Contact centers can embrace social media to get closer to customers, spot trends, and create customer advocates

By Patrick Haller

Social media is finding its way into the contact center ecosystem at a rapid rate. Operators are integrating social media methodologies into daily processes, and tech-savvy customers are indicating that they prefer alternate methods of contact to phone-based customer service.

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By Kathy Welch (TPI) and Jennifer Roxas (Compass)

The concept of “rural sourcing” is gaining increasing credibility as a viable component of a comprehensive sourcing strategy. Under a rural model, US-based service providers establish delivery centers outside of major metropolitan areas, enabling access to technical skills through proximity to large state universities, as well as to a large entry-level workforce in economically distressed rural areas.

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Source: IDG News Service

Clearwire is outsourcing day-to-day customer care to TeleTech Holdings, shifting about 700 employees to the company, in its latest move to cut costs.

The national WiMax service provider has been trying to reduce its operating expenses over the past several months as it continues to post large losses. Last year Clearwire announced layoffs of 15 percent of its workforce, and last month it outsourced management of its network to Ericsson for the next seven years.

About 700 Clearwire customer care workers based in Las Vegas and in Milton, Florida, will become TeleTech employees, Clearwire said in a statement on Thursday. The company will keep about 180 employees across the two locations to handle back-office tasks such as operations and workforce management.

Clearwire said the change will increase efficiencies and reduce costs and will be transparent to subscribers. TeleTech is a global outsourcing company based in Englewood, Colorado.

At the …

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Source: Boston Globe

ATLANTA — Delta Air Lines Inc. says it will stop sending US calls to a call center in South Africa, as it continues to shift that work back to the United States.

Starting July 1, calls about Delta promotions will go to a Delta facility in Dallas. On Aug. 1, general sales calls will go to various Delta call centers in the United States. Delta says the South African center will still handle some calls coming from outside of the United States. It also uses a call center in Jamaica.

Delta has about 4,000 call center workers around the United States and says that number won’t change after calls shift away from South Africa.

Most airlines have been reducing the number of call centers as more travel arrangements are handled online.

 

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Source: Business Wire

NASHVILLE — Sitel, a leading global customer care outsourcing provider, today announced that it is actively expanding its call center facility in the city of Las Cruces, New Mexico. For the second time in five months, the Las Cruces call center has begun a recruitment drive and is currently expanding its staff by more than 140 associates. These associates will be working with a new banking client, and Sitel is seeking a portion of these positions to be both English and Spanish-speaking to provide inbound customer care and value-add sales support.

“The continued demand from our valued clients to place their call center operations in Las Cruces is a testament to the quality of service our agents provide on a daily basis,” said John Munoz, site director at Sitel. “We are pleased to be able to hire a significant amount of new employees and in turn do …

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By John Dragisic

I read George Tillmann’s article, “Wait A Minute: If Outsourcing Is So Painful, Why Do It At All?” with great interest. The article suggested that when firms are able to successfully reengineer their troubled operations there is no need to outsource or offshore. This probably is true in some cases, such as when sales and relationship building skills are critical to call success.

However, it certainly does not address situations covered by run of the mill inbound customer care calls, or most types of outbound, survey and political calls.  In today’s world, when sales operations are under severe cost pressures, this type of call can be typically handled by lower wage agents with a moderate set of skills, which is exactly what offshore centers offer.

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By Linda Rosencrance

Although rural sourcing has been around for a number of years, it seems to have gained momentum in the U.S. in the past couple years. Rural sourcing is the practice of outsourcing work to suppliers that have located their delivery centers in rural areas where costs are lower. Because the suppliers’ costs are lower, they can pass those savings on to their customers.

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Bob Simmonds of Disney: Creating magic in every interaction is not just a cliche. Disney actually walks the walk.

ATA Show Report: Where Many Call Centers are Going Wrong and How To Change Course

By Tarun George

Orlando, FL – The call center landscape is changing fast. Because of increased competition and brutal cost pressures in the last year, client retention and consequently client satisfaction are more important now than they’ve ever been. But are companies changing their call center practices to reflect that? We found that for the most part the answer is no. Many are still over-focused on metrics like cost per call and average handle time, while giving less importance to problem resolution and the customer experience.

During this morning’s ATA Expo keynote speaker Bob Simmonds, Vice President of Walt Disney World Travel Operations drove home the point by stressing that many call center operators have lost their way by not putting enough focus on meeting the actual needs of the customer. “We create magic at every touch point,” he says.

Today we’re going to shine a light on some advancing call center practices, as well as a few companies that are modeling that behavior.

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SOURCE: Sun Sentinel

Interested in working from home? This may be your opportunity: Customer service giant Convergys Corp. is hiring for 118 full-time positions for its call center in Tamarac.

Eighteen of the positions require candidates who are bilingual in English and Spanish to work on site, while the rest are telecommuting opportunities that do not require bilingual capability.

The new Convergys employees will provide customer service support for a client in the telecommunications industry. The jobs offer full benefits including tuition reimbursement, said John Sargis, site leader for the Convergys contact center in South Florida.

Bilingual employees working in the Convergys site on Hiatus Road will receive up to three weeks of paid training and must be able to work schedules between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, the company said.

New telecommuting employees will receive two weeks of paid …

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SOURCE: Salt Lake Tribune

Teleperformance USA, a Salt Lake City-based call center company, has agreed to pay almost $2 million in back overtime wages to employees in Utah and nine other states.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced the settlement Wednesday following an investigation conducted by its wage and hour division in Salt Lake City.

According to settlement provisions, back wages totaling $1,978,147 will be paid to 15,862 workers in the 10 states where Teleperformance agents provided over-the-telephone customer service for clients that include Sprint Communications, Verizon Wireless and Dell Computers.

In Utah, Teleperformance has a call center in Lindon and had one in Clearfield.

Labor Department spokesman Rich Kulchewski said the overtime violations stemmed from employees not being compensated for breaks that were less than 30 minutes and for time spent waiting for work areas to become available, even through their …

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