September 04, 2006
Can VoIP Reduce Call Center Outsourcing?
One of the primary reasons that so many companies in Canada and the United States ended up outsourcing their call center help was due to a lack of local staff that would do the work for $13-16/hour. But now that nearly half of North American call centers are moving to VoIP by the end of 2007, other companies may want to consider what this means. Robert Poe at VoIP News thinks that VoIP could help keep call centers at home (i.e., in North America).
Now I'm not holding back any punches here. One of the biggest complaints I've heard from some people who have spoken to call center employees stationed outside of North America is that a representative's English isn't always that good. My experience has been, of the outsourced call center people I've spoken to, they seem to know their technical concepts well, but don't always explain things well if they have poor English. That frustrates callers. That's not to say that all outsourced call center employees have poor English. But if you had to wait in the caller queue for a long time, only to get a someone whom you cannot understand , regardless of the language, you'd probably be frustrated too. This person supposedly represents the company whose product or service you're calling about.
It's not an issue of which country a call center rep is from, just whether they can be understood by native speakers of the language that the help service is in. That applies to call centers providing help in any language. For example, I wouldn't expect, say, a native Spanish speaker to be happy to talking to me after a long wait in queue because of my mediocre Spanish language skills.
Getting back to Robert's article, he is saying that VoIP could help keep call centers local, and people could even work from home. While I think that the idea is a good one, I'd have to say that not every person is a good candidate to work from home. There are all sorts of distractions, and it takes a great deal of discipline not to be distracted. I also cannot see call center clients being happy with such an arrangement, unless they hand-picked the representative. Otherwise, the temptation might be for the company to want to pay on a pro-rated basis - say just for the time taken up by actual calls, plus a few hours of guaranteed "on-call" time. If that happens, then it may not be financially feasible for a worker to accept such work (exceptions below).
As well, a proper home office would have to be set up if the employee is to be reimbursed for equipment used, etc. Not everyone is going to want to do this. Which means that virtual call centers using home operators might take a while to catch on, if at all. Large companies would probably prefer the convenience of going with a call center instead of hiring their own reps. (Or they might pay bonuses to existing company - not call center - employees who are willing to handle calls during a specific block of time, from home. Willing employees could be trained for handling irate customers.)
On the other hand, with all the work starting to be available online, anyone who can find multiple streams of income from the Internet, is technically savvy, and has the typically qualities of a good call center rep might find a pro-rated, per call payment exactly what they want. Such an arrangement would give them time to manage their own online businesses, and when a call comes in, they could take it or pass it to the next available person. That way, both sides feeling they are being treated fairly.
From a technical point of view, If call center reps are going to use soft VoIP instead of hard VoIP (such as regular phones hooked up to a VoIP plug'n'play adapter and a broadband connection), then they should be setup with text IM software as well, like Leader's Bank in the United States is doing for their bank reps. I know that when I am discussing writing projects with some clients, they prefer to speak to me, but being simultaneously able to forward URLs or other text information enhances the conversation. Another possibility is to use the video-calling features of VoIP software such as Sightspeed (although it's not the only soft VoIP client with video ability). However, customers may not want to appear on the video call themselves. Either way, there are some rules of video VoIP etiquette to follow.
From a call center's point of view, they might have to change their shift scheduling, maybe make them shorter, say three hours each. This way, they could be more certain that someone was going to be available, and that their mind was focused on what ever product or service they are supporting. So while there is potential in the work-from-home call center model, there are a lot of wrinkles that have to be ironed out.
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