Virtual Call Centers on Holiday This September 5th

Mobile Express Contact Solutions (MECS) one of the leading call and contact Solutions Company is going to have a break this coming September 5, 2011. MECS serving a US based client is going to have some of its employees take the long weekend. Having a long weekend is a good way to start the month of September as there will be a very wide campaign for a MECS client this coming September 18, 2011. The employees can now have their plans of weekend getaways without the worry of returning to work on a Monday.

As a Virtual Call Center, MECS is following what days in the year are the holidays for a certain client. Since some of its employees are serving the east coast of the United States client, a long weekend is entitled to the agents assigned to this client. It is quite normal that the holidays in the Philippines will not match with the clients and as much as the MECS employees would like to work; they are in the mercy of the client’s schedule. It is totally a different scenario if it’s the holiday here in the Philippines. The employees are obliged to come on duty because the clients are not shutting down their operations on Philippines.

But working on holidays here in the Philippines gives some perks on an employee. They are entitled to have a wage that is twice of the normal of what they are expecting. Employees will not have the luxury of rest days during Philippine holidays but with US holidays the situations is reversed. The employees get to enjoy a day off while all part of the Philippines is working. It is give and take situation. This is a normal situation if you are outsourcing some jobs here in the Philippines. But there are times that the holidays are the same in all parts of the world.

A virtual contact center like MECS is taking into consideration the welfare of its employee by giving substantial rest periods for its employee and giving them what is essential like a double pay if the employee is working on a holiday and a rest day if the client has its own holiday.

This would be the perfect time for some of the employees of MECS to pursue some of their hobbies like travelling and if the employees don’t want to spend money they could just stay on their home and enjoy watching TV. After this long weekend the employees will feel energized and ready to take on the new task.

Home-Based Agents Don't Degrade Quality

Contact centers are not quite as "central" as they used to be. The old cliche of a big room full of representatives handling phone calls is starting to come apart, thanks to technological developments and to the critical need for new sources of labor. Remote agents and virtual centers are a small but growing component of the industry, especially in the more mature markets.

The fundamental platforms in contact centers have turned so quickly to IP that the availability of remote agents has grown faster than the actual adoption of that staffing model. One reason for the delay is the cultural hesitation among contact center managers about assuring the quality of customer interactions, and the ability to actively manage the staff from afar. In practice, it turns out that these fears are largely unfounded: managers see into each transaction and each agent's performance just as well as they could in a traditional brick-and-mortar center. There is not as much tension between adopting a remote staffing model and maintaining quality as many thought there would be.

To a large degree, remote agents depend on the presence of an IP-ACD infrastructure to connect them to the mother organization. A recent research study pegged the portion of IP-enabled seats in contact centers at just short of 50%, and expected to cross that important threshold in the next few years. The research has found at the same time, multi-sourcing, that is creating a mixed environment including multiple outsourcers or a mix of outsourced and in-house agents, will rise as IP adoption makes contact center virtualization easier to accomplish. Such virtualization will lead the growth of remote agents within enterprises, picking up significantly by the end of the year . The population of remote agents - agents who are part of a call center's infrastructure but don't work inside the walls of the center – is currently between 100 and 150 thousand people.

There are three compelling business cases for setting some part of the agent pool off-site, either in small virtual centers or fully remote.

First and foremost is cost control. Evidence shows that agents stay longer in their jobs, and have higher satisfaction levels, when there is flexibility in how they are deployed. In some very large companies, they have built their entire customer contact workforces out of remote agents because agents who work from home are clearly more vested in maintaining their jobs and their employment status. And as you reduce turnover, you can retain your most able and motivated staff and your costs for new-hire training and recruitment go down.

The second business case is continuity. Remote agents aren't affected when your physical center becomes unavailable; this is a benefit that's often discovered after the fact, rather than factored into the initial decision to decentralize the agent pool.

A third benefit, often neglected is the acquired quality improvement from using a single queue irrespective of the many separate call handling locations. Contact center managers can basically administer the setup from any location with a virtual model. Customers have a much more constant interaction than they do on centers are operating semi-independently under different metrics and management.

The Versatility of Speech Analytics

Speech analytics has become the next step for contact centers looking to supplement their quality monitoring solutions with more powerful technology. Contact centers in today's economy provide an essential differentiation point for competitive industries as customers decide between companies with similar products based on the level of customer service and the ability to resolve seemingly intractable problems in one interaction. Speech analytics helps meet customer expectations as by increasing awareness of agent interactions and resolving potential problem areas before they spread and create lasting damage. The power of speech analytics can be evaluated in two major areas: the breadth of its impact on contact center operations and the nature of its implementation.

