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Contact Center Solutions Week in Review: Hiring Spree in the US

September 20, 2014

There are two interesting trends that continue to make their appearance in Contact Center Solutions Community news on almost a weekly basis, and this week they are prominent. They happen to also be closely related. The first is that that with customer experience improvement being such a large priority for companies around the world, the investment in contact centers is clearly increasing. The second is that whether it is contact centers for individual companies and government agencies of relying on Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) operations, the U.S. after years of off-shoring is increasingly a place where organizations wish to place their front line personnel. 


The list is long on these items which is great news for all community members. This week it included:

  • Xerox is one of the companies moving its contact center operations back to the U.S. and will be creating 1,000+ jobs in Kentucky
  • In the State of Georgia, Henry County days a global payments company will soon create a new contact center in the city of McDonough and, with that new center, will create up to 450 jobs.
  • Alliance Data Retail Service is opening a 44,500 square-foot contact center in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho with over 200 jobs being created.
  • The Philippines remains at or near the top of the heap when it comes to BPO jobs and this week major outsourcer iQor said it is adding 65,000 sq. ft. of area to its existing Dasmarinas, Cavite contact center which will employ an additional 1,200 care agents.  
  • Returning to the U.S., in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, S&P Data is adding 425 jobs to its contact center in that city. The good news is the jobs will be well-paying, with an average salary of around $38,000 plus benefits. 
  • On the government side of things, in Omaha, Nebraska, the Metropolitan Utilities District's (MUD) contact center has been under duress for providing unsatisfactory service with long wait times, and all of that is about to change.

Before getting to the rest of this week in review, I wanted to return to an item that appeared last week and is worth mentioning again.  On September 30, 2014 you may wish to participate in the already immensely popular webinar, How Moving Your Contact Center to the Cloud Eliminates Risk, which is all about getting the cloud v. premises TCO calculation correct.  

There were some new capabilities and customer implementation to highlight this week.  These included: Tellwise Smart Messages being integrated with Salesforce.com CRM software;  Schneider Electric adopted the SDL Customer Experience Cloud to deliver localized and personalized experience globally; and, SKODA Auto 3-S dealership in India, Fahrenheit Automobiles, selected  Drishti-soft to improve customer service.

As visitors to the community know, we also like to share insights and two items provided some really good ones this week. In the first, we looked at Creating Customers for Life.  In the second, ContactCenterSolutions Special Guest, Abnesh Raina, CEO, Plumslice, explains when it comes to thinking about and executing an omni-channel strategy and deployment omni-channel success is all about the data and the process.

Finally, there were three items that seemed to defy categorization but stand out in this week’s news for obvious reasons.  Item number one is that while the Philippines remains a magnet for contact center operations by companies and BPO providers alike because of the large population of people who speak English, Spanish or both, the country has become very concerned that their talent pool is drying up and retention of agents has become a major concern as well.  

The second item has to do with the role contact centers are playing in increasing patient engagement in the healthcare sector in the Middle East and Africa, where despite all of the political and economic uncertainty the contact center industry is prospering.    

I have saved my favorite story of the week for last because I love the idea.  St. Petersburg, FL-based credit union services company PSCU for the third year in a row hosted its annual "Knockout" competition. The event gathers creative minds in the credit union industry who engage in a 24-hour brainstorming session to attempt to discover the next creative industry idea. For those of you who are interested in whether such an approach gets results, the short answer is YES!

 Weekend Reading

Summer is officially over this weekend so time to be ready for what is always a packed event and news season until we hit the Christmas season.  The best way to stay current, if you have some time over the weekend, is to use the links on the community home page. They put you a click away from constantly up-dated industry news, eBooks, whitepapers, videos, insights and interesting demos. 

Plus, visit our affiliated channels — Accounts Receivable Management, Business Process Automation, CaaS, Cloud-based Contact Centers and Insurance Technology —which contain news and insights on specific areas  of interest. 

Finally, I continue to recommend if you were unable to join us the incredibly insightful webinar, “Business Process Automation Best Practices For Improving Customer Complaint Resolution,” click on the link and view the archived version of the event. 





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