The Readerboard

We welcome and encourage reader response to stories and commentary in our magazines and on our sites. Here is a letter received from Paul E. Jones Chair, H.323 and H.325 Experts' Groups, regarding a recent article on SIP

Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions

I felt compelled to comment on the second page of your most recent article: S(L)Ipping IP Into The Contact Center (May 2009) http://flq.us/uZ
 
"[SIP] is gradually displacing H.323, which is an older protocol used to deliver voice over an IP network.

* They are the same age
* H.323 was designed for videoconferencing and multimedia, not "voice"
 
"SIP has several advantages over H.323, including scalability, ease of integration, and ease of management."

* Scalability is debatable, as we can build a massively scalable H.323 network, and we have

* "Ease of integration"...with what?  Perhaps it might be easier to integrate a half-baked SIP solution with another half-baked solution?  A fully-robust solution is a lot of work, regardless of protocol

* Ease of management?  Apparently the person who made this claim is entirely ignorant of the capability negotiation issues with SIP, the fact there is no means of accurately directing calls toward gateway devices to ensure calls do not fail on overloads, etc.  Poor management is actually something H.323 and SIP have in common, but there is absolutely nothing better in SIP.
 
"SIP has also helped lower product costs because it has made the components more interoperable through the common standard. Tom Fisher, Director of Systems Engineering for Interactive Intelligence points to an IP endpoint written to H.323 in 2001 that sold for $900, which has been superseded by one done in SIP in 2008 for $120."

* H.323 and SIP phones made in China run on exactly the same cheap hardware

* There were H.323 endpoints in 2001 that retailed for less than $150, though videoconferencing equipment was generally more expensive; in general, videoconferencing equipment is more expensive due to hardware costs that have nothing to do with the protocol employed
 
What bothers me is that SIP and H.323 are both now 13 years old (counting from the initial date of draft publication).  Even if they were a couple of years apart, the fact remains that SIP is "ancient" by all accounts.  Just how old was the "old" SS7 network when SIP was introduced in draft form in February 1996?  I believe it was 16 years old, though I might be mistaken.
 
The point is that, while SIP is a workable protocol for VoIP applications, it has a lot of problems.  It is better in some respects than H.323, but is worse in some respects than H.323.  To this point, SIP has done very little to propel the market forward: what propelled the market was the notion of VoIP, accelerated by H.323, and now slowly progressing forward with a mix of SIP and H.323 being deployed.  While it is true that there is a slow migration to SIP-based networks, most deployments have been little islands, not unlike the little H.323 islands.  Carriers around the world are trying to pull together some sort of interoperable SIP-based network (which they have failed to do thus far due to equipment interoperability issues and missing "stuff" to make carrier networks robust).  But the sad thing is that what they will deliver when they're done is nothing more than the PSTN over IP.  Have you looked at IMS?  It's a complex mess.
 
The big question is: do we need that?  Look at Skype.  It works for me, and they are basically a global "carrier".  One can put voice on just about any device and various companies can provide interworking through SBC devices in the back-end.  Perhaps it's SIP, or perhaps it's proprietary glue.  It matters very little to the end user, since a "call is a call".
 
What is worth looking out for is a new way of communicating, like being able to use a plurality of devices in parallel.  For example, wouldn't it be nice to use a headset to place a call (perhaps connected to a phone), the phone is talking to a mobile device in your hand.  The mobile device is also talking to your PC, so when you join a conference bridge, a notification is transmitted to your PC to let you join a web collaboration session: all without having to do a thing, really.  Oh, and during the call, perhaps you can transmit a file from your PC to the person(s) you're talking to, because there is an app on your PC that knows about your active call and transmits the file as a part of the session.  Now, that's cool.  But, it's not SIP.  It's a new kind of XML-based protocol that we're working on at the ITU right now called H.325 (or, "AMS", not to be confused with IMS).
 
I have no idea whether H.325 will ever prove to be a market success, but I would really like to see articles that do not continue to convey the same misleading (and I doubt it's deliberately misleading) statements.  The world really is not better with SIP.  In the words of an associate from in the VoIP industry, "SIP sucks.  It really sucks.  But, it's what we have."  And, there's a lot of truth in those words.

