So, before I continue dabbling in what I do, let me present Global Services’ January 2012 issue of its magazine and survey that may or will impact the call center industry in the Philippines, especially between the end-users and the vendors like myself. Please refer to the “Source” (below) for access to the digital magazine.

–oOo–

2012 will have moderate increases in outsourced services, including outsourced call center services; two-thirds of survey respondents see a positive year.

The second semester of 2011 saw significant downtrends in IT spending, especially for start-ups and expansions of small and mid-sized call centers in the Philippines. I should know because I lost six contract for my cloud-based call center solution in that period not from competitors but from the decision to forego the set up or simply abandon the entire plan for fear of the impact of the global recession in the U.S. From my rough-and-tumble survey, I’ve been hearing a more positive outlook for the first semester of 2012, and buried plans of 2011 are being dug up for implementation early this year.

–oOo–

Reducing operational costs is still the key driver to outsourcing, followed by creating more bandwidth for strategic growth – the core value propositions of outsourcing remain unchanged. However, the importance of cloud-based delivery models promising to make outsourcing more effective remains the least important priority this 2012. Cloud computing is a “game changer” because of its disruptive nature. That’s probably why it’s considered the least important priority as a business driver for 2012. Still, half of the respondents feel the need to rethink issues in light of adopting cloud-based models but they are uncertain on how to adopt it. So, the traditional way of doing it is to wait until acceptance of cloud-based solutions becomes the norm; then, they’ll start integrating it into their strategies and operations.

The small and mid-sized businesses, especially the SMB (or SME) call centers, have always been the early adaptors of new technology like cloud computing. The large enterprises, always cautious and in the waiting game stages, will now have to slowly integrate cloud-based solutions to their operations; they actually have no choice anymore. However, in-country regulations and industry laws still bar many from adopting the cloud on a large-scale endeavor. An example is a rule or two of the Philippine central banking board, though vague as many bankers say, that prohibit banks from implementing social media as a transactional means. So, an outsourced vendor of call center services is totally out of the picture.

–oOo–

One glaring inhibitor to outsourcing is the assumption that it entails new upfront investments to manage the outsourced relationship, together with reduced budgets. Add the changes to the organization – how will the client’s remaining employees adopt to outsourcing? Will they take the burden of change? So, only if it can be done with less investment and less change will outsourcing be a major driver in business.

America and the rest of the First World nations need to understand that outsourcing is a change that will only go faster; it won’t go away. Therefore, to counter this change, new skills have to be implemented and training the old workforce is key to adopting to the flat and outsourced world. U.S. President Barack Obama’s battle-cry of bringing back the jobs from the outsourcing countries is foolhardy; he needs to hold hands with the academic institutions of the U.S. and collaborate to re-train its unemployed in creating a new job order for America. Note that even if unemployment dipped a little bit in the U.S., real statistics will show you a spike in unemployment for those who served in the military ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. These heroes now back in the states are jobless.

–oOo–

About reduced budgets, these cuts really would be on capital investments and not on operating expense related activities. Therefore, the focus to use outsourcing as a cost-reduction tool will continue in 2012. US and Europe IT spends are expected to decrease to 5.5 percent in 2012, from estimated growth of 11 percent. So, buyers are increasingly trying to consolidate their IT services as portfolio and thereby arrive at cost savings.

The fiscal demands of the business will always outweigh national sentiments and political maneuvering. Cost reduction has and will always be the major if not the biggest reason to outsource. Consolidation has been ongoing for the past years, i.e. large consumer products companies that once outsourced service and support functions have brought it back and be managed internally, insourced yet still using cheaper labor elsewhere. IT solutions to consolidate and integrate insourcing continues to be a tool to enhancing and updating the processes.

–oOo–

Significant increase in IT spends in outsourcing are likely to come from emerging companies and economies. In Q1 2012, 350 companies are expected to invest more than $1B in IT. The main reason behind this is they comprehend that IT impacts their business performance and that there are many benefits to by spending on moving applications to the cloud.

