With its ability to provide greater employment opportunities to people in remote areas, as well as its positive impact on the environment in which we live, the homeshoring movement holds the promise of a brighter future for mankind – and no company is more aware of this than Denver, Colo.-based TouchStar (News - Alert), the fastest growing provider of call center solutions in the U.S.

TouchStar, which offers call center software facilitating the remote or “home-based” agent model, today announced the launch of Commerce For Change, a new initiative to “help create jobs for remote teleservices and call center workers in areas that are disadvantaged, remote, emerging from conflict, or recovering from disaster.” According to company officials, the new program was started “to create positive change and to inspire other businesses to create change in the communities where they do business.”

The program has a strong “green” element, as it is well established that homeshoring takes cars off the roads, which in turn reduces harmful carbon emissions and helps save the environment.

As part of this program, TouchStar has committed to donate virtual call center technology to businesses, government agencies and private organizations which work together to launch new programs that generate jobs utilizing the remote agent model in rural or “disadvantaged” areas. Commerce for Change, which is in need of supporters, is in line with TouchStar’s philosophy of “contributing to positive social and environmental change in the communities (or in this case the world) in which we do business.”

The program currently consists of five “review projects:” The “Rural Community Work from Home” program, which is designed to create new job opportunities for rural workers; the “Green Help Line,” a toll free call center dedicated to helping people to get information on reducing their energy costs; the “Disaster Displaced Workers Virtual Call Center,” a virtual call center that can provide rapid job opportunities for people in areas that have experienced a natural disaster; “Call Center for the State of Chihuahua, Mexico,” a project to provide job opportunities from Mexican federal and state government entities as well as private companies to the people of Chihuahua, Mexico; and “Call Center for the People of Palestine & Israel,” a new joint business, co-operative government entity, or non-profit created to provide job opportunities and increased communications for the people of Palestine and the people of Israel.

The program already has the support of the American Teleservices Association, a non-profit trade organization dedicated to the advancement of companies that utilize contact centers as an integral channel of operations. "Remote teleservices have a tremendous positive impact on the environment because carbon emissions from commuting can be minimized,” said Tim Searcy, CEO of the ATA, in a press release. “Urban sprawl is also minimized when people are empowered with job opportunities in their own communities. From a social perspective, remote workers gain the ability to stay in their communities and spend more time with their families. Businesses also benefit through increased retention and access to highly skilled employees that are willing to work remotely due to the flexibility.”

“The ATA will be encouraging our members to increase the number of remote workers they employ when possible,” he added. “We will ask them to hire in areas of the United States that have economic needs. Commerce For Change is helping us identify communities that need support from the teleservices industry and we are happy to help."

Global businesses, governments and institutions are invited to review the proposed projects at www.commerceforchange.org/review-projects.htm. Organizations can contribute in a variety of ways -- from helping to create remote worker job opportunities, to donating products and services such as computers, headsets, network equipment, Internet access lines, offices, furniture, micro lending, security, and travel credits.

“TouchStar is not only interested in providing world class communications technology, but we also recognize the potential our products have to improve the lives of all people both domestically and internationally,” said TouchStar CEO Steve Bederman (News - Alert). “TouchStar technology has enabled domestic and international middle class job creation, increased communications among diverse people, and helped to integrate supply chains that stabilize international relationships. We believe that commerce and communications are the most powerful elements of positive change in the world today. Conflict is certainly not the answer to our global challenges."

“Through our experience of enabling businesses and call centers around the world with remote worker technology, we gained a vision for creating a tremendous amount of positive change if more businesses and governments enabled remote workers,” added TouchStar's global director of marketing, Brian Smits. “Remote office and at-home job opportunities can create immediate positive opportunities for economic, social, and environmental change. There are domestic and international communities that need help right now. Through Commerce For Change, TouchStar will inspire and lead the business community to work together to create tangible changes this year."

TouchStar made news in February when it announced the introduction of “TouchStar Enterprise 2008,” its all-new, full-featured enterprise solution for outbound, inbound and blended communications. This new platform, which represents the company’s entry into the Tier 1 enterprise market, offers reliability and scalability up to 7,200 agents in the first version.

This multi-channel platform offers unified communications and virtualization capabilities, and thus is ideal for enterprises with multiple, geographically dispersed locations. Handling both VoIP and TDM environments, the solutionj includes includes TouchStar’s market leading predictive dialer -- offering predictive, power, preview and manual dialing options -- as well as multiple ACD and IVR features, compliance management, custom integration, quality assurance, reporting, recording, scripting, and best time to call analytics. In addition it offers six primary modules facilitating complete Web-based management of the entire system, including Administrator, Supervisor, Agent, IVR Maker, Reporter and Predictive Dialer modules. The full .NET (News - Alert) solution also offers new redundancy and compliance features which are in demand in today’s highly regulated enterprise market.

For more information about TouchStar visit www.touchstar.com.

For more information about Commerce For Change, visit www.commerceforchange.org.

For more information about the American Teleservices Association visit www.ataconnect.org.

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Patrick Barnard is Assignment Editor for TMCnet and Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.

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