OFFSHORE CALL CENTER

Call centers provide large and small international enterprises with the ability to establish a presence in foreign markets without the expense and complexity of owning and managing their own infrastructure.

Overview

Call Centers combine the use of highly effective and empowered company representatives with a service framework that relies heavily on state of the art communications and information technologies. A call center is sometimes defined as a telephone based shared service center for specific customer activities and is used for a number of customer related functions like marketing, selling, information dispensing, advice, technical support etc.

What does a Call Center do for an Organization?
* Allows a wider customer base with which to do business
* Offers an economical means of reaching diverse and widely distributed customer groups
* Fine-tunes offerings to specific customer groups
* Allows customers easy access to experts
* Facilitates business round the clock and in any geographical area
* Allows a company to avoid the overheads of brick and mortar branches

Criteria for Location of Call Centers
The choice of location of a call center by overseas companies is based on a number of factors:

* Laws and Regulations

* Telecommunication Infrastructure, Technology & Tariffs - For example, India is perceived as a technologically savvy nation but is still slightly lagging behind in a sound telecommunication infrastructure. Therefore, technology is an important deciding factor in location decision. There are also issues of connectivity (to PSTN etc.) that need to be addressed by the government quickly.

* Workforce- Companies look to countries that can provide them with work force that is proficient in English (and possibly other languages), cost effective and possesses disciplined work culture.

* Real Estate - availability and cost of office space

* Economic Incentives - These may take the form of grants or tax exemptions, repatriation of profits, corporate tax on profits generated by call centers, tax treaties etc.

* Decision Criteria

Some key criteria that should be considered are:

* Operations:What operational environment you want to use for call support? What media functions, applications, and hours of coverage are required?

* Technology: What infrastructure is needed to meet business goals? Are you in the process of procuring technology solutions like CRM, CTI that include web integration?

* Resources: Consider the number of the staff and management to be hired and subsequently the different type of trainings required.

* Workload: Volumes and variability of volumes. How are they likely to grow?

* Culture: Some companies need control of technology, staff or both in order to deliver the level and type of service and support they desire.

Cost: What are the investment priorities? Consider the cost of technology, resources and ongoing maintenance and support.

* Core Competencies: Are call centers the core competency of your company, or will they become so? For this you need to consider technology implementation, integration, development and management effectively.

* Systems Selection: In the race to gain a competitive edge in this market, it is easy to be seduced by advancing technology. In doing so, many companies lose sight of the ultimate business goal - to become more competitive, productive and efficient in providing the most effective customer service. Therefore, it is important to look carefully at the real technology needs of the call center and select the proper vendor. The possibility of increasing the efficiency of a technology project has to be thought of beforehand too.

Proven Success Factors

* Operations of a Call Center revolve around serving an existing and potential customer base. This need translates into providing satisfying and well-informed responses to a customer query, or in case of potential customers, meeting their expectations with regard to quality and quantity of service. The difference in services can be made through a number of factors:

* Process Integration: The call center service flow should be closely integrated with the processes applied at the client's side for which the service is being rendered. This translates into easy access to and presentation of updated information.

* Customer Satisfaction: Defined as Direct-to-Quality (DTQ), this is akin to the ability of satisfying the customer's (caller's) query the first time.

* Responses Time: Waiting period and responses time for a query should be minimized. The only way of doing this is by benchmarking against some of the best call center operations in the world.

* Quality: Vendors should aim to achieve quality certification such as ISO 9000 or other certification applicable to this industry. This includes full COPC-2000 Certification (COPC - Customer Outsourcing Performance Center). This distinction means that the facility has met the requirements of all 32 areas described in the COPC-2000 Standard. It thus helps to validate the call center's quality and continuous improvement initiatives.

* Quality of Service: The quality of service rendered by an outsourced call center should be equal to or exceed service levels already achieved by the client's in-house call center.

* Employees: Call Center staff should be efficiently trained regarding the client's business, the role of the call center, nature of potential callers, and client expectations.

* Accent and Fluency: Call Center staff needs to be constantly trained to help improve accent and diction capabilities, especially for the specific region being served.