What Would You Advise This Call Center to Do?
September 22, 2008

by Dan  Baldwin, TA Founder

Last week we announced a call center case study in response to the sudden changes being announced by carriers and resellers that have high volume call centers that use predictive dialers as customers.  TA invites members and vendors to submit ideas and comments.  Printable submissions will be included in weekly updates to this call center case study.

About Call Center "ABC"

Call center ABC is located in San Diego and currently has 8 PRI T1s, 4 each from two different resellers.  Both resellers are using the same underlying carrier.  The underlying carrier was chosen because the loop charges and intrastate rates on this carrier (as priced through the two resellers) is significantly lower ($140 per loop) than the other carriers the two resellers represent.  The reason ABC split the business between the two resellers was so the agent and the customer could objectively evaluate the billing and customer service differences between the two resellers as the traffic sent to the two resellers is virtually identical.

About the Traffic

ABC uses predictive dialers on their eight T1s to blast out an average of 1,800,000 call attempts per month to achieve about 550,000 completed calls, a 30% call completion rate.  The average call length on completed calls is 41 seconds and about 25% of completed calls are 6 seconds or less.  Their completed calls use 375,000 minutes per month.  Their interstate calls total 67% of their total minutes.  They get billing increments of 6 second minimum, six second rounding and 4 digit billing.  Their interstate rate is 1.2 cpm and their intrastate California rate is 2.6 cpm.

The Problem

Both resellers have communicated to customer ABC that the underlying carrier is adding a surcharge to the resellers because customer ABC's predictive dialer traffic causes the carrier to suffer network inefficiencies in part because they have so many short calls of 6 seconds or less and of their 1,250,000 monthly call attempts they are not currently being charged for.  To resolve the issue the two resellers are going to pass through a new surcharge equal to $240 per T1 or 1 cent for every "short call".  These extra surcharges are going to add $2,000 or more to the customer's monthly bill.

The Solution

You tell us.  TA is currently interviewing different agents, resellers and carriers.  The best advice and proposed solutions will be published in this ongoing case study.  Forward your printable input to Dan Baldwin at Dan@telecomAssociation.com or call 951-251-5155.

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