CALL CENTER UPDATES

Work at cancer hot line inspired Austin artist
Austin American-Statesman - Austin,TX,USA
Brown started working at the call center shortly after moving to Austin in 1999. His mother had just died of brain cancer. His task: using an American ...
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Meeting First Call Resolution Challenges in the Contact Center
CRM Buyer - USA
In the contact center world, that's known as "first call resolution," and the companies that you call want it, too. If a call takes too long or leaves your ...
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Insulting British callers make operators sick
Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingdom
Research carried out by India's booming call centre industry has found the 1.6 million people who work in them, mostly in their twenties, are plagued by ...
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SHOULD ONE WORK IN A CALL CENTER?

Much has been said about the advantages associated with call centers. But what are its negative externalities? Yesterday, a young fellow working in a big call center (in Manila) asked about the negative side of hosting call centers. I asked why did he asked and the reply was that he has observed a number of people who stopped going to school in favor of jobs in contact centers. He reasoned that this happened because contact centers do not require applicants to have a college degree.

My reply was not along the lines of his reasoning. I told him that the call centers’ ”No college degree required policy” provides the country with more benefits than disadvantages. The policy is a tremendous help to the throngs of people who failed to finish the college, who before the arrival of the Call Centers, were among the most disadvantaged in the country.

The real danger actually lurks within those who started working in Contact Centers immediately after college and that includes him. Dumbfounded, he asked why and I said, "look at it this way. Call Centers provide meaningful employment to young graduates but not much beyond it". For instance, a young graduate of architecture initially earns more if he works in a call center than as an apprentice in most architectural firms. And since most Filipino graduates belong to the lower class, the temptation to choose the higher paying job is a lot greater. In the beginning, the choice may seem wise but eventually, the individual will realize that the call center salary will not be enough. Young graduates do not require a lot of money to be able to finance their daily needs. But once they get married or older, the salary is nowhere close to being enough. They will all need to have their own houses, vehicles and other properties and call center salaries will be lacking. Of course, those who eventually rise to become managers earn well by the country’s standards but looking at the number high positions, one will realize that those posts are way below the number of starting (call center agent) posts. Only a handful meks it to the top. It means that a lot of people will become under employed in terms of income levels.

For the meantime, his classmates who started as apprentices in architectural firms had already accumulated enough experiences and skills and must have risen to become senior employees. They may even have their own architectural businesses. His classmates now command higher prices for their jobs and may even be doing their own architectural outsourcing services by designing houses for people overseas.

Can the call center employee switch jobs and go back to architecture? Of course, it is possible. However, he will have to start anew and the pay may not be enough to sustain his daily needs which should have increased since he has become older. And if that is the case, he may not leave his call center job anymore and get stuck in it. The main problem, at this point is a call center career is a dead end job.

NEXT ARTICLE: SOLUTIONS TO THIS PROBLEM

LATEST IN OUTSOURCING: Swedish Call Center Operators in the Philippines

Just now, I read about a Swedish contact center who located its offshore facility in Cagayan de Oro, a province located in the south of the Philippines. Since the company handles accounts in Sweden and there are hardly Swedish speaking Filipinos in that part of the world, the company brought in Swedish call center agents to operate the call center.

The move may come as a surprise to most people. The main reason why people outsource is the need to lower costs. Bringing the contact center agents offshore should be more expensive than simply maintaining them onshore.

The reason given by the company is that like most call center companies everywhere, they are experiencing a huge rate of employee turnovers. Since call center agents are very much in demand, their employees move from one company to another, to take advantage of better pay among other reasons. In addition, they are also having trouble recruiting and training newly hired agents.

One idea that came into their mind is the relocation of their call center facilities offshore in order to lure more employees into staying in the company for a long time. They established an office in Spain but it was not found to be successful due to the close proximity of Spain to Sweden and the high cost of living in la Espana. The company then decided to start an office in the Philippines and advertised the location using the country's warm weather, beaches, low cost of living and friendly people. Interviews with the Swedish employees seem to indicate that they are liking the Philippine office for the same reason.

