to improve the customer experience: Gartner suggests

Increasingly, companies are turning to customer experience initiatives to boost the bottom line, but it's an effort that requires cooperation across the organization and extends beyond just CRM, research from Gartner Inc. suggests. In fact, targeting, attracting and retaining new customers remains a top priority for CIOs this year, a Gartner survey of 1,500 CIOs worldwide found.

In the past, CRM failure was often blamed on too much IT involvement and not enough backing from the business side. However, customer experience initiatives and CRM are not the same. CRM projects may be a subset of customer experience initiatives. For example, in companies where the CRM initiative went well, it's organized, funded and there is a plan for a single view of the customer, according to Thompson.

"Most companies are much more fragmented and disorganised," he said. "And in those cases, there's a bit of a vacuum and CRM is just one little piece that might help. It depends on how successful CRM was in the past."

Customer experience team structure

While customer experience initiatives are often led by someone from marketing, organizations with the best-run programs tend to have a mixture of people who are responsible for, or report on, customers across the organization.

"The main types of people you get are brand- and design-type people, then the customer satisfaction and sometimes the loyalty people, then the process improvement people," Thompson said. "When you look at that group, if you have two of the four, maybe three of the four, that's what tends to work the best."

To improve the customer experience, Gartner advises focusing on projects that are doable and critical. There are two things to keep in mind before embarking on a project.

"One thing everyone tells you is: 'There's no silver bullet,'" Thompson said. "The second thing they all say is [that] as they start to look at what they're doing already … they're sort of amazed at what's going on."

Gartner's seven key initiatives are:

• Act on feedback: Companies that fail to respond to customer feedback are throwing away the chance to increase the number of satisfied and loyal customers. Changes need to be deployed throughout the company and communicated to employees and customers.
• Design processes from the outside in: Organizations need to identify which processes matter most to customers rather than designing them with the objective of improving operational efficiencies.
• Act as one organization to ensure consistency: Companies need to ensure that information gleaned from a customer at one interaction is not forgotten in the next channel.
• Be open: Opening channels or extending hours are one way, but it can mean more, like building communities. Organizations should be transparent and clear, open-minded and inclusive.
• Personalize products and experiences: Personalization can be complex, and complexity can mean costs for the company. Companies need to beware of just evaluating the costs of personalization against the sales benefits and to factor in the longer-term value of improving the customer experience when building a business case.
• Alter attitudes and company behavior: Employee actions are often the most powerful actions in a customer's experience. There are three ways to alter employee behavior: recruit the right employees; ensure standards with policies, procedures and governance structures; and create training programs that incent and can modify employee behavior.
• Design the complete customer experience: Organizations need to plan and design the customer experience, rather than letting it "just happen."
  

Companies should focus on what's already working, particularly in tough economic times.

"When you start to think about it, every part of the organization can be involved," Thompson said. "But the first thing to ask is: 'What are we already doing? What are the aspects of it? What can we fund better that's already being successful?' Often, people throw good money after bad, but how about throwing good money after good."

Author, Source: Barney Beal, SearchCRM.com

Tips to stop attrition in Call Centers

According to Dimension Data’s “Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2007″, a massive 70% of the cost of running contact centres is related to the people who work there: the agents or customer services representatives. The report also reveals that the UK contact centre industry wastes close to half a million pounds every month as a result of its average 24% staff attrition rate.

Live testing of agents, which is called mock call. HR department need to be strict on this part, their must be a policy (can be shown as HR policy) where hiring of an agent only become final when he/she is clear the mock call test. This will in result tighten up the new hirings of agents for who are not capable enough to handle the stress and pressure of process. As brought in a research report, many companies (25%+) still not having this mock call test as their integral part of hiring policy.

Agent must know for which kind of process and responsibilities he/she is going to be hired by company, the career growth and progress must be cleared would be agent. Although there is perception for call center industry that people are not looking for call center agent as long term career option but who think about career in call center they are really care about the career development he/she can get in the organisation.

Simplification and process flow must be as simple as it could be because there is a possibility that some agents might not be as good in using computers as tech savvy agents. Work flow analyst must provide the process flow where agents not to toggle between multiple windows and application if possible as this could be a stressful and time-consuming act while a important client/customer is on call.

Interestingly, although 77% of the organisations surveyed in the Dimension Data report say they have workflow solutions in place, only 32% have some form of decision support or case-based reasoning system to prompt agents with answers to customer queries.

Do you know how many people you need to achieve your service levels and create satisfied customers? Do you break this down per hour per day, and schedule staff with the right skills and experience accordingly? If not, then you are really in bad staffing policy and might be suffering from a huge hidden staffing cost, increased attrition with associated recruitment and training costs.