Don't let my comments suggest that SIP will fail. I suspect it will succeed. After all, what other options are there? Enterprises need something and carriers need something. But, SIP has long been over-sold as something that will enable all kinds of new applications. I strongly believe in the power of IP-based multimedia communications and SIP will play an important role; it's just over-sold and has been for so many years.

Yours truly,

Paul E. Jones
Chair, H.323 and H.325 Experts' Groups

Here we go again...another gang of skels abusing telemarketing and robocalling i.e. automated dialers calling to connive money out of consumers including those with cell numbers and who have gone to the trouble to place their numbers on Do Not Call lists (DNC).
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As reported June 12 on TMCnet The Better Business Bureau reports that American and Canadian consumers have been sounding off to the organization in both countries and on the U.S. side to U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) about incessant automated telemarketing calls promising to lower interest rates on their credit cards.  Not only are the calls a nuisance and violate U.S. and Canadian DNC laws, but some companies behind the calls it says are ripping off consumers by charging large up-front fees to negotiate lower interest rates with credit card companies. Something consumers can do on their own for free.

I feel sorry for not only for the consumers--as one I too get the ghost calls and I don't pick up unless I know the number but they are a pain in the backside because the phones rings nonetheless--but for at least some of the agents, supervisors, and staff who have to make and program them. Those that know it's wrong but if it is a choice between that and not feeding their families and losing their homes, well...This is a tough economy and to survive people may be faced with taking jobs and handle tasks that are unpleasant and shady.

These types of stories have been giving telemarketing, and automated dialers, both excellent methods and tools when deployed effectively and ethically, a bad rap. The same with e-mail marketing that has been abused by too many outfits a.k.a. spam.

And it isn't the fraudsters and the gray area outfits such as reportedly some of the extended warranty companies that are the problem either. Too many legitimate businesses such as most recently the satellite TV firms that have been the subject of action by FTC have reportedly been bending the ethic and rules.

These continuing instances call to question the assertion by businesses and business organizations that self-regulation is the answer. Not when anyone can buy a dialer, hire/put together a telemarketing operation, and create e-mail marketing programs and spam-spewing botnets. What is the worst a self-regulatory program can do? Throw out a member? Sue them for dues?

The American Teleservices Association devised some 11 years ago a program called TeleWatch aimed at creating a 'mark' for ethical telemarketers aimed at having a similar effect of creating trust as the 'UL' for Underwriters Laboratories and 'CSA' for Canadian Standards Association on appliances. Yet despite the fanfare, the backing of leading teleservices firms and supportive publicity from the trade media (including this writer) TeleWatch quickly died. As one longtime industry professional told me: "Many of the ATA members did not like being told what to do."

There is also in retrospect a 'who cares?' factor. A company that says that they belong to a trade association and proclaims that they comply with the X standards is likely to get the twirling finger from five 9s of consumers. Not so a firm says their products pass rigorous safety testing by well-respected organizations.

Canada has had one of the most effective, stringent, and thorough self-regulatory programs there is, organized and conducted by the Canadian Marketing Association. Even with that Canada's federal Conservative minority government has had to strengthen telemarketing laws, including creating a national DNC, and has put forward legislation, with the backing of the Opposition Liberals, to go after spam, phishing, ID theft, botnets, and spyware.

This is not to say that self-regulation doesn't have value. Any means that trade organizations can devise to ensure that their members stay within the laws and adopt best practices are 'five wins' for consumers/customers, companies, the industries, regulators i.e. smaller caseloads, and taxpayers. The ATA's Self-Regulatory Organization is to be commended for that reason.

The legislation that the teleservices industry has fought against has had the positive effect of quashing or at least drawing attention to some but not all of the bad practices carried out by legitimate outfits. When the Federal Trade Commission took action against Comcast for failing to implement a Telemarketing Sales Rule-compliant DNC program that would have identified and led to correcting problems at internal call centers and third-party telemarketing vendors and promptly corrected them, Comcast says it has been doing just that. Comcast agreed to pay $900,000 to settle the FTC's claims; the FTC order contains standard record-keeping and monitoring provisions to ensure Comcast's compliance with its terms.

