Tailorfitting our Packages
Since different companies have different needs for services, offering the same service will not attract all of them. So what we are doing right now is making our packages customizable to fit whatever our customer’s needs are. Imagine buying a car and being able to choose your color, your seats, your wheels etc. and taking out the things that you don’t want or need.
For example, If you are a company that offers chat support to your customers, and you don’t necessarily need to do phone calls,we can customize our offer to you, giving data access priority over voice, taking out the cost for telco and providing you VNC or remote access to your agents workstations instead.
I am doing some fine tuning on these and any feedbacks would be greatly appreciated.
rgs
The wonders of Linux
A stable software without the license issue and without those pesky windows viruses what more can you ask for? We’ve been using Linux as our Operating System for quite sometime now and it always worked good for us.
Since our predictive dialer is web based so we really don’t need to have any programs installed on the agents computers aside from a web browser or the occasional spreadsheet or word processor, Linux has all that. Not to mention that its stable, easy to install, easy to use and most importantly, its free! So you dont have to spend money on licenses for you computers.
There is a lot of choices to choose from, you have Xandros, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, Fedora Core, CentOS, Open Suse, Debian, Red Hat and a lot more.
Look around, maybe Linux would work good for you as well.
Call Center Attrition rate
Based on reports, the Call Center is the highest when it comes to attrition rate compared to other industries here in the Philippines, believe it or not, it reaches a whopping 50% annually. This is concerning because it gives out the wrong impression that the call center is an unstable industry to to work for.
Companies should focus more on how to keep their employees happy and satisfied. Higher salary isn’t always the answer, most employees look for the sense of stability and security in the company that they work for.Self improvement and development are also some of the things that an employee looks for when they start building their career. Constant training and improvement for the employees, a good working environment and an attractive compensation package should be more than enough to make sure that employees would see a long career in the company.
Companies should also avoid fast tracked trainings and invest more on the development of their employees since this is going to be beneficial for them in the long run. This would avoid the need for constant hiring and firing because of the employee’s lack of skills or knowledge on the task at hand. Constant training will help ensure that the employees are well equipped to do the tasks that are assigned to them.
Keep them happy and keep them competent.
rgs
BPO to KPO(Knowledge Process Outsourcing)
Business Process Outsourcing is now a big industry in the Philippines and we are one of the countries that is known worldwide to be a good place to outsource. We know that we cannot compete with India and China’s volume in terms of scale, but we can certainly beat them in terms of quality of service. Providing Higher-level services should be our focus.
The Filipinos are very competent in the fields of Engineering, Health care,Finance and Design Process and with these area of specializations, we can start focusing on it as future services that we can offer on top of regular call center services. We have to attract clients not because of the numbers of employees that we can have but the fields that we can offer to them.The industry of engineering design work, health research capabilities, finance accounting and analytics work should become our new sources of growth for the industry
This doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to change the way we offer our services, the new focus on high-end services must go with efforts to sustain regular call center operations since this is still the bulk of the industry’s revenue.
rgs
Life of a Call Center Agent
Everyone is off to bed, but not me, i actually just got out of the shower, getting ready for work.While everyone else calls it a day, i am just starting mine. This is how it is when you work in the call center. I still remember my days as a call center agent, and yes, it was my first time working the night shift and it was hard. I was used to working in the morning before i entered the call center industry and it was really not easy adjusting my body clock to what i call US standards. I didnt have a car that time so I had to take a bus going to work,(I was just a trainee that time with only training allowance so getting a cab was out of the question). On a good note, working nightshift has its advantages, mainly, travel time is shorter because there is less if not zero traffic.You also avoid the rush hours so goint to work and coming home is really a breeze.
While at work, I was amazed on how much coffee and energy drinks were consumed by the agents there I was doing outbound telemarketing that time so when we get on the phone, our supervisor does whatever she can to pump us up and keep the energy flowing while we were trying to get as many sales as we can. Background music, encouraging words and even a few bits of sweets here and there.Anything that would keep you up during the whole shift.
After the shift, some would get ready to go home, but some have other plans to end the day. That was where i first experienced drinking beer instead of coffee at 7am in the morning and this was not unusual for people that works in the call center. After a couple of bottles, I was ready to to go home, its still early so getting a ride home was easy. Ending my day and looking forward to a new day tonight.