The Philippines, surpassing India in 2010 as the top outsourced call center country in the world, continues to increase this industry by about 25 percent per annum since five or more years ago. This will continue in 2012 with the inclusion of more IT investments involving the use of cloud computing tools and applications. The merger of premise-based and cloud-based solutions will heighten this year with cloud solutions surpassing traditional enterprise systems for some.

–oOo–

The growth areas for BPO in 2012 are:

1. Industry-specific processes
2. Analytics outsourcing
3. Customer care

Customer care will always be at this list; it is something that will never go away. However, more of the business processes once needed to be internally driven have not seeped its way out to the outsourcing company. This even includes analytics and business intelligence functions that allow businesses to keep score of its delivery mechanisms, products and services, to its consumers.

–oOo–

BPO is more of an ongoing expense not a discretionary expense. Companies will continue to look for ways to cut costs out of their operations. Earlier buyers approach revolved primarily around cost cutting without due consideration on the long term perspective, or the approaches will take 2-3 years to see some benefits. In 2012, they will look for a balanced set of outcome or decisions that will help realize some of the short term objective without compromising on long term benefit.

This year, cost-savings due to labor rates is just one of the major reasons to outsource. Outsourcing companies and IT vendors will now have to work hand-in-hand to develop integrated systems and solutions that can immediately convince client-buyers of outsourcing services to select them. The delivery system of the outsourcing companies will now include in-depth reengineering and recommendation of changes of the client-buyer’s business processes than traditional hand-to-mouth delivery services of yesterday.

–oOo–

By outsourcing several business processes and IT systems to one provider, companies can free up cost and management resources while acquiring the strategic flexibility and capability for growth and to embrace the trends to drive competitive differentiation. Therefore, the role of the service integrator will continue to rise. The cloud brings a set of third parties into the mix whose services cut across traditional lines. The cloud has magnified the issues of a multi-sourced environment and strategic sourcing has become not just an integral but a critical part of IT and business strategy agendas. It is not just cloud services; it is all services IT provides to enable the business.

Cloud-based vendors will now become major resources of consolidated delivery services to free up more of the resources of outsourcing vendors and client-buyers. If before that objective was met only on the mindset of “doing what you do great” yet continuing to employ duplicate workforce functions, this year will see a total elimination of the duplication, and trusting the outsourcing vendor to provide error-free and on-time delivery of services.

–oOo–

In the last two years, enterprises prefer working with credible outsourcers who focus on effectiveness than efficiencies. It is about partnering with vendors who have demonstrated that they can create business value – e.g. increase the client’s revenue by architecting new product and services and skin-in-the-game contracts. Now that cost savings due to offshoring and simple process optimization are done, buyers are seeking more value. They want service providers to contribute in ways that will impact their business.

Vendors will now have to up the ante in delivering more for the same price. Cloud solutions will help ensure profits at both ends.

–oOo–

Banking BPO have seen a rising cost of servicing each loan last year. So, they are looking at 2012 to standardize loan origination and convert fixed costs to variable costs. The majority of set ups and expansions in banking BPO will be in Asia Pacific and CEE. We have (also) witnessed a 20% rise in real estate outsourcing services to middle market firms over the past three years. These firms are outsourcing at a faster pace as a means to create operational nimbleness and gain strategic competitive advantage. They also want the services available to larger companies to help their competitive position.

More industries that have relied in traditional means of outsourced services are now gearing up to shop outside their comfort zones.

–oOo–

Call centers with the right people, process and technology will be in a great position to deliver solutions that organization do not have the ability to invest in delivering, or would take years to develop their own operating best practices.

Where silos existed before, a criss-cross and mesh of collaborations will start to happen inside the call center in order to meet the growing demands of client-buyers and its consumers.

