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Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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October 23, 2000 |
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Call Centers: Here, There, And Everywhere
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In 1993, the company decided to centralize call-center activity at its headquarters facility in Romanel-sur-Marche, Switzerland. Callers throughout Europe dialed local numbers, which were then routed over leased lines to the Swiss call center.
This took care of changing numbers and inconsistent support, but Laudensack says the lines were often filled to capacity and customers would receive busy signals. The carriers also suffered regular outages, which caused the lines to go down. Additionally, service from the national telephone monopolies was expensive.
Two years later, Laudensack and call-center manager Ben Gorter moved the English-language calling operations to an outsourcer in London with the intention of migrating service for all languages to that location eventually. But multiple languages proved to be too big a challenge, so Logitech moved operations again in 1998 with Sykes managing call-center operations in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Willhelmshaven, Germany. However, Logitech has maintained its Swiss office for call escalation.
The key to making the moves seamless to Logitech's customers was its selection of Global One (instead of Unisource and BT) as its pangeographic network voice-virtual private-network provider. "Once we had a carrier, we just said 'take care of the leased lines, public telephone system, and call routing,'" Laudensack says.
Global One also had network operation centers in all European countries, something that wasn't so common until deregulation of European voice carriers during recent years. "The most intriguing things happening in call management are the integration of all the various types of communications coming into call-operations centers," says Giga Information Group analyst Elizabeth Herrell.
Here's where the streamlined operations come into play: Global One's services include on-screen call intelligence. Operators can see the caller's country of origin, language, and time on hold, allowing operators to pick up calls in the correct language. It also lets Logitech move overflow calls to other centers, such as Switzerland or the new German-language facility in Willhelmshaven, without losing the caller's data.
Laudensack adds that another benefit is emergency coverage. "If our French-speaking operator is out, there's usually someone there that can take the information and calm the caller down until we can get it fixed," he says.
Clearly, though, total outsourcing can create some problems for businesses that want to offer a high-quality experience for their customers while at the same time gathering important data about them.
For instance, most companies don't like to surrender more customer information to third parties than they have to, so only necessary data is made available from the company's database. That limits what an outsourced operator can do. In addition, as much as companies like the idea of a crisp, professional call response, if there's no business presence on site, it's easy to lose touch with what's happening between customers and the surrogate employees.
Furthermore, customers calling into call centers are a prime avenue for up-selling products. About 70% of up-selling and reselling is initiated through call-center contacts, McKinney says. Companies can't always rely on outsourced call-center operators to take the initiative to boost sales.
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