"Comcast fully supports all Do-Not-Call regulations and we are committed to preventing unwanted telemarketing calls," said Sena Fitzmaurice, Senior Director Corporate Communications and Government Affairs carried by the American Teleservices Association in a regulatory newswire to its members. "The FTC found our compliance with the national Registry to be 99.85 percent and chose not to pursue any claim against Comcast in that area...Since the period under review we have further strengthened our policies and procedures to prevent unwanted telemarketing calls."

Unfortunately existing laws and regulations do not seem stringent enough to get the attention of enough shady and legitimate marketers alike. A fine here, some bad publicity there: call it the cost of doing business is the attitude that too many outfits have. The risk is that lawmakers may get fed up enough to make telemarketing opt-in, ban all marketing calls to wireless devices (which as they supplant residential landlines mean a ban on telemarketing, period), extend that to charities (leaving political purposes alone, of course) and outlaw autodialers for any reason.

Instead legislators and regulators--and here is where the teleservices and direct marketing industry should be leading the charge--should start treating what has largely been civil matters and call and vigorously prosecute these issues for what they are. Namely harassment and trespassing in the case of DNC and autodial abuse, and break-and-enter, theft, and possession of burglary tools for hacking, creating botnets, and owning those toolkits. For without that that specter even banning telemarketing would have little effect.

Making individuals realize that they could be trading their blue business suits for pink jumpsuits and Rolexes for electronic monitoring devices would get their attention faster than any blather from the alphabet soup of federal and state agencies. It sends the message that these acts aren't being tolerated, and the consequences are unfunny. Having a criminal record, even if the penalties are minimal and the debt has been paid, will make life in this post 9-11 age from a getting a job or a client to running a red light or leaving or entering the country an ordeal for those found guilty and for their dependents.

We do live in a global village: a community where for it to function requires a degree of trust between its members to enable them, and us, to get along and make that community work. When that trust is broken action must be taken to identify and punish the violators, setting them as examples to discourage others from contemplating the same acts.

When the rights of consumers/customers to be free of fraud and to enjoy their property without trespass and theft are as respected and acted on when it occurs electronically (phone, fax, e-mail, online) as when it happens in-person then perhaps there will be much fewer such incidents with telemarketing and other electronic marketing forms. Shrinking back this specter of illegitimacy will permit companies and nonprofits alike to use these means effectively with true freedom through increased trust by contacted parties,who in turn will be happy to do business via these channels again.

As Americans set out for the Memorial Day weekend I wonder how many realize that this is in a reality a somber holiday, originally started to honor the Union soldiers who died in the Civil War that greatest of American tragedies, whose political aftershocks continue to this present day, and expanded (rightfully) to all fallen American service personnel. When I was a Cub Scout I took part in the local Memorial Day parade, marching to my town's largest cemetery where an honor guard fired a 21-gun salute with their rifles, and racing with the other boys to pick up the shell casings.

Unfortunately as with all human endeavors there are the vermin who seek to exploit and abuse the respect that we have for those who fight for our freedom by seeking funds for bogus veterans' organizations via telemarketing. The Federal Trade Commission has caught a few in its traps. The FTC, joined by 48 states, brought 76 enforcement actions against 32 fundraising companies, 22 non-profits or purported to be ones on whose behalf fund were solicited, and 31 individuals in "Operation False Charity". These include two FTC actions against alleged sham non-profits and the telemarketers who made deceptive claims about these so-called charities--including supposedly for veterans. The FTC alleged that three sham non-profit organizations, American Veterans Relief Foundation, Inc. (AVRF), Coalition of Police and Sheriffs, Inc. (COPS), and Disabled Firefighters Fund (DFF) "were created almost entirely to provide profits for the individual defendants and the for-profit fundraisers they hired."

The FTC contends that solicitors calling on behalf of AVRF falsely claimed that the money they were raising would support the families of soldiers fighting overseas through a program it called "Operation Home Front." In fact, AVRF spent virtually no money assisting military families. AVRF's bogus "Operation Home Front" is not connected to the genuine non-profit Operation Homefront, Inc., a national organization with 30 chapters across the country that provides real support to the families of troops and gets high ratings from watchdog groups.

