Call Center Carnage: New Surcharges Create Agent Problems - Case Study Helps Decide What To Do
September 15, 2008

by Dan  Baldwin, TA Founder

Prominent industry resellers, TMC and AireSpring, have announced to their outbound call center customers that because wholesale provider Qwest is basically loosing money having the call center's traffic on their network that new surcharges are going to be tacked on to the call center's bills to alleviate the problem.  TMC will add a penny per call "short call surcharge" to their Qwest network customers that have too many calls that are six seconds long or less.  AireSpring will add a $240 per circuit "incomplete call surcharge" to their Qwest network customer's who's call attempt completion rate is less than 50%.  What does this mean for the agents who represent outbound call centers?  A lot of troubles to be quickly solved without extra compensation to be earned.

Qwest politely declined TA's request for an interview on the matter.  There's plenty of off-the-record conversations going on, but for obvious reason no one really wants to go on the record about what's the best thing for an agent to recommend to their outbound call center customers to do.  Master agency, Telarus, sent out an email blast to their agents suggesting that the Global Crossing network was a good place to put the business that Qwest now seems to view as not profitable.  Indeed, several resellers seemed to be suggesting to their agents that a migration from the Qwest network to the Global Crossing network was a prudent choice.

To help provide answers, TA is writing a call center case study on the matter using two existing call centers that are having to make migration decisions this week.  TA will publish the case study shortly. If any TA agent or vendor would like to have their information about migration recommendations added to this call center case study, please contact TA's Dan Baldwin at 951-251-5155 or Dan@TelecomAssociation.com.

Do you agree or disagree? Forward printable comments to Dan@TelecomAssociation.com