Alternatively, you may be under-staffed, resulting in high abandonment rates, stressed staff, reduced first call resolution and dissatisfied customers. Workforce management tools have now reached maturity and can deliver a rapid return on investment; the main issue today is ensuring the tool is set up correctly and managed by a trained scheduler. According to the Dimension Data research, the top development strategy is customer satisfaction at 87%, with staff satisfaction close behind at 70%. I would therefore suggest there is no good reason for a mid-size or large contact centre not to adopt a properly managed, industry standard workforce management tool.

Good training is key for success of a call center, poorly trained agents deliver a poor customer experience, leading to unhappy customers and, therefore, stressed employees who leave or go sick. Providing initial training is just a beginning of agents career and process, there are so many different kind of queries which came time to time while process is on the go in this case agents often need help with complex or infrequent queries.

Training can be provided by professional coaches, trainers, or virtual coaching systems. The latter essentially provide step-by-step desktop assistance through processes, with a blend of specialist staff and virtual coaching providing arguably the optimum solution.

Dimension Data’s research shows that an average of around 17 hours of coaching is delivered to agents per month. This can cost-effectively be increased using a real-time online virtual coaching tool delivered to the agents at their desktops, resulting in improved first call resolution and employee and customer satisfaction.

Greet the agents by giving them incentives, rewards & recognitions by various monetary and non-monetary methods. Rewards provide a great feedback mechanism and agents will do what you target them to deliver, so you need to ensure you don’t reward skewed behaviors also, rewards can be great motivators if applied correctly.

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

Nonprofit's call center targets national needs

El Paso's latest call center is out for blood.

United Blood Services, a not-for-profit company that provides donated blood and blood components to more than 500 hospitals in 18 states including Texas, is consolidating its call center operations for more than 70 cities into two national call centers in El Paso and in Tempe, Ariz., a Phoenix suburb.

The El Paso center, at 20-B Concord in the Butterfield Industrial Park near El Paso International Airport, now has 90 mostly part-time employees, and is expected to grow to 150 to 200 mostly part-time jobs in the first quarter of next year, said Paula Villalobos-Jimenez, United Blood Services regional vice president overseeing the new call center.

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Report: Workforce Management Apps Make the Most of Call Center Resources

Contact center research company DMG Consulting recently announced the publication of its 2008 Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report, a guide to the essential and evolving contact center workforce management market, products and vendors. The report reveals some interesting and revealing stats. DMG reports that the contact center workforce management market grew at a rapid rate of 15 percent in 2007.

As anybody who manages a contact center knows, the seemingly impossible task that needs to be accomplished every day is, "make more with less." While budgets and headcounts get cut, expectations of better sales, better service, greater customer retention and satisfaction rise.

Most contact center technologies, when chosen well and implemented properly, can help companies make more out of less. But few of them can do it so dramatically as workforce optimization solutions: specifically, workforce management and quality monitoring.

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Call Center Recording Helps Agents Self-Improve

Traditional call centers throughout the world have long relied on call recording applications to provide supervisors and managers with the ability to monitor agents’ calls to determine where training is needed, if customer needs are being met and a change is needed in processes.

While call recording is an essential tool for managers, it can also be a very valuable tool for call center agents. Contrary to popular belief, not all agents are in their position without choice. Many of these individuals enjoy their work and would benefit from the value that call recording can provide.

Managers and supervisors can spend hours listening to recorded calls to identify areas of weakness. Why not work such monitoring tasks into the agent’s schedule? While it is understandable that the call center would rather have the agent on calls rather than listening to calls, it makes perfect sense that the agent may be able to guide their own performance improvement through this motivation.

It is highly likely that the agent has been inundated with information from his or her superiors on how to improve their calls, what to avoid and what to focus on, how quickly the call should be handled and how many calls should be completed within a given time frame. While all of these points are important, hitting on them everyday won’t necessarily entice the agent to improve.

Empowerment is a completely different story. Studies throughout the world have shown that when a person is empowered to make change, change happens and it happens swiftly. The person is motivated be his or her newfound position and strives to make the necessary changes to succeed. The same is true within the call center.

Any agent worth keeping in the call center understands the performance points that must be hit every day. Why not empower them with their own improvement processes? Allow the agent to listen to his or her own calls and measure their own performance against the standard KPIs within the center.

Call recording is meant mainly for training purposes within the call center. For those agents that really are looking to improve, listening to criticism from a supervisor or manager – no matter how constructive it may be – can cause the agent to stop listening. This defensive mechanism tends to be built into our psyche to protect our fragile egos. In the call center however, it can work against the agent trying to improve.

Turning to a strategy of empowerment could instead motivate the agent base to improve their performance on their own. Such a strategy could not only improve overall KPIs, it would also free managers and supervisors to focus on more important business drivers, and may even require less management within the center. The benefits are numerous – why not give it a try?

For more, check out the Call Center Recording channel on TMCnet.

Source : http://www.tmcnet.com/