The Scope of Speech Analytics

Speech analytics increases control and knowledge of contact center operations for larger organizations by assisting the analyzation an otherwise unmanageable number of conversations. It can address critical issues such as achievement of campaign goals, script adherence and agent skills. Management can set an indicator for key performance for agents and use speech analytics to evaluate their fulfilment.

In addition with measurement of agent output improvement, speech analytics can also evaluate customer input such as opinions of the company’s products, frequently asked questions and other reoccurring issues. Speech analytics can also help to evaluate the overall success of a campaign and help management make adjustments in a timely manner. The powerful nature of speech analytics derives from its ability to automate categorization of calls, but its overall capability varies depending on the form of speech analytics used.

Types of Speech Analytics

The system of speech analytics can be divided into the three technologies used to categorize calls. The most fundamental, keyword spotting, is dependent on the words or phrases selected by contact center managers as essential to evaluating customer interactions. These words can be used to find relevant calls for best practices training or to evaluate almost any issue spotted by certain specific phrases. Set up and configuration of keyword spotting is generally affordable for medium-sized contact centers and will quickly generate a positive return on investment. Phonetic indexing provides a more powerful form of speech analytics, but it requires more detailed processing to create a database of phonemes. It uses much more disk space, but it allows faster and more extensive searches once the translations have been compiled. Finally, speech-to-text transcription symbolizes the most sophisticated type of speech analytics. The system must be trained to recognize specific words, and it requires a high level of accuracy. This makes for an expensive set-up period, but once the technology has been implemented, it allows ongoing text mining as your needs evolve.

One day, speech analytics will include even more powerful features such as age or gender spotting. But for many organizations, it is essential today to streamline customer service and provide a competitive edge.

How to Start an Outsourcing Business

In an economic recession and decreasing demand for products and services in the market, outsourcing might be the best solution to resolve businesses problems in a cost-effective way. More and more companies in developed countries are increasingly outsourcing services to companies in developing countries, with services including manufacturing, design and even customer service. Outsourcing can let companies focus on their core businesses and shift to more strategic tasks like building customer relationships, a successful setup if done effectively.

The call center industry is growing and there are more and more companies or corporations outsourcing their business. You may be able to start a small business to fulfill a need for a larger business that is looking to outsource in a particular place. In a recession, large companies are looking to cut costs in every area of their business. Large companies also outsource to small businesses around the corner, and your business could be that one small business. All you have to do is provide a product or service to larger companies that you can provide more cheaply, with high quality.

Here are some ideas as to how you can start your own outsourcing services business:

1. Start with a business plan to set your goals, and reason why you believe these goals are attainable and the plan or action steps for reaching the goal. Know your business objective of outsourcing – Is it to reduce cost, generate more revenue or gain a competitive advantage?

2. Determine the services you will be providing and the target market, and which services to specialize in. Having a call center would attract large companies who wish to outsource some of their services, whether it is for consultancy purposes, customer service, data entry services, telesales, software development or technical support. The most outsourced service by far is manufacturing, because it is a labor-intensive activity that can be performed cheaply by low-wage workers. Developing countries often do not possess sufficient resources to produce capital-intensive services such as engineering design in an economically efficient manner.

3. Get to know the possible markets you can cater to – the general public or the individual clients, small commercial businesses, large corporation. Make contacts with local manufacturers or other service providers, and get estimates of their production costs. This should provide you with the basis for negotiating the price of outsourced services.

4. Determine your business location, it could be home-based or at a commercial location, depending of course on the size of your business and your target market.

5. Identify and contact several outsourcing providers. Negotiate with any or all of them so that you can find the vendor who can perfectly match your requirements. Make contacts with local manufacturers or other service providers, and get estimates of their production costs. This should provide you with the basis for negotiating the price of outsourced services.

Broker deals between companies in your home country and service providers in the countries where you maintain representative offices. Your company's income can be stated as a flat fee or a percentage of the value of the deals that it brokers.

Outsourcing is continuing to grow as small companies and larger companies continue to grow themselves. Their need for back office help - business process outsourcing - means that there will be greater need for an outsourcing company to provide them services. Be that company. Start your own business that could cater to not only one aspect, but make it multifaceted. Offer your future clients a one stop outsourcing services shop. Then, keep your company competitive by taking online courses in business policy and management. Having a call center would attract large companies who wish to outsource some of their services, whether it is for consultancy purposes, customer service, data entry services, telesales, software development or technical support.

