AT&T Opens Ohio County Call Center

TRIADELPHIA - When a local AT&T Mobility wireless customer calls for help with their service, it's now possible their neighbor will answer.

Jessica Mason of Belmont travels 45 minutes each way each day to her new job at the AT&T call center at The Highlands - and she said it's worth the drive.

"I've been in customer service and management before," she said. "I had heard about what AT&T is doing, and I wanted to see it for myself. I was amazed. It was more than what I expected."

Mason is among the 50 new employees in the first wave of trainees at the new AT&T Mobility Call Center at The Highlands. These call center representatives are to start answering incoming calls from AT&T wireless customers about their billing and service on Nov. 4.

Three more waves of 50 trainees - for a total of 200 new employees - are expected to be hired in the coming months. The jobs include health care benefits and a 401(k) plan.

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Call Center Agents : On the Frontlines of War

Call center agents are service representatives hired by a client company to handle support and information for a specific product usually through phone calls, faxes or emails. Call centers may be described as a set of functions or actions that can be carried out in a number of ways using multiple delivery channels by merging information and telecommunications technology, Among the services they offer are toll free customer service, direct response, interactive voice response (IVR), 24 - hour help desk, appointment scheduling, upholstery shampooing taking services, emergency response, conference and registration, virtual receptionist, and infomercials which can be tailored to suit your company's specific needs. IVR systems are set up to handle the initial stage of customer contact, and is programmed with a set menu for predictable customer questions, which gives them prerecorded answers and tells them how to proceed. If their issue is not adequately addressed by the IVR, customer calls are routed to knowledgeable representatives who have speedy access to information.

Call center agents are soldiers in the front-lines of war. They are a channel between a company and its customers, giving the latter a forum in which their concerns may be addressed and complaints resolved. It is also a way for companies to improve the product or service that they offer because customers can tell you directly exactly what they want. These dedicated soldiers are ready to deploy anytime, anywhere. Call center operations continue like a well-oiled 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This means that your company can cross the boundaries of distance and time zones so you can do business with people worldwide. Because this vital service may be costly for companies to put up themselves, the service is frequently outsourced to a call center company. Outsourcing the service to a call center at a set price is a cost effective solution for any business, large or small. This leaves companies free to concentrate on delivering the product or service without having to worry about the large cost of putting up their own call center and hiring employees to man the phones upholstery cleaning richmond being assured that customer satisfaction is being closely monitored. Performance markers for call center agents may include call handling time, call queue length, hold times and customer satisfaction level. Agents who fail these markers are subject for calibration with company standards or retraining as their progress requires. As soldiers are aware that one mistake can cost them their life, all call center agents are aware that every customer contact is a unique opportunity to create more business and cement the loyalty of the customer, so efforts are made to improve and retain relations. Seasoned agents are like war veterans; they know all the tricks of their trade and are keen to impart their hard earned knowledge to new recruits to ensure the same level of service for every customer call. They know that providing great customer service is winning yet another battle for market supremacy.

Source : http://www.corsavoo.com/

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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Customer support without walls

An increasing global customer base is driving companies to provide "follow-the-sun" customer support services. In order to enable this level of support, agents are now being located in any part of the world. The challenge is to merge technologies and provide seamless, accurate and real-time customer service.

Contact centers are constantly battling the conundrum of improving customer service while reducing costs. Real-time visibility and centralized management across a distributed agent strategy have emerged as the top challenge companies are now facing, according to a recent Aberdeen survey of more than 150 companies.

The survey also revealed the No. 1 pressure driving companies to implement a distributed agent strategy is the need to increase efficiency while reducing costs. Aberdeen defines a distributed agent strategy as one that meets the staffing requirements of a single contact center by blending some combination of locations, home-based agents and offshoring.

Reaping Benefits
Contact centers are clearly beginning to address these issues as over half of all survey respondents indicated they would upgrade their call center by adding distributed agents within the next 24 months. Customers can and will interact with call centers in any number of ways, at any time and through any channel.

Companies who have started down this path are already beginning to reap the benefits. When implementing a distributed agent strategy, Best-in-Class (BIC) companies have realized a greater than 10 percent improvement in customer satisfaction.

Best-in-Class companies who have implemented a distributed agent strategy also share several common characteristics:

• Eighty-nine percent of BIC companies versus 67 percent of all other companies provide Internet access to their distributed agents to help boost their performance.
• Seventy-two percent of BIC companies versus 43 percent of others are currently using online knowledge management systems.
• 53 percent of BIC companies versus 25 percent of others have implemented speech analytics, IVR Web and self-service technologies.
  

The Cornerstones
In order to measure, monitor and manage distributed agents effectively, companies must utilize a broad spectrum of technologies. Implementing a distributed agent strategy with the right tools, such as knowledge management, self service, ACD (automatic call distributor) and shift scheduling, has helped 45 percent of BIC companies see an improvement in call center uptime and 48 percent see an improvement in call closure rate. It is essential to apply the right technologies to gain the most benefit from your distributed agent network.

Companies require some basic block and tackling to be in place when embarking upon distributed agent strategy. The following are the cornerstones of any virtual contact center:

• Analytics;
• Workforce optimization;
• VoIP; and
• A consolidated contact center platform.
  