Good Idea!


By the way, I found a Philippine advertisement looking for Finnish and Swedish speaking call center agents. It seems that the Cagayan experiment is successful. The ads are for a different operation. It will be in Manila, the capital of region of the Philippines.

I KID YOU NOT. IT'S $7.47 PER CALL

The Japanese would say; "TAKAI!!!!" -- Expensive

A call center in Denver is computed to be costing the taxpayers $3.31 per call and if the set up costs will be considered, the figure goes up to $7.47/call.

That's way too expensive if it will be compared to what the Asian Call centers charge.

The complete article can be found in this link.

BPO Industry Hires 25% of Bagiuo's New Grads

The Philippine's summer capital now has another reason to smile. Aside from it's brisk tourism trade, a big portion of its new graduates were recently hired by the BPO sector.

"Only 2 to 3 percent of Manila's labor pool land jobs in business outsourcing firms, he said. But the BPO industry has been hiring 25 percent of Baguio's fresh graduates, he added."

In contrast to the pronouncement of an article posted in another site (read here), this column wishes to thank the foreign clients who entrusted some of their business processes to the Filipinos. As I have always maintained, the companies who outsourced properly, are bound to end with better productivity and emerge as a much better organizations. Furthermore, the offshore companies that benefited from outsourcing are called local heroes for having provided jobs. However, they should always be on their toes and stay competitive. Otherwise, the contracts might leave, faster than the rate the it came in.

As the new battlecry goes; "let's move towards KPO"

More Newspaper Jobs being Outsourced, Commentaries and Other News.

An Indian paper claims; “American inefficiency is India’s outsourcing gain”. I beg to disagree. Outsourcing leads to higher productivity for the companies that sent the jobs elsewhere. The end result will undoubtedly be a stronger and bigger enterprise. Please read my related discourse through this link.

The beneficiaries of outsourcing, instead of angering their clients, should be thankful for the inflow of new employment and business opportunities. Instead of namecalling, why not focus on doing the job well? Geesh, is that the way to treat clients? Call them inefficient? I wonder why the paper stopped itself from calling them stupid.

A day after a New Zealand newspaper announced the outsourcing of 70 sub-editing jobs to Australia (details here); an American newspaper declared plans to outsource jobs to another country. In the news, the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) will be sending 25 graphic design jobs to India (details in this page). Of course, the union is mad. Again, this site’s contention in regard to this topic remains.

This site preaches the gospel of outsourcing but is constantly aware of the follies of a few employees of outsourcing companies specifically, call center agents. Of course, most people know that absurd replies to customer questions are heard everywhere. Furthermore, it is also known that offshore contact centers are delivering better services at lesser cost. It is indeed very true, that the benefits of outsourcing far outweigh the costs. As an example, PC manufacturer DELL has thousands of customer service representatives in the Philippines and in a television advertisement in Manila, a ranking Dell executive declares that their BPO facility in the country is the best so far. Here is another testimony to outsourcing’s exemplary benefits.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

- As the US turns to India and other Asian countries for their outsourcing needs, Western Europe is sending jobs to its former adversaries-Eastern Europe. Please read the complete news here.

- Infosys BPO is expanding to Manila. Please read it here.

- While call centers are rapidly being outsourced to Asian countries, some US call centers continue to expand (onshore). Please read it here.

ARE AMERICAN JOBS IN REAL DANGER?

I think not.

In a news report, economist Alan S Blinder, a champion of free trade warns about the inevitable consequences of outsourcing.

"Communication technology that allows services to be delivered electronically from afar — will put as many as 40 million jobs at risk of being shipped out of America in the next two decades."

The job insecurity US workers face today is “only the tip of a very big iceberg”, said Blinder.

The same report quoted the disagreement of another economist jagdish Bhagwati.

“You have two-way flows, three-way flows; you have what we call trade in variety,” Bhagwati said. “Even if India has the same skill person, it doesn’t mean the US is going to suffer. It just means the US and India will transact within the same industry.”

