Changes in the Call Center Industry

The call center industry was pioneered in America, arising out of a need to centralize customer service operations to save money in the eighties. As the economy improved and business boomed, competition became fierce-and customers more demanding. Companies used call centers to differentiate themselves with excellent customer service, in the hope that handling customer concerns quickly and efficiently would encourage brand loyalty.

However, the job of call center employees has always been difficult. Customers are more sophisticated today than ever before. They expect much from the companies from which they do business, including customer service. But the call center work environment is difficult on employees. Most call centers are run under efficiency principles that dictate that agents must constantly be on the phone, with no breaks to decompress after handling a difficult call. Turnover in the industry is traditionally very high.

In addition, the need to save money has led to many evolutions in the call center industry, some of which undermine companies' desire to solve customer complaints effectively. One is the automated voice system. Developed in order to allow customers to solve problems without the help of an agent, the idea was that companies would need fewer agents, and agents could spend less time on simple requests and more time on complex customer complaints. However, the automated system does have drawbacks-significantly, its capacity to enrage customers who "just want to talk to a human being." A significant development in automated voice technology is voice recognition, which allows customers to speak directions into the phone. The voice recognition system will recognize the directions and deliver the customer's requested information. Businesses hope that, with voice recognition technology, customers will feel more like they are interacting with human agents. However, the most successful call centers are still those that allow customers to contact an agent quickly.

One of the most significant changes in the call center industry is outsourcing. In the early days of the industry, call centers were managed in-house or outsourced to local American companies. However, businesses soon discovered that by outsourcing to countries like India and the Philippines, where employees can live comfortably with wages up to 90% lower than American call center employees are paid, they could save billions of dollars annually. As a result, many customers calling American companies today have their calls answered by call centers thousands of miles away.

There's no getting around the resentment this can cause among American customers. While businesses have been outsourcing their customer service to American call centers for a long time, the term "outsourcing" has been generally linked with the practice of outsourcing work to other countries, often less-developed ones where employees will work for dramatically less. Many Americans feel betrayed by companies who lay off their local workers to move their operations overseas. Call center employees in countries such as India are often coached in speaking English without an accent and encouraged to tell customers that they are U.S.-based in order to avoid abuse.

Experts have conflicting opinions on whether outsourcing your call center overseas is good for the American economy as a whole, good for the country where you are outsourcing, or good for your customers. However, customers consistently have been shown to prefer local call centers that stick to the basics of customer service-short waits, efficient service, and human contact. If your business can deliver, they'll thank you for it.