State funding helps 911 call centers

The Virginia Department of Health, Office of Emergency Medical Services recently awarded the Eastern Shore 911 Communications Center a Rescue Squad Assistance Fund grant for the purchase of two channel radios and one VHF radio and antenna system totaling $51,317. These new radio systems will allow call center dispatchers to communicate in an efficient and timely manner.


The Eastern Shore Communications Center serves the counties of Accomack and Northampton to field and dispatch all 911 calls to the proper EMS responder. It also serves as an emergency operations center for any EMS crisis that occurs in the two counties and the town of Chincoteague.

"It is important for volunteer and nonprofit EMS agencies to apply for grant funding in order to reduce their operating costs and maintain a high level of functionality with state-of-the-art equipment," says Gary Brown, director of the Office of Emergency Medical Services.

RSAF grant funding comes from Virginia's "Four-for-Life" program, which is administered by OEMS. Through this program, $4.25 is deducted from every motor vehicle registration to provide funding for EMS programs in Virginia, which include the RSAF grant program and other funding that is returned to localities for EMS training and equipment.

Additional information is available at www.vdh.virginia.gov/OEMS/Grants/.

The Emergency Medical Services grants program is for Virginia non-profit EMS agencies and organizations.

Tradeshow Marketing Company Selects LiveOps for Inbound Call Center Services

Tradeshow Marketing Company, Ltd. (Pink Sheets: TSHO) today announced the selection and engagement of contact center industry leader, LiveOps, to handle the inbound contact center services for their upcoming direct response television (DRTV) campaign.LiveOps, based in Santa Clara, California, provides the industry's only full-service, virtual call center solution through a network of more than 20,000 independent at-home agents. The LiveOps independent agents will be answering all of the inbound calls generated through the upcoming Tradeshow Marketing DRTV launch. LiveOps is yet another best-in-class campaign partner to join Tradeshow Marketing's DRTV production/creative partner, Cesari Direct, helping to round out the marketing team. In the DRTV market, LiveOps handles over 80% of the calls for the top ten direct response programs. With high-quality independent agents and unique Results-Based Routing capabilities that help increase conversion and upsell, LiveOps has a reputation as the best performing inbound call center, generating up to 33% more revenue per campaign than traditional call centers. Additionally, LiveOps' cloud-based business model allows for unlimited scalability for each campaign that minimizes call abandonment and allows for more orders to be taken even when a company engages in aggressive media and campaign ramping.

Luniel de Beer, President and CEO of Tradeshow Marketing, commented that, "This selection and engagement of LiveOps marks another key milestone towards the launch of our highly anticipated DRTV campaign. We are actively negotiating the additional vendor agreements needed for our campaign and we hope to finalize these before the end of next week." He continued that, "The process of selecting and engaging key vendors such as LiveOps is indispensable as it directly contributes to our readiness to launch the campaign on national television and will ultimately contribute to the overall success of the campaign."

Source: auto-mobi.info

US Banks Set To Begin Offshoring

As America’s top banks emerge from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the economy shows signs of recovery, Indian outsourcing vendors
Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are set to gain new offshoring projects worth around $1 billion over the next 1-2 years.

Among the firms seeking operational efficiencies by outsourcing non-core IT and back office projects to India are JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—which received approval to buy back government stake worth $68 billion earlier this year, as well as American Express, Bank of New York Mellon Corp and Capital One—which have started repaying government debt. Many of these banks had deferred new offshoring decisions as they attempted to cope with TARP funding requirements and internal restructuring processes.

Experts such as Andy Efstathiou , director of banking sourcing practice at research & consulting firm NelsonHall, said US banks are increasing offshoring. “Since the beginning of the economic crisis, many of these contracts have been put on hold. That is beginning to change. It is looking like Q4 of 2009 is shaping up to be a 20% growth over Q4 of 2008,” he told ET in an interview.

The US government’s decision to allow these banks to repay TARP funds also reflects a growing pressure to operate independently devoid of any political and public interference.

In a September survey of around 480 firms by Efstathiou, only 2% said they plan to reduce offshoring, while almost 37% said they will increase offshoring. “The financial services firms we have spoken to intend to increase spending on offshoring. Specifically, in a survey of firms we did in September 2009, only 2% expect to spend less on offshoring, the rest expect to spend the same (61%) or increase spending offshore (37%),” he added.

The merger of the banking systems of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, among many other such deals, is creating newer opportunities for offshoring and outsourcing vendors.


Source: indiatimes.com

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.