–oOo–

Traditionally, call centers are limited by their geography to a job-recruiting radius of about 50 miles, and the hiring constraints that come with that geographical location. Hence, 2012 will see the need for creating a home-based or at-home labor pool that will drive operating efficiency. This model provides a wider hiring footprint with the corporate hub focused on hiring and training that improve work and life balances for the at-home workforce. This concept will ultimately overcome the rigid scheduling challenges of call center-based operations while complementing existing in-center customer care support, providing various types of talent, shifts and scale for seasonality and call volume, regardless of location. So, the suggestion is to include at least 10-20 percent at-home labor force.

Though at-home services have existed for decades, recent acceptance and implementation of cloud-based solutions will fast-track the use of the at-home labor pool. Recruitment and IT systems will need to change to accommodate this change. New processes will be implemented to reduce or eliminate chaos. Above all these, the cloud will be the biggest support system.

–oOo–

A lot of contact centers will be moving to the cloud – both hardware and software. CRM software is already going to the cloud. The global market for cloud services is predicted to surge to US$148.8B in 2014 from US $68.3 billion in 2010. This shows that there will be a huge transformation in the business model of any organization. The cloud service providers should work aggressively on finding out the solutions to cloud security as its one of the biggest issues when we talk about cloud.

As I mentioned above, small and medium-sized businesses and outsourcers have already been in the cloud since last year or more. 2012 will see the larger players start to accept and integrate cloud-based solutions to become a key ingredient in making themselves more competitive and profitable.

–oOo–

Most of services offered by software vendors today will soon be offered as “as-a-Service” because it gives cost efficiency which is acceptable to most of the customers. As such, enterprises will eventually be forced to standardize their processes (for competitive-parity business functions), to embrace the lowest-cost solutions in order to ensure that underlying cost structures meet industry averages. As a result, clients will need to clearly identify business processes providing competitive parity, along with their underlying IT services, for analyzing “as a service” potential.

The cloud has forced vendors to convert capital-intesive investments that end users have to pony-up to a recurring yet smaller expense to the bottom line. Even hardware-based investments will begin to become “as-a-service” offer than traditional downpayment and amortized payments for something that can become obsolete in a year. Most services, outsourced or otherwise, are now shifting to the “as-a-service” model.

–oOo–

In BPO, high performing businesses will continue to extract significantly more value out of their investments if they approach outsourcing as a partnership with their service providers. Buyers are looking at outsourcing as a driver of business value – to help operate their businesses better and to deliver measurable business outcomes – and that is best achieved with a true business partner. To that end, we expect clients to be much more discerning about their outsourcing providers.

I belong to the outbound, telemarketing-type of outsourced call center service providers for a decade. Traditionally, it’s always been a hand-to-mouth, “do everything for me” type of service to sell a client’s product or service, as the client sits and waits for the confirmed orders to arrive. Last year, I’ve witnessed many clients have begun to work hand-in-hand with the outsourced call centers, including but not limited to onsite training (which was once a telephone-based engagement only) and new delivery processes that were developed together and not just by the client. The assessment process of the client have now become more exact or discerning; so, gone are the “wait and see” attitude of clients towards the outsourced call center.

–oOo–

Providers will need to possess industry, technical and functional knowledge. They will need the proven ability to deliver end-to-end processes and deploy analytics in order to identify opportunities to improve and add value to a client’s business. And they need a strong transformational capability by making change management a priority. Therefore, outcome oriented model is becoming the norm. Certain services which are at the bottom of the value chain are becoming increasingly commoditized putting margin pressures on traditional large outsourcing services companies.

Call centers were traditionally seen as a do-it-all type of business, operating under the idea that the technical knowledge need not be brought down to the outsourced call center. Today, clients are shopping around for outsourced call centers that have more of the technical and functional knowlege. An example is for the call center to hire experienced or licensed real estate brokers just to conduct cold calling to prospects; before, call center reps simply relied on the script and delivered this like myna birds.

–oOo–

Enterprise mobility, cloud computing, managed services, machine-to-machine communications, and product engineering service are some of the areas that will witness growth in 2012.

IT vendors need to bring computing power from the PC to the cloud and now to a mobile computing platform such as smartphones. The call center may see the advent of service delivery through the mobile phone.