If there is a hereafter there should be a special nasty place for companies who manipulate individuals' instincts to give and help, not just for veterans and in this instance but for all worthy causes whose would-be donors are victims of deliberate misrepresentation. Barring that the authorities should go further by having them arrested, charge them with fraud and if pled or found guilty sentence them to the vilest community service assignments there are: like picking garbage and cleaning cesspools, septic tanks, stables and zoo pens in 100-degree heat while wearing the finest cold-rolled steel 'jewelry'. Or if criminal prosecutions are not feasible, giving the defendants the 'option' of paying the penalty by such 'barter' and strongly encouraging them to take it.

Yet what is more disturbing, yet more commonplace unfortunately are the misrepresentations made by telemarketers calling on behalf of legitimate organizations, to try and boost their incomes and what the public consensus appears to be a too-low take (15 percent) by charities. One of news stories about CDG closing down several of its contact centers also includes mention of action by the FTC against it. To cite the South Florida Business Journal: "The company's tactics have come under scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission and others who allege CDG exaggerates the amount of donations that go toward charitable causes."

In defense of CDG and other teleservices firms charities point out that while these companies do extract most of the money raised from donors--up to 85 percent--what they have left over is more than what they had before.

Chuck Hurley, chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving told the Long Island Business News, in a story published Oct.10, 2008, that MADD national tried more 'down-home methods of fundraising', but they failed. MADD national in 2005 lost money on golf tournaments, made a mere $585 after expenses on walking, running and biking events and earned only $326 on dinners and luncheons.

"'If you think it's easy to raise money for a nonprofit organization, even one as important as MADD, you're new to this,'" said Hurley.

Charities run the risk in today's environment of losing credibility with the average donor, who contributes via telemarketing, and in being restricted in their efforts by further legislation to curb fraud and misrepresentation, such as removing their exemption from Do Not Call lists. In response there needs to be reform of charity fundraising via telemarketing, ideally a combination of stiff penalties including aggressive criminal prosecution to reflect the vileness of the fraud when it takes place, find ways to remove the temptation of misrepresentation, and a review of practices and costs to increase returns to worthy organizations.

To make such meaningful actions happen organizations like the American Teleservices Association, the Direct Marketing Association, and the Canadian Marketing Association and the charities need to step up to the (collection) plate to come up with best practices that can become codes and practices and standards that in turn form the basis of laws. They also have the collective clout to make this happen.

By making worthy causes more worthy to donate, more people, such as our veterans, can get the help they need, which is the least we can do for those who have and continue to serve us, and in doing so making our world a better place.

If staying afloat in rough economic waters were not enough, small-midsized businesses (SMBs) are experiencing frustration and inefficiency when it comes to integrating data management and business software (i.e. ERP, CRM) that have been intended to help them manage costs and grow revenues. With the hefty chunk of change those solutions command, at a time where every dollar spent must have the maximum value extracted, these need to start pulling their weight.

A new white paper sponsored by Sage and published on TMCnet reveals that customizing applications for particular needs ranks the top--63 percent--of common software problems. This is followed way behind by duplicate data entry points and coordinating software updates each at 32 percent.

"Many SMBs are utilizing contact management and accounting software but most don't have a solution that provides visibility and insights from data," says the paper. "And they're finding that customization and data management across different systems can be very challenging."

The paper also found that an overwhelming majority of SMBs use ERP software--79 percent--to manage sales, manufacturing, distribution, and HR. A sizable minority--38 percent--use CRM applications.

Yet while ERP and CRM solutions complement each other, fewer than 1 in 10 SMBs believe they are seamlessly integrated. Most feel that they have some room for improvements when it comes to data sharing.

The Sage white paper makes the case for integrating these solutions. It has very helpful recommendations to help SMBs obtain greater ROI from ERP and CRM.

"What can seamless CRM and ERP integration do for my business?" asks the paper.
SIMPLIFY EVERYTHING. Bridge your ERP and CRM software into one unified solution that can deliver a consistent user experience."

