September 29,
2008
Call Center Vendors Advise Agents to
Educate Call Center Customers
Predictive dialers congest voice network with
unbillable and incomplete calls. Carriers advise "The free ride is over".
by Dan
Baldwin, TA Founder
Over the past week I interviewed principals of three
TA vendor members that specialize in serving the needs of call center
customers. All three, Chris Barton of
Wholesale Carrier Services
(WCS), Daniel Lonstein of
AireSpring and Ron Ireland of
TMC suggested that telecom
agents with call center customers need to focus on educating their customers
on the new network surcharge realities rather than simply looking for a new
carrier to switch their call center customers to.
Wholesale Carrier Services
(WCS) Comments
| WCS' Chris Barton says that many years ago when the voice
carriers had more capacity than traffic, accommodating all the "junk
calls" (incomplete & short duration calls) that accompany the profitable calls
(long duration sales calls) that call centers make was not a problem.
"Today though, call center junk calls are creating network congestion
for many carriers requiring either new
capital outlays to expand voice network capacity or the need to drive low-margin,
junk-call traffic off their networks" Barton said. Industry leading
facilities-based carriers seem to be pursuing the later. |
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Chris Barton,
WCS |
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"We look at every industry change as an opportunity," Barton
continued. "With over 80 carrier relationships to draw upon, WCS is in the
creative solutions business. We don't just solve call center customer
problems, we will address and suggest a solution for any high-volume voice
application." Barton states that any agent with a set of customer call
records should contact WCS to ensure no option has been overlooked. |
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Listen to Chris Barton discuss the call center issue. |
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40m:21s, Click right arrow to listen
Download MP3 |
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AireSpring Comments
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Daniel Lonstein,
AireSpring |
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AireSpring's Daniel Lonstein says there are no simple answers for
agents because all call center are different. "When it comes to incomplete
call counts for individual call centers we see averages ranging from 10%
to 70%", Lonstein continued. When excess capacity is scarce and a carrier
can't bill a call center for 70% of their calls because the calls are
technically 'incomplete', something will have to change. Call centers with
poor completion rates will have to pay more or improve their practices. |
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| "The industry is changing and the smart agents are the
ones that are teaching their call center customers what they can do to
complete 50% or more of their calls", says Lonstein. To help agents do
just that AireSpring has published a three page "Best
Practices for Voice Network Utilization" that they can use as an
education piece for both their existing and prospective call center
customers. "This issue is only affecting a minority of our call center
customers," Lonstein added. "But we're taking a proactive
approach to the problem
so our agents and customers can see we're doing everything possible to
keep
incomplete call surcharges from raising phone bills. |
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Click to view 3-page PDF |
| Airespring’s long term solution is to move
customers to our own network, where they are more insulated from a change
that a particular, individual carrier might make, as we least cost route
their traffic amongst multiple carriers." |
TMC Comments
Click to view 1-page PDF |
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"Educating your call center customers about the new
industry reality regarding incomplete and short calls is really the key to
success here," states TMC's Ron Ireland. Our 'Network
Efficiency Guide' is just one of many documents TMC has produced to
educate agents and their call center customers about how TMC provides
value above and beyond just a low per-minute price. Ireland went on to
caution agents against moving call center customers from one network or
another to escape incomplete or short call surcharges as he would not be
surprised to see most all facilities based carriers following suit with
similar surcharges. |
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| "You might find a carrier that isn't currently saying
whether they will place surcharges on incomplete calls originating from
predictive dialers," Ireland stated, "but to roll a call center customer
onto a new carrier with a new multi-year agreement only to be surcharged
six-months down the line for incomplete calls might be a serious
disservice to the customer." Ireland suggests that the financial reality
of the network costs facing all the carriers are the same and that a
complete call detail analysis by a reseller like TMC that can present
multiple carrier options and recommendations for traffic improvement, is
the best first step in serving call center clients. |
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Ron Ireland,
TMC |
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This blog posting is part of an ongoing TA call center case study regarding
incomplete and short call surcharges being implemented by many facilities
based telecom carriers. If you feel you have information that should be
included in future updates please forward printable information to
Dan@TelecomAssociation.com.
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