–oOo–

European and US enterprises will continue to battle rising costs and productivity issues. The hunt is for service providers that can add value and bring a mix of everything-low cost, innovation and overall efficiency.

Cost-reduction is still King, but value-added services at the same or reduced price will be a common-ground battle for the contract.

–oOo–

Healthcare is expected to consume a significant chunk of outsourcing services. Traditional areas like banking and financial services will see growing demand for e-banking, online authentication and automation services. Hospitality is another opportunity area; a growing number of hotels will use technology like GDS (Global Distribution Systems) and IDS (Internet Distribution Systems) to increase online visibility and enable guests to book online. In addition, hotels are looking at outsourcing non-core technology functions like managed services, internet marketing and loyalty management. The bottomline for service providers? They need to have improved domain knowledge (i.e. industry-specific operational knowledge) to be able to play in different verticals.

Consolidation and better yet remote service delivery models through the use of the cloud will become the common factor in providing more for less.

–oOo–

Many organizations want to leverage cloud, SaaS and mobility tools but don’t have the domain visibility to select the best ones or the integration experience. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are starting to invest heavily in cloud, SaaS and enterprise mobility technology. However, few of these businesses have the technical expertise to develop this technology in-house.

Educating the market on what exactly the cloud, SaaS and mobility technologies can do for their business, whether small or large enterprise type, is still a wanting thing vendors need to spend on just to get the deal closed.

–oOo–

2012 will be the year in which cloud sourcing supplants traditional outsourcing. Thereís no question that cloud computing has transformed the way companies do business. Organizations are now sourcing complete business solutions through the public cloud using a combination of cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure. We expect that outsourcing companies will become more specialized in 2012 and will include some cloud-based tools in their offerings.

Whereas cloud-based call center solutions were using the traditional model, i.e. long-term contract, upfront payments, cloud vendors with newer models like prepaid or pay-as-you-go, start-and-stop anytime and freeware but with the same full suite of functionality, will become the deal breaker for servicing more call center customers.

–oOo–

The return on investment for BPO is no longer generated from the reduced cost of a transaction but rather from staffing quality and flexibility, tools, process improvement and innovation that remains inherent in the culture of third party global service providers.

Obviously, with the global economic earthquake happening everywhere, transactional cost just won’t bring back the black ink on the financial health of businesses. A consolidated, collaborative and integrated approach to outsourcing that affects the bottom line are what enterprises will be looking for this year.

–oOo–

Pressure on suppliers will continue, meaning that pricing will be flat – but not down – compared to 2010/11 levels. Moreover, weak exchange rates and weakness of the U.S. dollar, will put increased pressure on suppliers. This could be a good time for businesses to get good deals on contract terms. Increasingly, outsourcing will move away from staff augmentation/time and materials toward output-based pricing and managed services.

The “terms and conditions” will now be dictated by the business owner, not the vendor. So, call center solutions providers need to be prepared to deal with these new conditions business are looking for, especially for cloud-based services.

–oOo–

Eastern Europe and Central and South America are surging and buyers will increasingly utilize existing supplier’s Global Delivery Models to provide time-zone coverage and realize true 24x7x365 support. Offshore players will also continue to expand and/or setup operations in new geographies, such as Brazil, Poland, China, Mexico and Colombia.

The voice-based, English language outsourcing business will continue to propel the Philippines as the number one country in the world (see Why the Philippines is the World’s Top Call Center Country) However, non-voice outsourced services community have been growing and language-specific requirements will be going to new economies in Europe and south of the U.S.

–oOo–

CONCLUSION: 2012 will be the year in which cloud sourcing supplants traditional outsourcing. There’s no question that cloud computing has transformed the way companies do business. There are now two million users of Salesforce.com around the world and 25 million users of Google Apps. Organizations are now sourcing complete business solutions through the public cloud using a combination of cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure. There are good reasons why this happening. Public cloud services give companies much more granular control over their IT environments. They also offer a much cheaper alternative to traditional outsourcing – some businesses can cut their costs by as much as 85% by going down the cloud sourcing route.

