IT Consulting from the Trenches

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.