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Katrina Red Cross Concert

When disasters strike or there is a need for large amounts of money to be donated to charitable causes it is usually the teleservices outsourcing companies that come to the rescue. These sorts of companies have been called many things over the past two decades from telemarketing companies to now the more fashionable business process outsourcing or BPO companies.

Tonight, Friday, September 2, 2005 NBC will be hosting a Red Cross telethon and part of the coalition of businesses that will be supporting this effort is TeleTech a company that has earned the distinction of being a Customer Interaction Solutions TOP 50 winner repeatedly over the past 20 years.

TeleTech has offered employees an opportunity to volunteer to take calls during the telethon and has committed to match their time in a cash donation to the American Red Cross. The Red Cross anticipates that more than half a million calls from donors making pledges during the telethon. As a result, several hundred TeleTech employees will be needed to join other call center volunteers nationally to handle the volume.

In addition to utilizing five existing TeleTech customer management operations including Birmingham AL, Deland FL, Enfield CT, Kalispell MT, and Moundsville WV, the company will mobilize its headquarters in Englewood, CO with special workstations to take calls and pledges for the American Red Cross. TeleTech is long time supporter of the American Red Cross and donated approximately $125,000 to the Tsunami relief effort earlier this year through a combination of employee donations and a corporate match. “I am overwhelmed by our employees’ consistent drive to help others in a time of crisis and their generosity to give of their time and resources,” said Ken Tuchman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TeleTech.

Sometimes teleservices companies get stigmatized as telemarketers and get negative publicity because they call people and disturb them. Obviously the do-not-call list was designed to minimize these interruptions. The flipside to this is that teleservices outsourcing companies such as TeleTech are consistently donating their phone lines, people, furniture and equipment to help make a difference in the world and provide assistance to a very noble cause.

We don’t realize how much call center technology and VoIP equipment and people in the industry can help us help our fellow human beings. Here is just one example. Hats off to TeleTech and all other companies and people that are donating to the worthy cause of helping the people who were stricken by the terrible disaster that is Hurricane Katrina.

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Gas Prices Fuel Conferencing

I read today on Greg Galitzine’s VoIP blog about how the higher gas prices seem to be leading us to rely on conferencing more and more. In this post on gas prices and conferencing Frost and Sullivan is predicting the web conferencing market will grow from 1 billion today to $2 billion in 2009. This seems like a conservative growth number to me and I wonder if it takes into the account of the cost of conferencing decreasing quickly over time.

There are other great projections in Greg’s blog post so if you are interested, feel free to take a look at what Greg wrote.

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Gizmo Project

Here is a great podcast between Erik Lagerway and Michael Robertson, Founder SIPphone & Gizmo Project. Michael also founded MP3.com and is a pretty good podcast guest. He sees little future for products like Skype that don’t embrace open standards.

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