Source: Global Services Outlook 2012

Title photo by henrylvreyes at Flickr.com | Emerald Avenue, call center avenue of Manila

_

Back in 2002, I used to work for Atlantic Tele-Center (ATC), a call center company with operations in Miami, Florida, Guyana in South America and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. ATC was owned by the U.S. telecommunications company Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATNI) headquartered at St. Thomas. VoiceLog, the largest third-party verification company at that time, was one of its clients and I headed the team that set up, managed and maintained ATC’s call center software in the cloud, then called Application Service Provider (ASP), for VoiceLog. This way, their at-home agents and supervisors (home-based workforce) could access the software by way of each one’s home DSL connection and home phone. Besides managing technology for VoiceLog (IT folks call this managed service), we also provided 24×7 technical support to the entire at-home workforce, especially when at-home agent profiles were locked because of unanswered customer calls.

During a time when unified messaging was not available, support was also provided by chat through AOL’s instant messaging service. Supervisors would IM my team about VoiceLog agents who couldn’t receive calls or connect to the cloud-based software, and so on. Overall, the year-long project worked well and only minor issues ensued.

Fast track to today and Filipinos ask themselves why is it that almost a decade ago, at-home agent operations works well in the U.S. and it doesn’t seem to get a good head start in the Philippines. Despite the Filipino’s dominance in the call center world, with its advantages in American linguistics and culture (“as American as apple pie”), shouldn’t it follow that the country already began employing at-home agents a few years back? Or even last year or this year?

I’m sure there are a few of them out there but the mass culture of at-home agents never really took off in the Philippines and call center companies, big or small, still continue to rent enclosed office spaces lined up with tens and hundreds of workstations wired to dozens of servers and integrated into its global private network.

Let me describe five major factors that should seriously be considered to make the at-home agent program work for any type of business in the Philippines (not just call center companies), and how to implement each of these on a practical standpoint.

1. CONNECTIVITY

Though home DSL connection in the Philippines have improved that past decade, it is still not at par to provide the best quality VOIP service that large call centers want it to. It’s not speed that’s important – it’s uninterrupted connectivity between the home computer and the cloud-based servers. A majority of home DSL users surf the web, access e-mail, use Facebook or Google, but hardly run VOIP programs like Skype or Google Talk. This means only (browser) data is being fetched and sent between the home computer and the web servers their browsers try to access, not voice (data packets). The old stand-alone computer days of using Cyclic Redundancy Checks (CRC) is similarly being used when you surf the net – if your web browser cannot connect to the web servers, your browser will retry connectivity several times until it successfully connects. Some web programs like YouTube also buffer data to provide a near-to-seamless view of their videos. This is not the case with VOIP. VOIP cannot live with these packets of interruptions that are called “timeouts.” VOIP needs uninterrupted connectivity.

Photo by kirklau at Flickr.com

After having used most DSL and cable internet providers in the Philippines, including the wireless ones, I’ve stuck it out with Globe Telecom’s DSL because it has the least amount of timeouts during an extended duration of use. Globe’s DSL may not have the best burst of download speed but it sure beats all others with the least amount of timeouts in my locations – Makati and Taguig.

How Do You Do It: Your business must conduct connectivity tests between your at-home agent’s home computer and your service provider’s cloud-based VOIP servers. “Ping tests” are the usual first-level tests. More comprehensive tests may include measuring Jitter, QoS (quality of service), MOS (mean opinion score) and packet loss that assess VOIP quality (I always use MyVOIPSpeed test by VisualWare). The connectivity test has to be done several times, at certain points of the day, to get a better overview of your at-home agent’s home DSL connection. Never assume that your at-home agent’s home DSL connectivity is workable even if they are subscribed to Globe’s DSL; telecommunications companies in the Philippines have different degrees of connectivity that depends on location. Other internet providers actually do better than Globe at other localities.

