Call Centers — Boom or Bust?

My prediction seems to be panning out. 2009 looks like it is going to be a very good year for Voice-over-IP telephony. That does not seem to be the case with all VoIP market segments. Call centers seems to be having their ups and downs.

Resellers Have Pulled Back

We have had several resellers that were planning to target call centers pull back on their efforts. It seems that they have sensed a weakness in the call center market. This was strange to me since the VoIP market is going through a very strong period of growth. What seems to be the problem with call centers?

Call Centers function

Call centers have evolved to respond to customer demand or to provide services to a company. They can be both internal or external to the company. When customers need to contact someone for support, sales, information, account information, or to change services, an in-bound call center is generally what the customers has dialed into. If the company wants to contact its customer base, expand the customer base, take a survey, etc, they are using services provided from an out-bound call center.

In-Bound Call Centers

In bound Call centers are the preferred call centers for telephone companies. Is it any wonder, the calls are longer in duration. The in-bound call centers have been taking a hit recently as many have been out sourced to overseas call centers. With the improved quality of VoIP and the lowered telephony costs, outsourcing has had an advantage to many companies by both lowering telephone costs as well as personnel costs. This trend seems to be reversing as many companies have had a negative response to the unintelligible answering the phone and trying to carry on a conversation in English.

Even though there may be some cut backs, the in-bound call centers seem to be holding their own during the economic hard times.

Out-Bound Call Centers

Out bound call centers are used in a proactive way for the business, political party, poling agency, etc. You will find predictive dialers used to call a list. Predictive dialers know when: there is no answer, a calling machine answers, or a human answers. When a human answers, there is typically a short delay until the call is transferred to an out-bound call center staff person. This is usually when I hang up.

The out-bound call center has been recently affected in three ways:

• Outsourcing
• Call duration charges
• Economy

The outsourcing of call centers is not news. Outsourcing has had its damaging effects. It is possible that this trend is reversing.

However, carriers have been getting crippled by short duration calls and have taken steps to penalize companies that tie up their circuits with these calls. These short duration calls are a direct result of the out-bound call center hanging up on the answer machine, no answer, or humans hanging up on them. This has proven to be a serious problem. Additional charges are now being assessed against the offending call centers to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a months.

If that is not enough, the economy has probably been the biggest blow to the out-bound call center. As indicated previously, the out-bound call center is used for advertising, surveys, poling and more. Most of these functions come out of the advertising budget and are viewed as expenses. Now that times are tough, businesses are cutting expenses and the out-bound call center expense is one of those areas being cut — BIG TIME.

My assessment of the call center market right now is:

• In-bound call centers are a Boom/Steady
• Out-bound call centers are a Bust   IT

Don Witt is President of cyLogistics (News - Alert) (www.cylogistics.com).

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