Small and Medium BPO Companies Urge Gov't for More Tax Incentives

Small and Medium Call Center companies urged the government for additional tax incentives to help them compete with the large companies amid the talent war and higher power rates. Among the challenges that small call center companies cited were talent recruitment, high attrition rate, government incentives and rising cost of power and utilities.

New facets of the business process outsourcing sectors are still emerging, such as small to medium sized call centers. Small and medium scale call centers (SMCCs) are flourishing and they can prove to be as strong support sector as the big operators we are seeing today. SMCCs are those operated with a capacity of 200 seats or less, and preferably at least 10 seats to ensure viability. The Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT), refer to these as Smites or small-and-medium-scale information technology enterprises. These call centers are becoming are becoming a strong presence in the Philippine call center industry for the up coming years. In fact, they are dispersed in the regions unlike the big call centers, and the average SMCC has 10 seats.

There are over 300 small and medium enterprises call center firms in the BPO industry. Small companies have 1,000 and below employees, medium has 1,000 to 5,000 and large with 5,000 and above. Beaver Lopez Jr., chief executive officer (CEO) of Pacific Hub, said that the incentives to SME should be different from that of the large companies to help them to cope with the challenges. Lopez said the government gives tax and holiday incentives in the first five years of operations whether large or small companies.

Edith Reilly, president of TrecPacific Corp., said the government incentives for the SMEs are not enough as the cost of doing business in the Philippines has been going up. She said the lower foreign exchange rate has also impacted the small companies because when they started, the forex was at P50 but is now down to P 43. Majority of their clients are SMEs in the United States. Aside from the incentives, Reilly also said that the government also needs to step up the quality of education in the Philippines as the English speaking skills of the graduates in the past years have been deteriorating.

Benefits of Home Sourcing

Home sourcing, in basic terms, it is outsourcing to people's homes. Many businesses - chiefly, call centers - are jumping on the home sourcing bandwagon to cut costs and reap many other benefits. Home sourcing is a win-win prospect, as these positions allow workers to obtain stable employment while enjoying the advantages of working at home. As stated, both employers and employees can benefit from home sourcing positions. Employers are well aware that many customers and clients prefer to speak with someone whom they can easily understand and vice versa. Outsourcing overseas can result in language and dialect barriers that leave callers frustrated and unhappy. Home sourcing is a solution for this problem that pleases customers while keeping overhead costs lower for the companies they are calling. Employers may even be able to benefit from special tax credits by home sourcing jobs. Many home sourcing employers hire representatives on a contract basis, which cuts the costs of benefits such as health insurance and paid time off.

Since employees enjoy the plusses of telecommuting, such as saving money on gas and no stressful commute, they can pay a lower wage than they would to full-time, on-site staff. Don't write home sourcing jobs off as not worth your time, though. These jobs are still subject to minimum wage laws and most pay substantially more than that. In addition, read Benefits of Working from Home and Environmental and Cost Benefits of Telecommuting to Work to learn more about how you might benefit from a home sourcing position.

Outsourcing has become more attractive in recent years due to improved technology and wage arbitrage opportunities. Expanded broadband access, improved call-routing networks, and cheaper computer technology have allowed outsourcing to accelerate. Wage arbitrage opportunities, buying labor where it is relatively inexpensive, have arisen in industrialized countries with significant labor costs. An American computer programmer is paid between $75-$100 an hour while a similarly skilled Indian programmer is paid only $20 an hour. The same developments that have encouraged outsourcing have also benefited the growth of home sourcing. Improvements in technology can just as easily move work to a call center in Bangalore as to an employee’s home in Salt Lake City. Similarly, the sorts of wage differences that allow labor arbitrage between countries exist within the U.S. as well. U.S. computer programmers in metro areas earn between $75-$100 an hour while similarly skilled programmers in rural areas earn only $35-$40 an hour.

Cost Cutting in the Outsourcing Business

Companies nowadays keep on searching for possible ways to cut costs. Amidst the economic turmoil, outsourcing business became popular and viable to help businesses continue their services while decreasing operational costs. As a result, cost centers, like IT departments, are prime targets for outsourcing and off-shore maintenance. The typical business script is that as the IT organization moves into maintenance mode that cost center with high overhead becomes a prime target for reducing costs. Companies have reduced their spend on IT services and business transformation by almost one fifth by turning to outsourcers, according to a survey.