2. VOIP SOLUTION

There were several small call centers averaging 5 to 10 seats that started using the MagicJack system during the time when the maker of that device did not limit the number of calls per day. However, after testing this solution, I found out that it hogged as much as 250 kbps during a call. That’s a problem for your at-home agent’s home DSL connection because even if they lease a 1 Mbps subscription (that’s the maximum download burst speed, not a steady stream), all home DSL providers’ 1 Mbps subscription plan only allow a maximum upload burst of 250 kbps (or one-fourth of the download speed). Maximum isn’t always available. Thus, there will be moments of poor quality of the conversation leading to timeouts.

Photo by avaya at Flickr.com

Hosted solutions (also known as SaaS) being offered today mean that all the expensive servers and its operating systems and application software required to run your customer sales, marketing, service and support operations are owned by a third-party provider and leases (or rents) resource time to you and your at-home agents on preset terms, i.e. monthly subscription. What you and your at-home agents just need to have is a computer running a web browser like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox where you enter the web address or URL of the hosted solution and do your thing. There are simple PBX hosted solutions and more complex hosted call center solutions out there, sometimes called cloud-based software or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

How Do You Do It: You have to make sure that the hosted IP-PBX or VOIP solution your at-home agents will be using should not exceed 100 kbps both ways. Otherwise, it will be difficult to realize good voice quality during customer contact, just like the MagicJack example above. Remember, besides the VOIP bandwidth requirement, your IP-PBX, VOIP or hosted call center solution will also need to refresh your at-home agent’s screen, meaning additional bandwidth. Therefore, you must conduct voice tests through live test calls between your at-home agent’s home computer and the origination or termination points, i.e. calls originating or terminating in the United States, before you allow your at-home agent to accept or place live calls.

3. CULTURE

It’s not about discipline but more of the culture of the Filipino. It takes some time for a typical Filipino family to understand the difference between work and play, or the work-at-home mind-set. Doing work at home has always been somewhat of a taboo because family members see the humble abode as it is – a place to relax, get together with family members, and do things that are seen as personal and comfortable. Thus, conducting uninterrupted, continuous hours of work at home is not impossible but a challenge.

A well established, multinational call center company in the Philippines tried the at-home agent method and failed because the inborn Filipino culture and value system treated the home as a family’s turf. For example, when the at-home agent’s spouse demands their time, the former can’t negate that exact moment no matter how trivial it is, lest he or she allows that little issue to balloon into a marital World War III. It may take some time for the spouse and the other family members to form the habit of not disturbing the first-time at-home agent.

Photo by at ikaw_ay_pinoy Flickr.com

Another negative impact is ambient noise. A huge majority of would-be at-home agents do not live in posh, gated villages where the constant noise of pedestrian and vehicular traffic are almost non-existent. Lucky you if the at-home agent lives outside the city and in a place where the only background noise would be birds chirping. Many Filipinos do not have a sound-proof room in their house unless they so desire to build one specifically for this type of job. It would be one for the record books to hear a customer to ask the at-home agent, “What was that noise?” and we could only imagine the comical answer coming from your at-home agent, “Oh, that was a five-passenger motorcycle passing by.”

How Do You Do It: Always ask your at-home agent applicant to describe his or her workplace inside the house, specific to the details of construction materials used for the room including a rough-draft floor plan of the house, a vicinity map and where public transportation ply about, the volume of pedestrians passing by, animals living inside and near the home, and many more items you should consider before hiring the at-home agent. If you have a Sound Level Meter at hand, ask the at-home agent applicant to bring it home. Then, there’s also the interview about family members living at home, their routine and schedules, babies to tend to, kids to take care of after school, sleeping hours, and so on. In summary, you need to know the exact living and working conditions, and lifestyle habits of your at-home agent applicant down to the nitty-gritty detail so you know what to expect.

