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.
New attack fells Internet Explorer
11/22/09
A hacker has posted attack code that could be used to break into a PC running older versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.
Google Chrome OS on the PC World Podcast
11/21/09
In this week's special (and slightly long) episode of the PC World podcast, editors Robert Strohmeyer, Tim Moynihan, Melissa Perenson, and Nick Mediati discuss the just-announced Google Chrome OS.
LG NAS Adds Blu-ray Drive
11/21/09
LG's N4B1 NAS box is neither a comprehensive media server nor a particularly fast performer, but as a network-attached storage device, it's quick enough for home/small-business file serving. The unit--available at this writing for around $700--is also the sturdiest and quite possibly the best-looking such box I've had my hands on. You also can't beat it's HTML configuration interface for looks or ease of learning and use. But none of that compares to the N4B1's most outstanding feature: an integrated Blu-ray burner, unique among NAS products in the SMB/SOHO market.
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.
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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