That experience, helping to ensure that every time when a customer interacts with your organization is consistent and successful, is what being successful in business is about.

In what cynics say is another death knell for nearshore contact centers in Canada, and one more piece of evidence that beneath globalization is headquarters nationalism, online auction giant eBay is closing its Canadian contact center, which is located in Burnaby, British Columbia; Burnaby is part of the Metro Vancouver area.

Yet this move is one more illustration why traditional bricks-and-mortar centers are obsolete...

The Canadian Press reports that 700 agents will lose their jobs by the end of September as eBay pulls its work back across the border: to its Salt Lake City offices plus to other offices worldwide.

"While it is a difficult decision to close our Vancouver facility, we believe that consolidating our North America customer service operations will help accelerate our efforts to continually exceed buyer and seller expectations," the wire service quoted Chad O'Meara, vice-president of customer service for eBay Marketplaces.

It is too bad to see eBay shutter its shop. Despite the fanfare around the 2010 Winter Olympics, British Columbia including Metro Vancouver has been hard hit by the downturn and can ill-afford to lose this employment.

Naturally the eBay closure has become one more issue in the provincial election, which will take place May 12. The Globe and Mail reported that Opposition New Democratic Leader Carole James pointed to it as evidence to support her party's claim that Liberal Leader and sitting premier Gordon Campbell and his government has not been doing enough on the economy.

"'I'd like to see him take some time to talk to those [eBay] workers,'" she said. "'Gordon Campbell continues to say everything is fine while we continue to see these kinds of job losses, we see forest workers lose their job, we see some of the worst job losses in the country, here in British Columbia. So the first thing is to acknowledge there is a problem.'"

In response Campbell said B.C. businesses are going through difficult times but his government's tax regimes have helped ensure things aren't worse.

"'For the 700 people, that is not a good thing... I understand how difficult it will be for them, but I think they know we have done everything we can,'" the Liberal leader told the newspaper.

eBay is only the latest contact center to pull out of Canada, including British Columbia. West slammed the doors on its Victoria area center last year. Convergys and Dell have closed centers as well.

In fairness to eBay the closing is in many respects understandable. The firm, like many others has been rocked by a tough economy, even for low-priced goods sold on auction and through its online merchants. Its latest financial report, released in April, cited the downturn behind a drop in net income in 1Q 2009 to $357 million from $460 million in 1Q 2008.

By the same token Convergys, Dell, and West have also had to look at ways to cut costs. Padlocking redundant facilities when there is spare capacity elsewhere makes sense.

The high and unstable Canadian dollar related to the U.S. currency has made closing Canadian contact centers a viable option. It has climbed from as low as 62-65 cents in 2001-2002 to parity and higher in mid 2008. After dropping to 78 cents recently it has climbed back up to 86 cents. Site selectors figure that 80 cents is the highest Canadian currency can go to make it worth while to set up and keep nearshore contact centers there.

Yes Canadian workers are somewhat better educated, have a strong work ethic, and the government-sponsored healthcare system removes the benefits costs and makes working part-time more appealing. Yet those advantages are not for many firms enough to make up the spread and offset the comfort factor of locating/keeping operations on home territory.

It is this last issue that sticks in the craw, rightly or wrongly, of Canadians, Irish, and others that have seen American companies pull back Stateside in tough times and not just in contact centers either: these moves have been occurring in IT and in manufacturing as well. And it is causing resentment leading to possible political action.

The Globe and Mail reports that Canada is threatening legal action to force United States Steel Corp to resume production at two Ontario steel mills it acquired in its takeover of Stelco in 2007. The paper said that U.S. Steel, which took its first quarterly loss in five years due to auto production declines, is laying off more than 9,000 employees at six North America facilities.

"When U.S. Steel acquired Stelco Inc. in 2007, it committed to a series of undertakings regarding, among others, capital expenditures, research and development and production," said federal Industry Minister Tony Clement in a statement. "U.S. Steel has recently cut production and laid off employees at its Canadian operations.

"I am concerned by the actions of U.S. Steel in cutting operations in Canada and by the impact this will have on its workers. While I recognize that these are challenging economic times, we expect the company to live up to its commitments.

