Telework boosted by virtual call centers, Part 1

Lots of excitement at this year’s Call Center Demo/Western Telework Conference

Branch Office Best Practices Newsletter Network World, 02/08/05

What a difference a year makes. At last week’s Call Center Demo Show and Western Telework Conference in Dallas, the telework/virtual call center sessions were packed, and the CEOs of the companies that launched this niche, misunderstood market eight years ago - Willow CSN, Alpine Access, Working Solutions, ARO Outsourcing - walked around like rock stars.

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Last year, the show was dead. Budget constraints hurt attendance, and businesses that did make the trip wanted to hear how they could pay Indian agents $2 an hour. But now most have since realized (with help from Lou Dobbs) that it’s a bad idea to have foreign agents care for U.S. customers, and they’re circling back to the states, and to home-based agents.

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It was like watching a light bulb go off in everybody’s head. Most organizations have a customer-care element of one kind or another, a bunch of employees who spend all or most of the day answering calls. On a good day the work is stressful and tedious. On a bad day, irate customers and long queues of on-hold calls can bring you to tears.

Bookend a phone-based job with a long commute and you’ve got some pretty miserable workers; workers who nearly always quit. The typical turnover rate for brick-and-mortar call centers, (or “contact centers” that include e-mail and instant messaging), is around 60% or 70% - many report much higher, 100% or more.

And that’s not just with entry-level call center jobs, either. There’s this misperception that call centers by definition are powered by twenty-somethings with bad attitudes set to jump when something better comes along. In big traditional call center operations that’s true. But there are vast and growing segments of phone-based workers who are well-educated professionals - HR professionals, nurses and insurance agents. People you don’t want to lose over a miserable work environment or a long commute.

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