He cited the example of clinical trials now being done in India.

“An American surgeon is not going to lose his job because drug trials are being done in India,” he remarked.

Bhagwati responded to the rising rhetoric about high-end research being outsourced:

— there will always be a to-and-fro movement of trade and services.”

Read the full report here:

In the immediate future, I can see a great number of jobs being outsourced. However, the process should also pave way for the creation of a lot of better news career positions for Americans.

With some of the traditional jobs now being sent to far locations, US firms should be able to give more attention to the main purposes of their businesses. It will result to the recruitment of more core personnel thus paving the way for higher productivity of American companies.

For example, with help desk call centers and vital machine parts being done elsewhere, the management of a manufacturing company will suddenly have time for greater focus on product development and marketing of their products.

In the areas of medical billing, coding and transcription, the few existing onshore transcribers should learn to handle quality assurance (of the output coming from offshore offices). When the voice recognition technology has matured and become ready to transcribe voice dictations, the transcripionists should be ready to become editors who will fine tune the software to the specific dictators. In IT outsourcing, more managerial jobs will be created onshore. In addition, more attention can be given to the most vital tasks.

The demand for conventional (traditional) jobs will diminish but not totally disappear. Those who will be displaced should be able to upgrade their skills. In so doing, they will be able to move (upwards)to other positions. In the case of the manufacturing company, some of the employees will have to learn to handle sales and marketing or become technically competent to be able to move on to product development.

In the long run, Outsourcing should be good for the country. It will upgrade the skills of its citizens, giving it a higher value. In the end, GDP will increase. Besides, the world continues to move forward, labor unions pressuring their company's management to stop outsourcing are simply posing as hindrances to development.

This is a competitive world, those who fail to upgrade, will be culled.

Hmmn.. I just remembered Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection.

WORKPLACE SAFETY + BPO NEWS AND COMMENTS FOR TODAY

Last week, different newspapers articles reported the shutting down of several call centers in the US. This week however, there are reports of new ones rising. To cite a couple, there is one in Colorado and another in Pleasanton.

Call Centers in the Philippines continue to expand. On 2006, companies led by DELL hired thousands of new call center employees. This year, People Support and several other existing BPO’s are contracting new buildings that will house their expansions. Today, another call center expands its operation.

The voice of the customer management profession points out that outsourcing is inevitable. However, there are some perils associated with it and discussed ways to avoid it.

In Dubai, a center called the Financial Technologies Centre for Straight Through Processing Services (FT-CSS) was created to act as a “Technology platform for brokers of stocks and commodities to outsource their complete trading and back-office transaction processing.”

Emirates, the Dubai based airline company will will inaugurate a big call and data center at the Dubai Outsource Zone in order to augment its existing facilities.

A call center incident in Portland has highlighted the need to establish steps to protect contact center employees from infectious diseases. Hopefully, all those affected will recover properly. What happened in that call center should serve as a lesson to all other BPO and non BPO firms all over the world.

The workplace conditions should be planned, taking into careful consideration the outmost safety of the people working in it. Despite the cut throat competition, it will always be a good business practice to institute measures that will protect the employees.

Clients should also take such matters into consideration whenever they choose new vendors. It is not simply the low figures that they should rely upon. Clients and vendors alike, should compete and take pride for the distinction of having and supporting the best working environments in the industry. Calling the Safety Organizations in the world...

Apartheid in the BPO Industry? + Other BPO Updates

A US Congressman filed a bill requiring foreign call center workers to disclose their location. Read the complete news this page:

"The congressman, a Democrat, has filed legislation called the Call Center Consumer's Right to Know Act that would require call center employees to state their physical location when called by consumers. supporters believe location disclosure would inform consumers that many of their calls have been redirected to foreign countries and will focus attention on the degree to which U.S. call center jobs have moved overseas."

Hmmn.. Does the congressman want to encourage the practice discrimination based on location, race and color? Isn't this bill leading to a new variant of Apartheid and Racial Profiling? Let's see what the American Civil Liberties Union have to say regarding this.