"I have sent U.S. Steel a demand letter under section 39 of the Investment Canada Act, asking the company to comply with its undertakings. A demand letter is the first step in the enforcement process under the Investment Canada Act."

No one is going to expect similar action with eBay, but what it does do is make the economic development agencies leery about attracting and keeping contact centers, especially when there are incentives involved even if and when the currency differential widens for a long period of time, or to serve domestic customers.

Canadian and American communities have seen contact centers pack up when the goodies stop coming. One development agency official called the process by the name of a prominent teleservices company.

In the case of brand name firms like eBay, and Dell closing operations, no matter the PR sends a signal, rightly or wrongly, to customers that all may not be well with them, making them leery about being customers. And that's not a good thing in today's economy,

eBay's Burnaby contact center is one of the coolest designwise and operationally I've ever seen, with plenty of light, curving space, glare-free interiors and virtually no sound; the agents use e-mail rather than voice. Yet in some ways it is the last of an era; the equivalent of the Pennsylvania Railroad's T-1 steam locomotive which appeared just as diesels were beginning to take over and the S.S. United States ocean liner that sail as travelers took to the skies.

For the future of contact centers is not in bricks-and-mortar facilities but in agents' homes where more can be accomplished for less: today's business mantra. Home agent programs i.e. telework can achieve gains of $10,000 to $20,000 per agent/year.

That may be the way forward for eBay, and for other companies caught up in the financial squeeze of both the downturn and a strong Canadian dollar. When Convergys shuttered operations in Alberta, it hired a number of the laid off staff as home-based agents.

eBay should do likewise, which may enable keeping some if not all of its Canadian workers while maintaining its presence in Canada. It can get some help from TransLink, Metro Vancouver's transit agency whose buses and nearby rapid transit line serve the eBay site. It offers an online telework kit.

While eBay is on a cost-saving run it should shutter its Salt Lake City site and move the agents there home too. The Salt Lake City area has become the center of a galaxy of home agent operations, the most prominent of which is JetBlue.

After all, eBay is the ultimate home-based business. What is more appropriate than contacts being handled at home, and at home and abroad?

The other day I came across a contact center expansion story where the employer, whose name will not be revealed to save them from the embarrassment of being singled out, preferred to have applicants for its contact center agent positions to have college degrees.

My jaw dropped. A two-or four-year degree just to answer and make calls and handle chats and e-mails in a contact center? Is this overkill or what?

Then again, given too many reports about how poor the American--and to a lesser extent the Canadian--public education system is, such employers may sadly be onto something.

Yes, that company, and others who look for college educations in their applicants can get away with that in today's downturn. Yet is that a wise move? Is that not setting up such contact centers for another round of escalating turnover, higher costs, and pressure to move the work once again to offshore and more into self-service?

Once the economy turns around and higher paid openings that more closely match the responsibilities and room to grow with applicants' education, training, and aspirations college-educated individuals will be out contact centers' doors faster than one can type 'job board'. So will many others who took jobs in contact centers as a last resort.

As essential as contact center work is the tasks at hand is not exactly rocket science. All these positions require for the most part is a reasonable level of comprehension, reading, writing, and speaking. That goes for today's demanding multichannel environments where agents must juggle calls, chats, and e-mails and SMSes from customers who have in many cases have gone through the Web and IVR/speech rec self-service and want answers now.

Only when the responsibilities are highly specialized and where there are some serious consequences if there are errors made are formal qualifications: certifications, licenses, and degrees needed. In these ranks are engineering, Level 3 support, insurance, securities, and telemedicine.

And it isn't that working in a contact center is the first step to an exciting career that may require higher education or other qualifications to prepare themselves for. The opportunities for advancement into management or to other positions are extremely limited. Not with high agent to supervisor ratios, no lateral career paths into other fields, like accounting or sales, and with centers' physical locations offsite and far removed from regional and central headquarters.

