Bestsourcing Contact Center Agents

By Rich Tehrani (News - Alert)

In a conversation with telecom carrier Level 3 I just learned they recently ceased all of their customer service operations in India and have brought them back to the U.S. The agents are located near the company’s NOCs nationwide. Company executives tell me that India still has strengths in performing back office operations but this move will be positive for customer service levels going forward.

This is not to say the U.S. is the only country with new contact center jobs. In fact Telecom New Zealand (News - Alert) just decided that the economic environment they live in makes for a great opportunity to hire contact center agents in the Philippines. A year-long trial demonstrated to company decision-makers that staff located offshore delivered strong results in areas where specific technical knowledge was important.

It seems like service providers are making most of the contact center agent news as Verizon (News - Alert) will be adding 60 new agent positions in Hamilton, New Jersey.

“We’re looking for great people to help us grow and succeed,” said Michelle Swittenberg, Verizon’s vice president of sales, mid-Atlantic region. “With surging demand for Verizon FiOS (News - Alert) and our other leading products and services, these new team members will help us take our great customer service and sales support to an entirely new level.”

But who needs to hire people in a center when homesourcing has become such a rage. TMC (News - Alert)’s Brendan Read, Customer Interaction Solutions’ Senior Contributing Editor is excited when he talks about the growth in this area. This enthusiasm is not lost on IDC (News - Alert) who predict the homesourcing market will exceed 300,000 agents by 2010. Perhaps part of the reason for the growth is that monitoring tools allow companies to keep tabs on what is happening and they can save $10/hour per agent by keeping them home. Considering the economy it is not surprising the lower priced option is what companies will choose.

Contactual (News - Alert) too has jumped on the homeshoring bandwagon with their latest Contactual OnDemand Contact Center Version 6.

The company has added these new features better security, a new reporting API and an improved IVR editor. It also has a redesigned agent toolbar, ability to broadcast notices to agent groups, enhanced chat functions and desktop sharing to make agents more productive and improve job satisfaction. Platform capacity, stability and interactive toolbar performance are all significantly improved over previous versions.

And they had this to say about home agents:

No commute for your agents means your company will decrease its environmental impact, and you’ll expand your ability to offer employment opportunities to homebound candidates. Your agents and supervisors can be located anywhere in the country and be just as productive as if they were all working in the same room.

With Contactual your home agents are up and running in less than a week. The agent interface makes it easy for them to learn and use the application.

Are you afraid that your call center supervisors won’t be able to effectively manage the home agent workforce? Don’t be – the Contactual solution gives supervisors access to critical call center metrics in real time. Call reporting, monitoring, service level management, historical reports and more are all available on demand.

Municipal Contact Centers
One area of growth for contact centers is certainly municipalities as they now have lots of stimulus dollars to spend. This is why QScend Technologies, a company focusing on municipal CRM solutions has just released enhancements to its QAlert Municipal CRM software which now includes new features such as a full-blown knowledge base, customizable reporting and charting, and a citizen self-service center.

QScend President Keith LeBeau said the product can be implemented as a full 311 call center product or “in a decentralized environment, in which several departments may be entering non-emergency citizen issues.”

Contact Center Quality
In quality news, CVS Caremark Corporation announced this week that its Customer Care Centers were recognized for the third time by J.D. Power and Associates Certified Call Center Program for customer service excellence.

The company was reportedly recognized for providing an Outstanding “Customer Service Experience” at their Caremark Customer Care Centers in Arizona, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas.

In all, the troubled economic environment seems to present an opportunity for companies to find ways to reduce costs by using home agents and outsourcing even to other countries as needed i.e. ‘bestsourcing’. In addition with the price of labor falling in the U.S. due to higher levels of unemployment it seems like it is time for companies to reevaluate their offshoring strategy to improve customer-retaining service.

' Rich Tehrani is TMC's Group Publisher.

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