Andolini, an economist, will probably have a different take on this. Let's wait for his comments.

Cops Outsource the maintenance of their crime database. Click here.

"Police officers are entering crime incident reports, arrest records and other important data into the CrimeCog integrated criminal justice system using personal computers and a common Internet browser. The information is encrypted as it is sent to a secure data center, where it can be accessed by other authorized users, including other police departments."

In Jerusalem, large tourists arrivals are forcing hotel owners to do what others may think as "Unthinkable". Hotels are currently outsourcing rooms to competitors. I hope Asian hotels will have a way of transporting the tourists to their hotels for the evening and return them to the streets of Jerusalem in the morning. Hmmn.. "Beam me up, Scottie!" Read the news here

IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME? -- Continued

What made me select the previous post for publication (in this blog) is my disbelief at the consultant's brazen attempt, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to increase her inventory (of properties to offer), at the investor's peril.

Some liars are difficult to spot. However, there are those who can be smelled from miles away.

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"A consultant's role is to present the best possible options to the clients. In the BPO industry, making property owners spend while awaiting possible locators is never an option. The money invested sleeps, the facilities become outdated therefore reducing the possibility of it being used. Furthermore, the equiments can burn to the ground or get stolen. There is no real guarantee that money will ever be recovered."
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First of all, her example is fallacious. Among the things that I didn't mention to her, is the fact that I was a part of that particular building's construction. Seven years ago, when the country was going through a period of economic difficulty, that infrastructure was built with the intention of making it an Information Technology (I.T.) hub. The building is supposed to house IT developers. For quite sometime after construction, the building had a low occupancy. It was only later, when the call cnter industry boomed, was the building fully occupied. I can hardly consider cantact centers as IT developement companies.

During our meeting, the "Consultant" also noted an operational call center (near my client's property) which was built without any client in mind. She added that they offered that facility to their long term client, only that, the decision was to locate elsewhere. Why did her client locate far from that facility? I know the reason. That particular building is far from the present popular call center locations. The company probably did not want to risk being the first to locate in that area and have a hard time recruiting employees. That is actually my main hesitation. My client's property hardly has a call center nearby. Though my assessment (based on experiences) showed that it is a good spot, I am not sure if the prospective locators sees it the way I do.

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"No consultant worth his salt, will ever lead anybody in a
road to perdition

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I didn't bother pinpointing the lies that I heard so that others will recognize her, as easily as I did. Had I told her, she would have modified her story before talking to the next potential client (victim?).

In my opinion, a consultant's role is to present the best possible options to the clients. In the BPO industry, making property owners spend while awaiting possible locators is never an option. The money invested sleeps, the facilities become outdated. thus reducing the possibility of it being used. Furthermore, it can possibly burn or get stolen. There is no real guarantee that money will ever be recovered.

That property consultant, in my opinion, was simply out to make money out of her retension fees. In so doing, she is also increasing her inventory of properties that can be offered to her clients. That is not the way to honestly live. If clients make money out of the options presented, the consultant's presence becomes indispensable. Otherwise, there is no reason why any investor should hire one. No consultant worth his salt, will ever lead anybody in a road to perdition.

IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME?

One client chairs a group of companies that successfully developed several real properties during the past few decades. Not long ago, he consulted me regarding the BPO prospects of his company. He mentioned having noticed the boom in the office leasing business due to the upsurge of BPO firms. Call Centers have taken over a number of previously empty office buildings and numerous projects that are yet to break ground have already been fully committed.

I was given a preview of their inventory that can possibly be converted into BPO facilities and asked of my opinion and help, being an industry insider. The following day, I wrote a few Call Centers and made a preliminary presentation of my client. Several replies came but I find a particular response worth sharing in this space.


A consultant to a giant call center company, called and asked to meet with me in their office. I agreed while asking if their client has a requirement that matches our inventory. The reply was positive. Arriving on time for my meeting, I was made to wait for half an hour while the person I was to meet, rummaged through her things. During the meeting, I described the properties available for BPO use and asked for its prospects (with her client). She then enumerated a number of projects that my client should put into effect. In summary, my client was being asked to build an expensive BPO facility, with a minimum size of 5,000 square meters, among other things.