Analytics provides agents and contact center management with customer data necessary to provide consistent support no matter the time or the location. Workforce optimization tools will provide the capability to manage and improve the customer interaction.

Driving Down Costs
They will also ensure that all agents are equally trained on new technologies, products and services. The ability to run voice over the Internet directly to the distributed agent will help significantly drive down costs for companies. Currently, 55 percent of BIC companies have implemented VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) technology with one-third planning an implementation in the next 24 months.

The widespread interest in establishing virtual call centers reflected in this survey suggests that the inherently virtual nature of all-IP contact center technology will be one of the key drivers for its adoption in the next few years. The all-IP contact center will be the basis of the consolidated contact center platform. The consolidated contact center platform is the next step in providing improved availability of contact center resources at a lower cost.

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The four walls of the contact center are rapidly eroding. Contact centers are spreading across the world and providing increased customer service as a result. In order to be competitive, all firms are going need to provide this level of service to their customers.

Source: E-Commerce Times

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

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/

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 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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Indian offshore call centers 'not doomed'

Offshore call centers are expected to continue growing, despite the fact that some companies are bringing their customer care services back home.

Lloyds TSB became the latest British company to decide to reduce its use of Indian call centers. But earlier this week, Barclaycard announced that it is moving more work to Mumbai, and Datamonitor contact center outsourcing analyst Peter Ryan said it is shortsighted to predict the end of customer service outsourcing.

Investment in offshore markets will continue for some time, as companies attempt to capitalize on lower costs and high-quality client care, Ryan said, predicting that more industries "than ever before" will be looking to adopt outsourced customer services.

This year "will be one of the most challenging in contact center outsourcing's history," Ryan said.

Ryan said, however, that call center operations will have to invest in Web-chat, SMS and e-mail technologies if they want to attract new customers. They also must offer systems tailored to specific vertically integrated industries, he said.

Companies will be looking for suppliers that can satisfy demand from multiple contact channels rather than just voice, he added.

Datamonitor predicts that outsourcers will start to focus on higher-value services--such as business-to-employee care and technical support--that are likely to lead to higher revenues and profits over the long term.

Steve Ranger of Silicon.com reported from London

Winners announced for CCF European Call Centre Awards 2007

The Hilton Metropole in Birmingham played host to the CCF European Call Centre Awards on 26th September 2007. The awards, sponsored by Garlands, served to celebrate the successes and achievements of the call centre industry over this past year.

The evening proved a great success, with 1,200 guests attending on the night. Comedian Frankie Boyle was the compere for the sell-out evening, in which 20 awards were given out. The evening also raised an incredible £1,500 for the Samaritans with a charity race card, where guests could predict the eventual winners of each award.

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12 Principles that Drive Profitable Customer Relationships

A dozen time-tested fundamentals that will help your organization achieve greater success.

If you’re still trying to sort out what customer relationship management really means, you're not alone. The term has been so hyped and so broadly interpreted that it remains a source of confusion. And once codified as a popular business movement, terms tend rise and fall with the trends of the day.

But it’s important to remember that building profitable customer relationships will never go out of style. From the days of the corner store in centuries past, to the global enterprises of the future, the following 12 principles will remain the backbone of building a successful business. Each is both compelling on its own and intertwined with the others — there is no question, though, that customer relationship management as an integrated whole is greater than the sum of these parts.

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Report: Call centers no better at satisfying customers

Dimension Data says plummeting customer satisfaction rates reflect more accurate measurement on part of contact centers.

Despite increasing emphasis on providing better service, contact centers appear to be doing a worse job of satisfying customers, according to a call center report published Monday.

Satisfaction rates in contact centers took a nosedive in 2006, falling from 82% a year earlier to 68% last year, according to the Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report. IT services consultant Dimension Data prepared the report, which surveyed 403 contact centers in 42 countries about the latest industry trends.

Participants reported lower customer satisfaction rates and at the same time confirmed that customer satisfaction is the principal driver of call center development strategies. It ranked first among development strategies in importance, according to 87.3% of respondents. Quality and process improvements placed second in the rankings, cited by 80.7% of respondents.

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Automated Intervention Works Against Call Center Agents

By Patrick Barnard
Customer Inter@ction Solutions

My problem is with intervening on the call -- especially if you use speech analytics to make it happen automatically. To me this sounds like a case of over-engineering, and I can imagine it causing serious problems for agents. Furthermore, I see this idea as being in conflict with the current movement in the contact center industry to empower the agent.

I see real value in real time analytics for the contact center, particularly in terms of its ability to gather valuable customer information which can be used across the enterprise. However, as a former outbound agent from the 1980s, I'm distressed about this idea of using real time speech analytics to identify calls that are going sour and automatically intervening on the call for the purpose of preventing the customer from defecting.

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A call centre in your bedroom?

The trend for call centre workers to be based from home is set to increase rapidly over the next five years as businesses look to cut customer service costs.

Analyst Datamonitor claims the use of outsourced home agents is now becoming a mainstream option for businesses.

There are currently around 47,000 home-based outsourced call centre workers working 20 hours per week or more globally - predominantly in the US - and Datamonitor predicts this will rise to almost 224,000 by 2012.

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