That's one of the reasons why contact center employment is not exactly seen by many people as desirable, and why other service work: hospitality and retail in particular, draw the more go-getting individuals. One can--and one is encouraged in these other industries--to start at the bottom and work their way to the top, learning every aspect of that business and have an appreciation when they are in management of the individuals below them. In contact centers in contrast one starts and with few exceptions stays at the bottom.

At the same time the college degree 'preferred' or 'required' stipulation in employment postings is too often lazy HR. It is much easier, faster, and less expensive to wordspot 'college' and dump those applications and applicants that don't have that term than to actually read, review, and analyze what these individuals have to offer.

Unfortunately the HR departments may be right in seeking some college education or degrees. I have talked to many people in the contact center business over the past 14 years and the general consensus is that too many of the applicants who walk into contact centers out of high school cannot cut it on the call floor both in basic skills and work ethic. That basically they have wasted their years, and huge sums of taxpayers' dollars in glorified babysitting services that has ill-prepared them for the real world.

It is not that long ago when a high school education counted for something. That even finishing junior high i.e. Grade 8 enabled the aptitudes and gave one the tools to make a decent living. Is the work world that complex to demand 4 to 8 years of additional schooling for individuals to be at the same level as their parents and grandparents were? So much for technology and communications...

A poor educational system has serious consequences for contact centers. More firms want to keep and/or bring back their work onshore. Yet how can they justify this if the quality they get, especially when the economy rebounds and the college types leave, is mediocre to terrible?

The public education system is too far gone for anything to be done with it. The self-interested parties: teachers, unions, and bureaucracies nothing to be gained and everything to lose from meaningful reform. They have cemented themselves in their unassailable ivory towers.

There are two options for contact centers: making sure that they locate their sites where there are good high schools whose graduates are not all college-bound, and, more likely, tearing down the bricks-and-mortar and going home-based. The latter is far more doable and likely than the former.

Study after study continue to demonstrate that home agents are the ideal contact center workforce because they have higher skills, better work ethic (they tend to be ages 40+), are more productive, and are not career minded. Because they know a little bit of the world unlike the fresh-out-of-college 20-somethings they can easily answer sales objections and solve problems. And they don't need the constant supervision nor require workplace socialization. They know how to work and have their own lives outside of work.

When the economy recovers there will be demand growth for contact center services, not as big or widespread as that in what can be accurately termed as the 'Ponzi Bubble' but sufficient to require more and high quality agents. Going home meets these needs without worrying about finding and housing these employees, while saving money on facilities costs and turnover expenses, thereby freeing up resources to create products and services that people and businesses want to buy. Items that customers will need agents to help them.

Telemarketing is rarely in the news these days, and that's a good thing. The advent and acceptance of Do Not Call (DNC) and predictive dialer abandonment regulations in the U.S. and Canada appear to have had the intended effects. That is they have lowered--but not eliminated--annoying calls that had turned off more customers and had prompted them to spend their money elsewhere that they had attracted and revenue generated.

In doing so the DNC legislation also saved the telemarketing industry and the jobs it creates. So ticked off were lawmakers who were being bombarded with consumer complaints that they didn't care about the risk of employment losses. And that's unusual for politicians.

Tom Cardella, founder of Thomas M. Cardella Associates, and one of the teleservices industry's leading lights, called it right in a recent article on TMCnet:

"There has been much hand-wringing about the effects of the national Do Not Call list. It has been blamed by some as the cause of huge job losses in the teleservices industry."
 
"I don't agree. Those jobs would have been gone anyway because consumers were getting annoyed with unwanted calls and were hanging up, not answering, and otherwise not buying, which was making outbound teleservices more costly and less profitable."

Concerns about annoying telemarketing calls appear to have been superseded by more pressing worries: like keeping jobs including in teleservices, hence the interest in preventing more them from going offshore and bringing those back that have left.