That how my call center agent life was, there are some excitements and challenges in between but all in all, it was a great experience.Whenever i see or talk to somebody who is new in the call center, I cant help but see myself in them and I always tell them, ‘you still have a long way to go’, but don’t worry, the reward is well worth the journey.
rgs.
Call Center Buffet…. A smorgas board of job opportunities
“Hiring, Outbound Call Center Agents” “We are looking for Inbound Call Center Agents” “Start a better career now, apply for our CSR positions” just some of the recruitment ads that you would see almost everywhere, May it be in the newspapers, billboards, banners and flyers. Call centers are always on the prowl to look for new blood to support the huge need for call center staffs. And their effort is never in vain, because day by day, more and more applicants are being drawn in the call center industry. From fresh graduates, to people who decided to leave their practiced craft and move to the so called ‘sunshine industry of our country’ the world of the call center.
Why? Simple.., career opportunities and I mean lots of them. Call centers provide a lot of position for aspiring candidates, from entry level agents to managerial positions. There is also an equal battleground for candidates since most call centers don’t require a bachelor’s degree for entry level positions. Don’t get the wrong idea that it’s easy to be hired though because the hiring process is strict and tedious, they only want the best, and since you will be competing with other applicants, some are fresh grads, some already had call center experiences, competition will be tough. So make sure that you arm yourself with the right skills, and of course the right attitude.
Call Center Bloopers…Not really a laughing matter
It was just one of those days, got in to the office, opened my laptop and checked my emails, and as usual I get my to do list for the day. Then suddenly, one email caught my attention, its one of those send-to-many emails and the title was ‘Call Center Bloopers’. It’s actually a compilation of mistakes made by call center agents while on the phone. Mistakes that some may find funny and worth sharing but on my personal opinion, there is actually nothing funny about it, to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here are some of them;
CSR:Thank you for calling Sprint now together with Nextel, to better resist you
CSR:Oh, no, you don’t have to worry, Mrs.Parker, we can call your husband to ask permission to charge the amount on his credit card. We can call him right now and do a threesome with him on the phone.”
CSR:I apologize for that very long hold, Mr.Sedillo, but thank you for that patiently waiting.”
And there is a LOT more of them. At first glance, yes they sound funny and we have to admit the fact that we people always get a laugh when we hear or see others make mistakes. But, if you come to think of it, there is nothing funny about them; It shows flaws of call center agents, it shows weakness in the Company’s training, its sounds so unprofessional and the company that the call center services definitely doesn’t appreciate them. The funny thing is how other people exert effort to compile these mistakes and post it on the web or propagate it through email. Hasn’t it occurred to them that they are in a way demoralizing overseas companies from outsourcing their services to us? Maybe if those overseas companies start looking at other countries to outsource their business to,, people who gets a laugh out of our agents mistakes might realize that the joke was actually on them.
Bottomline is, instead of populating the internet with all those ‘funny’ stuffs, why not start posting about how good our agents are and show everyone that we are at par with them when it comes to skills and communication efficiency. This might not provide laughter in the start, but it would definitely make us smile in the long run.
rgs
Death of a Call Center
After being in the business for more than three years, a call center that i know so well decided to fold and close down the business. I was actually surprised when I first heard the news and thought it was just one of those closing-call-center-gossips but when my old colleagues who were working there asked me for a job, I knew right there and then that the news was true.
It was a call center located in the heart of Manila, my first ever call center. It’s what you may call my “portal” to the call center industry. I still remember my days there as an agent and as supervisor, my first conversation with an American over the phone, my first rejection, my first sale, my first ‘closer’ award and my first promotion. I actually thought that it would be my first and last call center but like what my mentor said, there is a bigger world out there… venture, and I just found myself out of Manila and into the corporate area of Ortigas. But anyway, going back to the topic, I honestly believed that that call center would do well and grow big since it is backed by two of the biggest business entities here in the Philippines but I guess I was wrong. From what I’ve found out, conflict after conflict from the owner and the backer slowly weakened what were once the strong pillars of the company. It was a domino effect, management slowly crumbled, people started leaving, campaigns started pulling out and then the inevitable happened, after more than three years of survival, the company that I thought was going to be great closed its doors and decided to leave the industry. It just proves that it’s not just about who is backing you up because at the end of the day, it all boils down to you and your people. Why worry about someone catching you when you can just avoid falling simply by taking the right steps.
Looking back on that event, I am proud to say that the organization that I am with right now is doing a great job. More power to you guys and keep up the good work.
-rgs