Michael DeSalles, Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst, said While the U.K. outsourcing market is fully grown and nearly reached dispersion and there are important opportunities in other European countries. Central and Eastern Netherlands proposed new outsourcing contracts that deal with financial services, communications, and information technology. The cost differential in BPO operations is not adequate. The organization must certify the availability of the resources which includes infrastructure and pool of individuals. The service levels can be maintained while deducting the costs. Last year Europe became the world's highest spender on outsourcing, with companies based in Europe spending more on IT outsourcing than those based in any other region of the world. In 2010 UK companies are expected to increase the amount they spend on outsourcing back-office functions, such as HR and finance.

Call centers desire to accomplish their work efficiently in low cost. If a company wants to compete, it must deal with business operations that will be beneficial and less costly. Inbound and outbound services in call centers maintain all types of tensions. Personnel with expertise are hired to have the work done as required by their clients. Customers will be grateful if they are attended with full respect and attention. BPO services are important to make better infrastructure provide good service to the customers. Call Center activities are tedious, cumbersome, time-consuming, extra-strenuous, and demanding. Extra budget is needed in other BPO activities. The workforce handling is another task which involves setting up of individual customer care unit. Outsourcing call center activities will benefit the Company's performance.

Despite The Crisis in Europe Outsourcing Work Expected to Continue

Despite a debt crisis in Europe, are expected to continue and, in some cases, even increase their outsourcing and offshoring work to low-cost countries like India and Philippines. Though Europe is still fragile, we are certainly seeing an uptick in outsourcing, as well as offshoring from European clients. Deals are getting shorter and smaller in duration, but it certainly is increasing. To give you an idea of the 800 inquiries that we received last year from European clients, about 90 per cent asked us about offshoring, explains Gilbert Van Der Heiden, Gartners research director for information technology (IT) sourcing.

Earlier European customers started with staff augmentation but as they see the cost advantage, they are looking beyond that and want to partner at a strategic level. Other than the economic downturn and need to cut cost, European customers use a large number of contractors. Due to the immediate cost savings initiatives, they are looking at replacing expensive contractors with offshoring. IT firms also agree that Europe is much more positive to offshoring than it was before the global meltdown hit.

“The Europe crisis will not have much of an impact on Philippine IT service providers. The impact will be on valuations due to the currency movement, but this will not impact the deal flow. Similarly in the UK, the incumbent government is under huge pressure to reduce cost,” says Peter Bendor Samuel, Chief Executive Officer, Everest Group. Much more, Philippine outsourcers have been urged to turn their attention to European customers to expand their markets. European Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Philippines executive VP Henry Schumacher said the Philippines is still unable to fully maximise the outsourcing market, which is currently being enjoyed by India. Philippines has a huge potential to even grab a bigger share. Since Europe is also aggressively looking at opportunities from emerging countries in the east, Philippines set to explore Europe since it is also the largest business process outsourcing market.

Vikram Gulati, Director of Quantum Step remarks that Europe has some serious challenges. The population is aging, and they are running out of skills. They will have to look at outsourcing and offshoring. Most of the large players have benefited from this. It is for the others, the medium-sized players, to adopt this.

Philippines Urged to Tap Europe Outsourcing Market

Philippine outsourcing companies have been urged to turn their attention to European customers to expand their markets. Now that the country is fast capitalizing on being among the world’s destinations for global outsourcing and off-shoring business, industry stakeholders here are encouraged to continue to taking advantage of the vast European market.

European Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Philippines executive VP Henry Schumacher said the Philippines is still unable to fully maximize the outsourcing market, which is currently being enjoyed by India. "India is doing well in marketing itself as a growth location for European investors. But the Philippines has a huge potential to even grab a bigger share," he said. "Since Europe is also aggressively looking at opportunities from emerging countries in the east, now is the time for the entire Philippines to explore Europe since it is also the largest business process outsourcing market," Schumacher said. While several European companies have already come to invest in the Philippines, the lack of knowledge in understanding the European culture requires need for waging a more aggressive campaign when penetrating the foreign market. The European culture is not hard to grasp and the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) is willing to assist stakeholders here in that aspect, the association can do initial training for employees to businesses like call center.

Schumacher advised that more visibility in the market should be emphasize, including the need for a European or someone with influence speaking for the Philippines and the business environment in the country. Branding, he stressed, is also necessary when capitalizing on the highly elusive European market. The brand should professionalize Filipinos. We believe that everybody in the world has in one way or another been touched by a Filipino. The Filipinos’ individuality is important to market the Philippines to Europe, we just have to focus on the Filipinos’ capabilities.

The ECCP is currently conducting talks with the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) to pioneer a committee called “Team Europe” to spearhead an aggressive marketing campaign for the country’s O&O industry. The team will also involve other institutions like the Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT), CITEM and a number of individual companies.