4. AGE

I mentioned previously of the well-established, multinational call center company in the Philippines experimenting with an at-home agent program and failing on it. Even before the year ended, they folded the project and absorbed some of the agents into their office-like centers. Some of the reasons for the failure were the factors I mentioned above. However, the other major factor was  maturity, or the lack of it. But it is difficult to measure maturity and so, the better way to categorize this section is to use “age” when recruiting at-home agents.

Statistically (based on the 2008 Philippine Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report by CallCentres.net), about 80% of the call center agent workforce in the Philippines belongs to the 18-34 years old age bracket where almost half are ages 18 to 24. Another related fact about the industry is that 60% of its employed population is female. In a closed office environment where team leaders, supervisors, managers and senior executives are physically near the agents, on-demand supervision is the norm and productivity can be managed on the spot. But at home, there are no supervisors or managers. The at-home agent is on his or her own to manage their productivity and discipline to the best of their ability. This requires maturity, and maturity generally grows as one ages.

How Do You Do It: Though it may seem discriminating to do so, it is reasonable that your best bet for hiring at-home agents should generally be no younger than 35 years old. Also, the female psyche of maturity still holds more weight because this gender group can do better in multitasking than its equivalent. Multitasking is necessary in a home environment and women are genetically good at juggling every activity at home, being born homemakers, generally speaking. A married spouse with no full-time job that’s about 40-50 years old (life begins at 40, eh?) will probably be a better at-home agent, especially if her kids are already in high school, attending college or university or best, in the daily grind of a job. True, there is always an exception to the rule. So, always use your good judgment and sound interview techniques to find out if a younger at-home agent applicant possesses the required maturity and at-home multitasking skils you so desire.

5. THE REST OF THE SKILLS

I’m not going to go through the other work-related, project-specific skills you need for your sales, marketing, service and support campaign, be it in a captive or outsourced corporate environment. You may be thinking of hiring at-home agents to conduct Philippine local calls, not necessarily in an outsourced situation where your agents receive calls from U.S. customers. “The rest of the skills” mean the ability of your at-home agent to express and communicate properly, common sense, technical skills, and so on. That’s up to you.

Photo by kingratt82 at Flickr.com

IN SUMMARY

So, the at-home agent idea can actually work in the Philippines (and probably other Asian or developing nation) if all these five factors are seriously considered and even enhanced. This makes work more available to the Filipino homemaker whose responsibilities have now been diminished – kids all working or married, spouse is still a workaholic and wouldn’t think of retiring, too tiring to get a part-time field sales job, and other things that makes your work-at-home program more appealing than anything else.

However, these are not surefire ways of successfully implementing an at-home agent operation. Motivation, skills training, professional development and a bigger sense of understanding about the at-home agent work have to come from you, and how to go about conducting these activities is another thing worthwhile to consider. So, don’t quote me as saying, “Hey! Raffy said this and that.” Based on my experience, knowledge and practical intuition, I listed these few, major items that need to be addressed before attempting to employ an at-home agent program. But if you become successful, do let me know so we can inform the entire country that truly the at-home agent program can work in the Philippines using “Your Way!”

Photo by forexsoftware at Flickr.com

NOTE: This blog also appears at the inContact Blog.

Is 2011 the year where US companies realize its failures in outsourcing call center operations to offshore sites? A TheStreet article announcing Delta’s (airlines) plan to shut down its call center in Montago Bay, Jamaica, is just one of the bad news circling around. In 2009, Delta also closed a reservations call center in India, stating that “customer acceptance” of outsourced, offshore call centers are low. In addition, TheStreet also reported that US Airways will close a passenger call center in the Philippines later this year.

Many companies in the developed world joined the fray of outsourcing parts of their operations to Third World countries like India and the Philippines primarily because of cheap labor, much as decades-ago manufacturing firms have done so. However, this often results in low quality of workmanship because there is not a lot of thought placed with this “blatant outsourcing” before moving parts of a company’s operations abroad. Boardroom decisions usually only look at the pennies saved without much thought placed in operational challenges to make it work. Hence, failures result in bad press and publicity for both the outsourced country and the US industry that the corporation esteems itself to be part of.

