Fortune 500 Financial Services Companies Using Virtual Call Centers More

Denver, Colorado - December 7, 2009 - Alpine Access, the provider of virtual contact center solutions for brand-conscious companies, announced today that over the past 12 months the company has seen a significant increase in the number of financial service companies outsourcing their customer service to virtual call centers.

According to internal Alpine Access data, more than 75% of Fortune 500 financial services companies, including retail banks, credit card companies, mortgage providers, and insurance carriers, are currently using or are considering using home-based customer service agents. As the founder of the at-home call center model, Alpine Access serves numerous Fortune 100 financial service companies, and is currently negotiating contracts with several more. The company handles account inquiries, bill payment and processing, balance transfers, account origination, product/service selling, and collections for several of the nation’s leading financial institutions including one of the largest issuers of charge cards, one of the three largest retail banks and one of the three largest private label credit card issuers.


"We signed our first financial services client in 2005 and now a significant portion of our revenue comes from this market," said Christopher Carrington, CEO of Alpine Access. "The at-home model makes sense for financial institutions because it provides extreme security, high quality service and efficient operations at a low overall cost. As a result, the use of at-home customer service agents is becoming much more mainstream among leading financial services companies."

Virtual contact centers hire agents from across the country based on specific skill set requirements. Alpine Access receives more than 10,000 résumés annually from applicants with previous financial services experience. The ability to locate, hire and train agents from anywhere in the U.S. allows virtual centers to employ the top 2-3% of the nation’s most qualified customer service agents. This is especially important to the financial services industry where agents typically handle complex call types and need specific licenses and/or certifications.

In addition to accessing higher quality agents, financial services companies are turning to virtual call centers for these further benefits:

* Information security. Alpine Access is Level 1 PCI DSS compliant as certified by third party audits. In addition, all agent computers are secured through a remote desktop solution and 100% of all calls are recorded.

*Operational cost savings. Virtual call centers have a more flexible workforce, allowing them to efficiently schedule agents based on actual call volume.

*Effective training. By applying the latest adult learning philosophies to distance-based training programs for one of its financial services clients, Alpine Access’ online university has reduced training time by 22%, while performance metrics are nearly 10% higher than the client’s internal brick-and-mortar agents.

While many Fortune 500 institutions moved call center operations offshore earlier in the decade, they are now bringing the function back onshore as security, quality and overall cost has improved through the use of U.S.-based, virtual call center providers. With more than 1,000 agents expected to be handling customer service for financial companies within the next year, Alpine Access continues to lead the homeshoring trend.


Source: contactcenterworld.com

US firms shift call centre ops back home from India

Two weeks ago, AGL Resources Inc., an Atlanta, US-based natural gas distribution company, decided to shift its call centre operations from India to the US. The centre was operated by India’s third largest information technology (IT) services company, Wipro Ltd.

Along with similar instances of Delta Airlines Inc., United Airlines Inc. and Chrysler Group Llc reported earlier in the year, this could raise a flag for Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) firms which earned nearly $15 billion (Rs69,450 crore today) from such back-office work in the year to March.

In-house services: A file photo of a TeamLease Services call centre in Bangalore. Some US states have legislation that requires public utility companies to locate their customer call centres within the service area. Hemant Mishra / Mint

In-house services: A file photo of a TeamLease Services call centre in Bangalore. Some US states have legislation that requires public utility companies to locate their customer call centres within the service area. Hemant Mishra / Mint
The move comes as the downturn in the US and subsequent government bailouts, combined with rules that require service centres to be located locally, are persuading companies to move jobs back home.

How To Test The Actual Work Rate Of Customer Care Representatives?

The actual work rate: a test, such as customer service representatives are planned, as in their method of on the job.


The actual work rate calculation is a percentage, which is equal to customer service representatives to sign into the system prepared to answer the phone (actual time) divided by customer service representatives to answer the phone according to plan should be the total time, and then multiplied by 100. The percentage of the actual work rate data are usually from the ACD, and should be every day to make a report, according to weekly and monthly tracking.

I have worked in the operation of a project to make outbound test: Each customer service representative of the actual work the best rate should reach 92% or more. If the employee is the actual work rate below the set targets should be investigated and I will provide the elements that should be taken care of on next post.

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Will That Make Any Difference In BPO India?

"We will stop letting American companies that create jobs overseas take deductions on their expenses when they do not pay any American taxes on their profits," Barak Obama said at White House announcing the international tax policy reform.

By implementing the tax policy Barak Obama will be the greatest of all American President, however if you think on other side it will be the disaster for most of the companies in America. The sector belongs to ITES ( Information Technology Enable Services) will be traumatize by this policy. Most of the IT companies in US have been saving huge amount of money by outsourcing services from India for several years, and the new tax policy will completely vanish the scenario both in India and US. Any business depends upon the revenue upon cost ratio and that is going to disappear if the policy is implemented finally. However the news is pretty much good for the people in America but not for the corporate house.

The aftermath situation will not affect much in India, as India is favorite outsourcing place for many europian countries like UK, Germany, France and many more. The only change thats gonna happen in India are new learning centers for other than English language. People in India are very smart in learning new languages and pedagogy, which is very good for Indians. However it will take two long years to implement the policy in action. To rescue the situation Indian companies should start approaching other English and non-English European countries.

India will definitely affect by this policy but it will certainly find the way to tackle this trouble comfortably.

Leading BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) destination in the world

India is one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world. There are huge business opportunities in sectors like BPO, Information Technology & Communications(IT&C),IT enable services (ITES), Media & Entertainmen, Biotechnology & Life Sciences, Real Estate & Construction, Infrastructure, Aviation, Nuclear Energy, Renewable & Clean Energy, Petroleum & Natural Gas, Food Processing, SMEs, Microfinance, Financial Services and many more.

Institutions and Investors across globe, especially in America and Europe, are constantly looking for opportunities to do outsource business from India particularly in the area of Debt and Equity participation, BPO, Corporate finance, KPO & offshoring, structured finance, project finance, joint venture, cross boarder M&A, trading, strategic tie up.

IBM to cut 5,000 jobs in US; India may gain

NEW YORK: IBM will cut about 5,000 jobs in the United States, adding to similarly large cuts in the past few months, sources with knowledge of
IBM
the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

The job cuts will account for over 4 percent of IBM's US workforce, which totaled around 115,000 at the end of 2008. The sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said the cuts will mostly be in IBM's global services business, which includes outsourcing and consulting services.

An International Business Machines Corp spokesman declined to comment. The company, which had a total workforce of 398,455 as of end 2008, has not disclosed how many jobs it has cut so far this year, but has said it was making "structural changes" to reduce spending and improve productivity.

IBM, which now earns around two-thirds of its revenue from outside the United States, has been expanding its workforce in emerging markets like India and China.

At the end of 2008, employment in the BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China-- totaled around 113,000.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com