|
The trend of outsourcing inbound
and outbound contact centers the
past few years have become a billion
dollar industry, the main issue
here however are the growing acceptance
by companies to move their outsourced
contact center offshore. The large
numbers of Filipino English speaking
personnel, Indian technical expertise,
and very low cost Chinese labor
have proven to be a worthwhile
management decision for a lot
of industries.
There is no need to discuss the
advantages of outsourcing contact
centers when even the government
itself has begun outsourcing a
lot of their public service lines
to outsourcing companies. The
main discussion right now is how
to manage the cost of the outsourcing
business on the technology side
in the meantime maintain the level
of quality control level on the
personnel side.
Outsourcing companies normally
have technologies geared toward
achieving this goal. The price
for telecommunication hardware
and equipment has been the main
financial concern of most contact
centers especially the outsourced
ones.
There are also issues of connectivity,
IPL reliability, and proximity
to skilled workers. Positioning
contact centers to highly skilled
areas reduce the impact of having
cheap labor by having additional
costs on office maintenance and
salary competitiveness.
If such a technology where a contact
center queue can be routed to
anywhere in the world at anytime
even to a mobile phone, will it
solve issues. To some it will.
If such a technology exists and
in spite of having agents work
remotely from a contact center
itself, will it resolve such issues?
Maybe it does. If the technology
still allows you to manage your
agent’s skill routings, live queue
management, live quality control
monitoring and call recording?
Will that reduce the loss of quality
control? Probably. If the extra
budget due to the reduction of
sophisticated hardware and brick
and mortar office are spent on
US quality voice and not VoIP
IPLs? Will that make the phone
quality better? Most likely.
In the end, the virtual contact
center technology has created
as much questions as it has answered.
It has solved a lot of problems
yet created new ones. But aren’t
these factors the same issues
when outsourcing is still an infant?
Aren’t these the same concerns
when a company decides to go virtual?
History has proven that it may
not be for everyone, but if it’s
for you. The impact to your business
is enormous.
The technology is already here.
It is ready, It can do inbound
and outbound from anywhere in
the world to anywhere in the world.
Monitor and manage real time anywhere
in the world. The real question
is. Would your business model
benefit from having such technology
on your side?
I guess it would.
Carlo Caparras is currently a
marketing consultant for several
ISP’s, webhosting, web development,
web-services, outsourcing, colocation,
and telecommunication companies
including toll free express (http://www.tollfreeexpress.com)
|
