What Does the Future Hold for the Call Center?

By Anthony Mitchell

In five years, homeshoring will become vastly more popular, and Pakistan will become more of a call center hub, says ECT News Network columnist Anthony Mitchell. In addition, demand for voice services in China and India will climb dramatically, he predicts.

TRUE BELIEVER - CFO Asia.com

By Karen Yap and Tom Leander

“Pakistan is resilient,” says Wattoo. “I understand [investors’] reservations, but the economic story is still robust.” He adds, “It’s a relief that many of our foreign partners can see this, too.”

Finger-thin cables tie Internet together - Y! News

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer

NEW YORK - The lines that tie the globe together by carrying phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick where they lie on the ocean floor.

The foundation for a connected world seems quite fragile, an impression reinforced this week when a break in two cables in the Mediterranean Sea disrupted communications across the Middle East and into India and neighboring countries.

Yet the network itself is fairly resilient. In fact, cables are broken all the time, usually by fishing lines and ship anchors, and few of us notice. It takes a confluence of factors for a cable break to cause an outage.

India's booming outsourcing industry takes toll on workforce

By Rajesh Mahapatra, AP

NEW DELHI -- The job came with a good salary, and good perks.

But, 26-year-old Vaibhav Vats will tell you, it was doing him no good. His weight had grown to 120 kilos (265 pounds) and he was missing out on social life as he worked long overnight hours at a call center. Eventually, he quit.

"You are making nice money. But the tradeoff is also big," said Vats, who spent nearly two years at IBM Corp.'s call center arm in India, answering customer calls from the United States.

Call centers and other outsourced businesses such as software writing, medical transcription and back-office work employ more than 1.6 million young men and women in India, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who make much more than their contemporaries in most other professions.

They are, however, facing sleep disorders, heart disease, depression and family discord, according to doctors and several industry surveys.

Pakistan luring Indian BPO executives (International Business Times)

By Debanjan Mullick

New Delhi - New Delhi - The success of BPOs in India has encouraged Pakistan to lure top brains from its neighbour to train their call centers' staff.

According to industry sources, people from call centers in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore are being hired by Pakistan-based BPOs to help in training, migration and integration and already 18-20 Indian BPO trainers are working in two newly-established call centers in Pakistan.

The Pakistan government is going all out to attract investment in the ITEs sector and at present there are 123 international and domestic call centers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, with 30 more in the pipeline. On an average, these call centers employ around 3000 agents.

Cracking the Outsourcing Market

By Anthony Mitchell

Successful entry into U.S. markets is difficult for outsourcing companies operating within North America. For call center and business process outsourcing (BPO) firms seeking to gain initial market entry or to expand their market share from offshore locations, it is even tougher.

The steps to market entry presented here focus on how to avoid the most common pitfalls made by information technology enabled services (ITES) companies in India and Pakistan, but are relevant to domestic companies and those from other international outsourcing destinations.

10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2007

From concrete that can flex to sensors that you swallow, here are the technologies you’ll be talking about.

BY Alex Hutchinson
(popularmechanics.com, Jan 2007)

Getting more from call centers

Call centers are an essential part of the marketing and customer care strategy of many companies, but too many executives consider these operations a necessary expense rather than a way to generate new business. Indiscriminately moving customer traffic to a company's Web site or outsourcing call centers haphazardly can make them less rather than more effective.

Using IT to boost call-center performance

• Technologies that can help call centers reduce costs and increase revenues have become less expensive and more powerful.
• Two such technologies—voice recognition and interactive voice response—can automate a higher percentage of phone calls because the new systems are more sophisticated and thus more acceptable to customers.