Knowlagent's Calculator Controls Labor Costs In Call Center

Knowlagent offers calculator that will help to find some quick hits if you’re looking to maximize efficiencies in your call center in the new year.

Using standard industry data or own custom entries, the tool will enable to uncover some of the hidden labor costs driven by common call center staffing methods.

The calculator will discover costs associated with:

-Manual agent management
-Off-phone time for training and coaching
-Avoidable attrition
-Inefficient screening processes.

You can download the calculator here.

Frontier Airlines closes Las Cruces call center

For the first time in nearly nine years, Las Crucen Etta Hough won't go to work tomorrow at the Frontier Airlines call center on Hickory Loop. That's because with today's final shift -- set to end at midnight -- the facility will close its doors.

Hough said she is sad to see this day come.

"Very much so," she said. "We have a very tight-knit group. Everybody has been wonderful to work with."

There are still about 100 workers left at the facility, which at one time employed as many as 200. The airline opened the customer support center in the summer of 2000 and Ruben Servando Valdez has been the facilities manager ever since the first day.

He said that even after Frontier's parent company, Indianapolis-based Republic Airways Holdings Inc., announced earlier this year that the Las Cruces facility would close, the employees kept their heads up.

"People have continued to work hard, we have a remarkable group of people," Servando Valdez said. "I'm blessed to have worked with these people."

The genesis of the closing can be traced to April 2008, when Frontier filed for bankruptcy. This past summer, Republic Airways Holdings won a bankruptcy court auction for Frontier, with a plan to buy the carrier after a bid by Southwest Airlines was rejected. The deal was finalized in October and Republic announced it would consolidate functions between the airlines, including the call centers.

Las Cruces employees were given the opportunity to stay with the companyAdvertisementand move. Servando Valdez said 11 local workers have accepted and will relocate to Denver, where Frontier is based. As for himself, the only manager the Las Cruces call center has ever known said he plans to stay in the area.

"I'm going to be seeking employment here, in the El Paso-Las Cruces area," said Servando Valdez, an El Paso resident.

Hough said that representatives of the New Mexico Workforce Connection's Las Cruces office visited the call center to help workers who would soon be laid off. Usually, the state will put together a rapid response team to help the workers who will lose their jobs. The team offers information on training, unemployment benefits and other services.

"They were excellent," she said.

Source: lcsun-news.com

How will the U.S. compete with growing talent pools abroad?

Outsourcing is no longer just about cheap labor. The number of foreign-educated students returning to their native countries is exploding, creating an offshore talent pool of highly trained workers that never existed before.

It's also no longer just about India and China. Globalization is catching on almost everywhere, creating competition even in the most highly skilled professions and raising the competitive stakes everywhere. The silver lining is that it's also opening new markets that seemed unlikely even five years ago.

Forbes caught up with Robert Kennedy, director of the Global Initiative at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

Forbes: What's driving outsourcing on a macro level?

Robert Kennedy: There are five key drivers. One is a tremendous liberalization on the policy side. In the mid- to late-1980s, the global economy consisted of the U.S., Europe and Japan. Places like India and China were behind Central and Eastern Europe and parts of Africa. They weren't really engaged in the global economy. That's completely changed. Roughly 3 billion people have entered the global economy. They want to buy things, and in order to do that, they have to sell something back to us. They can sell us manufactured goods, and they have a small advantage there. But in services, they have a huge advantage. If you move an automobile manufacturing plant from Michigan to Mexico, you may save 20%. If you move a call center offshore, once you've set it up on a run-rate basis, you'll save 50% to 60%. The advantage in services is that labor costs are a bigger overall percentage.

Real-Time Quotes

04/03/2009 7:00PM ET

• PER

• $13.73

• 0.96%

• AIG

• $1.14

• 0.00%

• IBM

• $102.22

• 1.39%

• GE

• $10.94

• 1.86%

Does that mean China ultimately will move to head-to-head competition with India?

No, China is pretty far behind India and even places like the Philippines and Eastern Europe. It's largely due to a language problem. There are real challenges. Services exports from China will grow, but they won't overtake India anytime soon.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/30/outsourcing-globalization-workers-technology-cio-network_0202_outsourcing.html

A brief about call center process:

Call center process are generally specified by large volumes of telephone calls that are either inbound or outbound.

An inbound call center process is designed or designated to provide product support or to handle customers inquiries and complaints concerning to the respective process.

On the other hand, an outbound call center process plays as opposite, it requires to contact potential customers usually for the purpose of selling or surveying.

The basic requirement for any call centers are individual work stations for each agent with headsets or telephone sets that should be for each customer care representative. A handy percentage of call centers are outsourced companies. They offer their services to other companies that require additional manpower to interact with their customers. Some of these companies are mail order catalogue companies, computer hardware and software companies and utility firms.