TRACKING THE PERFORMANCE OF INDIVIDUAL CALL CENTERS

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) is the umbrella organization for the fastest-growing industry in the Philippines: offshoring and outsourcing (O&O). According to its website, in OFFSHORING & OUTSOURCING PHILIPPINES: ROADMAP 2010:

BPAP believes it is possible for the Philippines to increase its share of the global market from 5 percent in 2006 to 10 percent in 2010. This will mean the Philippine industry will earn revenues of about USD13 billion and directly employ close to one million people by the end of 2010.

Call centers account for the majority of O&O firms. How can the performance of individual call centers be objectively tracked? And why does it matter?

Well, a recent article in The New York Times reported the emergence of a new class of software that can do just that. “It can monitor workers who, conveniently, do most of their work on computers. It can also measure their efforts and direct work to those who do it best.”

To quote:

LiveOps, a rapidly growing company in Santa Clara, Calif., that operates virtual call centers — agents working from home across the country — has also found that software can perform other management tasks. How it uses that software points to the direction in which technology is taking the workplace.

Founded in 2000, LiveOps fields some 20,000 “home agents,” all independent contractors who take orders for products advertised on late-night TV, sell insurance or transcribe recordings for other companies. The agents even take pizza orders. If there is a storm in a particular city and pizza orders surge because no one is going out, calls to the pizza store are routed to LiveOps agents thousands of miles away. (The delivery boy still has to brave the rain and the wind. Software hasn’t solved that problem.)

The software moves a company beyond simple cost-cutting. Mr. Webb says greater efficiencies can be found because the company’s software measures the results from each agent according to criteria determined by the client.

If a client wants agents to persuade callers to buy additional products, the software tracks that — and then directs calls to the agents who do it best. Those agents prosper.

What about the agents who aren’t so good? “No one gets fired,” Mr. Webb said. “They just don’t get work.”

Software becomes a passive-aggressive manager.

He thinks the concept can be expanded to any line of work — like health care, retailing, publishing and law — where the output can be measured.

The BPAP would do well to note this development. It could be used to determine best of breed, foster competition, and, by doing so, raise the bar. The industry, as a whole, becomes more competitive. It takes a step towards maturity. The results can then be used in BPAP’s marketing. This technique should be part of the strategy to sustain the competitiveness of the outsourcing and offshoring industry.

MICROSOFT’S TECH SUPPORT

The outcry against employing foreign workers.

Everywhere you turn around, it seems, IT professionals are concerned that their jobs will be outsourced. In many cases, this outsourcing goes offshore to foreign workers. Alternatively, foreign IT talent is imported through the much-reviled H1-B visa. (The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. It allows US employers to employ foreign guest workers in specialty occupations.)

From an academic point of view, offshoring is a phenomena that reflects the growing globalization of resources. Work that was previously done by Americans has now been shifted to foreign-based workers. This kind of work varies from the high-end, application development (or what used to be called “programming” before) to the customer-intensive (call centers) to the mundane but necessary (transcripting of medical records). The latter transcribes the spoken notes of the physician to written form. There are several advantages to the offshoring trend. First, rates inexpensive relative to American wages. Second, these are the rates paid to numerous skilled English-speaking educated workers. And third, most offshoring destinations are in Asia—principally India and the Philippines. When it’s night time here, it’s day time there. That allows work to be literally turned over overnight.

Let’s recognize that offshoring is not a new practice. It’s never been on the radar as prominently as it is now because in the recent past, offshoring involved manufacturing jobs—many of which required technical expertise. A good example is Boeing. Many airplane components are built overseas—not in Asia but in Europe. That’s offshoring too.

Offshoring is a major burden for Americans who lose their jobs. However, economically speaking, it makes a lot of sense. Offshoring is a part of the trend towards specialization in skilled services. In fact, it’s easier understood when you think of it as international trading in services.

The US has a sizable trade surplus with other nations. In fact, we have a trade surplus in services only. In goods, we have huge deficits with the rest of the world.

The US “wins” by specializing in high-value services such as transportation (UPS, FedEx, and DHL), accounting (Ernst & Young which are respected names around the world), consulting (McKinsey & Co.), and others. As a country, we trade away our lower-value services, such as call centers and data entry work (of which medical transcription is one of them) in exchange for high-value services.

Offshoring increases the demand for complementary jobs in the US. The lower cost of time-intensive transcription work reduces the cost of that piece of medical administration. And heaven knows how much more we need to reduce that cost. Complementary jobs take the form of nurses, physician assistants, therapists, and the like. If transcription work wasn’t offshored, these jobs would be in short supply. (They already are so the problem would be exacerbated!) Offshoring has another less apparent benefit. The cost advantage it gives American companies make them more competitive in the global market. Offshoring jobs may actually be thought of as importing competitiveness.