Very politely, I asked if their call center will lease our building, should my client spend for the infrastructure that they ask for. The reply blunt was "First, build your facility, then we will offer it (to clients)." A bit surprised, I explained that my client is willing to invest, but no businessman will spend (that much) without any indication that money will be made from it.

The reply was "You have to show to your prospective lessee/s that you have the confidence in your company and the capability to spend & maintain the facility, before you even talk to them."

She added; “Look at this particular building at _ _ _ _ _ _. It was built without any lessee on the list, but now it is filled to capacity.”

Geesh!!!! TO BE CONTINUED....

Online BPO and Work at Home Opportunities

Browsing through the internet, several work at home ads can be found. A few require do not require a membership fee in order to gain access to (online jobs) but a big majority does. Some membership fees may be as low as US$5.00 but there are those that can go to as much as US$199.00 or even more.

Through the years, a lot of news articles claim that fraudulent advertisments are all over and that unsuspecting viewers have easily fallen victims of unscrupulous sites.

I created a new site that will publish vacancies that are personally known to the author/s to be in actual existence. The blog will also post advertisements found through the net but all of it will be accompanied with short notes/ reviews. The authors of this site will also browse through, but not limited to Google advertisements and will try conduct verifications and authenticate some ads.

Ads that are personally found to be truly reliable and those that were verified and authenticated by reliable sources, will be accompanied by this site's "Seal of Approval".

Check the site regularly and tell your friends about it.

Philippines hosts the 7th e-services expo

Foreign companies thinking of outsourcing some of their business processes will be attending the e-Services Expo: 7th global conference on outsourcing and exhibition at the Shangri-La Plaza, along the Ortigas Business District, Philippines. Most of the conference exhibitors are companies specializing in Contact Centers, Transcription, Software Development, Animation, Back Office Operations, and various IT solutions.

Repair Of Damaged Cables To Be Completed By End Feb

The full service restoration of the submarine cables damaged during the Boxing Day Earthquake is expected to be completed by the end of February 2007. This is due to delays in repair caused by bad weather.

The quake which hit Taiwan badly damaged vital submarine telecom cables connecting several Asian countries. Immediate results of the quake included the delays in receiving emails, difficulties in IDD connections, unreliable international SMS and slow internet connections.

At this point, most telecom services are reported to have been restored but the affected countries still await the completion of the repairs.

New Submarine Cable system for RP

Good News for Asian BPO!

The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that the Hongkong based company- Asia Netcom will be installing a 23,500 kilometer submarine cable system that will augment the existing telecoms infrastructure connecting the Philippines with the rest of the world. The project which is estimated to cost $636 Million, is expected to be completed by July 2008 .

Phil BPO rams through despite natural calamities

Backed up, Redundant, Mirrored, Fail Safe, etc... These words are now proving that Asian BPO firms can deliver despite catastrophes.

Last month, it was the super typhoon "Milenyo". This December, the country was struck by a much stronger storm "Reming". Overall, close to a couple of hundreds of houses were destroyed and thousands of lives were lost . If you are familiar with the famed Cagsawa ruins near the world famous Mayon Volcano, let me inform you that only the roof of the bell tower is left after mudslides rampaged through the place.

The other night, internet access, which made the Asian BPO Industry possible, was suddenly cut off when a series of strong quakes hit Taiwan, a couple of days ago. While most BPO companies took the interruption in stride, hardest hit was the Call Center sub sector which relies on good real time connection, in order to make person to person communication possible. Despite that, industry insiders reported that most contact centers were able to quickly recover and are now back on operation. The Makati Business District which houses a big number of contact centers is back to its normal activities, unlike a couple of nights ago, when an unusually big number of call center agents were seen hanging around their offices, unable to work.

Despite some difficulty in sending and retrieving important files to and from their partners across the globe, other BPO firms, at this point, continue to operate at full capacity.