Correct use of technology, hiring the right people and establishing optimal processes are the three basic rules for successfully outsourcing a company’s operations elsewhere. Though a premise-based solution is often implemented, the problem with this model lies in dealing with several points of command, control and information between all parties involved – end users, software vendors, telecommunications providers, and managed networks, to name a few. Thus, a solution where every point of contact uses the cloud is something a business must start taking advantage of. Therein lies cloud-based providers like Kunnect, a perfect conduit for outsourcing because not only does it provide the best-in-class SaaS call center technology and employs hundreds of people with decades of expertise in the industry, it also has access to thousands of seats with hundreds of its clients, many of which are outsourcers within the United States and in countries like the Philippines. This immediate access to technology, people and process from one entity gives businesses the optimal leverage to move operations outside its location but correctly manage and monitor it using the cloud and employing tried-and-tested resources that  they can deliver. With its overseas offices in APAC and EMEA (Asia and Europe), US businesses can now rely on the perfect SaaS technology, the best expert advise to create workable processes, and access to thousands of qualified and skilled human resources from its 750+ clients at favorable rates.

Call Center Outsourcing 2.0 defines a new way to help US businesses face its challenges of fiscal growth by leveraging the best, hassle-free, single point of outsourcing contract for SaaS-based call center technology, people and process. In this all-in-one model, it’s apparent that these providers stick out to be best, ready-to-deliver service provider in the call center space.

The CEO and COO of KUNNECT recently visited the Philippines to launch its call center technology solutions to the Philippine BPO market. Fred Cote, co-founder and CEO, spoke at the October 12 meeting of the members of the Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) in Shangri-La Hotel Makati. Mr. Cote presented KUNNECT as a viable, inexpensive call center solution for immediate operations without the need for costly and time-consuming setup, calling it the “best in its class” of a full suite of call center features and functionality. Together with Mr. Cote were Chris Persaud, COO of KUNNECT, and Raffy Pekson II, the Country Representative of KUNNECT in the Philippines.

In Mr. Cote’s talk, he presented two new subscription plans, specially created for the Philippines, at half-the-price rates: Plan 100 for $100 per month, per seat, with unlimited calls within North America at a 1-year commitment contract, and Plan 125 for $125 per month, per seat, unlimited calls and a 6-month commitment contract. KUNNECT has two regular monthly plans with no commitment contract (start and stop anytime): the Basic Plan of $50 per month, per seat, plus toll charges, and the Unlimited Plan of $199 per month, per seat, with unlimited calls within North America. “Someone has yet to beat our $100 plan.  We are setting a new standard.” adds Mr. Cote of KUNNECT’S web-based SAAS call center offering.

During their two-week stay in the Philippines, Messieurs Cote and Persaud personally presented KUNNECT and met with the management teams of several call centers, and also non-call center companies that want to set up small, internally-controlled call centers for their sales, marketing, service and support business requirements. Mr. Pekson said that some prospective clients remarked that the main enticing feature of KUNNECT’S offer, besides the price, is one’s ability to start immediately without the high setup and maintenance costs.

KUNNECT is a global Tier-2 class telecommunications carrier with offices in the U.S., Canada, France and Germany, and does about 6 billion calls a year through its network, according to Mr. Cote.  “The amazing thing about the Philippine’s business and commercial broadband internet service is that all the telecommunications companies in the country first land their internet pop in One Wilshire, Los Angeles, which is where KUNNECT is co-located.   This helps eliminate any downtime due to latency problems, as well as ensure the shortest possible route to a business.” (Latency is defined as the round-trip time it takes to access an IP address or a website, measured in milliseconds).

Aside from its popular hosted call center solution, KUNNECT also sells a premise-based, enterprise version for call centers that want to host their own solution. For details about KUNNECT’S solutions, get in touch with Raffy Pekson, KUNNECT’S Country Representative in Manila, at 501-3025 and 0927-726-9949, or e-mail him at raffy@kunnect.com. You can also visit their website at www.kunnect.ph for more information.