That does not mean that telemarketing is finally free of hassles, and resulting attention of lawmakers. Because there continues to be other aggravating and costly-to-consumer telemarketing practices which are on their radar screens. Once the big targets of the economy and employment have been knocked off it is a safe bet that they will turn their sights to these issues such as:

1. Random calling and DNC list abuse. Fraudsters and greedy, irresponsible if lawful businesses are or are paying teleservices companies to make random calls even to individuals who put their names on DNC lists. Some have used the DNC lists to make calls

2. Continuing stupid telemarketing/outbound practices. High on the list: not having their names show up and 'Number Unavailables' on called parties' Caller ID

Yes, stupid. Many consumers use Caller ID to screen calls. If they don't know who the caller is they don't answer. And consumers are getting ticked off at the dumb firms who don't let them know who they are. Many would no doubt love to see those practices banned or deploy a ready tech fix that blocks all unidentified calls with the option of programming from phones or computers lists of acceptable numbers.

3. Calling to wireless numbers. Prohibited except for emergencies and or if there is prior express consent, this issue is much more problematic as more people are using, forwarding calls to, and increasingly ripping out their landlines (like the infamous definitely don't-do this-at home T-Mobile ad with the woman chainsawing telephone [actually 3-phase power, no phone lines] poles) for wireless.

The FCC is looking at, in response to a petition filed by Paul D.S. Edwards, whether creditors can place autodialed or prerecorded message calls to a telephone number associated with wireless service that was provided to the creditor initially as a telephone number associated with landlines.

It will be interesting to see how the FCC rules on this issue. Requiring express consent for all wireless calls including ported will accelerate wireless adoption--and be a boon to cell firms.

Yet regulators are usually loath to let rules stand in the way of legitimate activity such as collecting debts, and to let those who have such obligations to hide behind regulatory language to avoid meeting them.

There is also the issue of fairness to businesses who in good faith call landlines only to have the transmissions answered on cellphones.

Does the FCC open the gates to wireless users, who pay for their inbound calls, to receive many more calls on their devices at their expense by providing such 'safe harbors' for creditors and others e.g. telemarketers making lawful calls via autodialers?

Or does it decide to go beyond the Do Not Call list and make all outbound calls opt-in with express consent because such calls, wanted, undesired but lawful and proper i.e. collections, and unwanted cost consumers money?

Steve Brubaker, senior vice president, corporate affairs of InfoCision, a leading teleservices firm, pointed out in a recent blog and had informed the FCC that "it is ludicrous to think that a consumer would want to abolish all existing business relationship pertaining to a phone number just because he or she moved the number from their home phone to their cell phone.  Think about it... if the petition goes through, then every consumer that wants to retain its existing business relationships, and allow those companies to call it using that same phone number would have to contact those companies to give them express consent to do so.  What a waste of consumers' time!

"And we're not just talking about collection and solicitation calls, but also notifications of credit card fraud, interruptions in telecommunication service, and many other issues of which the consumer typically wants to be notified. 

"In addition, the detailed lists that teleservices companies like InfoCision have painstakingly built over time would be rendered useless, unless we contacted each of the consumers on the lists by some other method to reestablish consent to be contacted by their recently ported cell phone number.  It would be nearly impossible and terribly expensive to undertake such a task."

There has been a powerful call for industry self-regulation to handle issues such as these. It can and has been argued that had there been an effective self-regulatory regime 10-15 years ago the present DNC and other rules could have been avoided.

The advocates of this viewpoint are correct in one sense: developing best practices standards, educating the industry on them, and backing them with penalties such as expulsion from trade organizations that adopt these standards can and will reduce violations. There has been excellent work in this area by the American Teleservices Association through its SRO (Self-Regulatory Organization) and by the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA).

There is certainly a need to get and keep the legitimate players on their toes. Witness the recent regulatory actions involving certain cable and satellite entertainment firms, whose names need not be repeated here.

The CMA has one of the most stringent set of telemarketing best practices/self-regulation there is. The CMA, unlike its U.S. counterparts, has taken a smarter, more politically astute approach to regulations. Instead of confrontation and foot dragging it took an accurate reading of the situation and chose to work with elected officials and departments. It got what it wanted including the canning of a proposal to include B2B in Canada's DNCL.

Yet not even the CMA was able to forestall regulations or prevent ongoing telemarketing problems. That's because of the biggest weakness of self-regulation in this industry which is the lack of barriers to entry. Anyone can set up a telemarketing business and many do, and they don't have to join a trade organization and many don't. Their clientele could care less, especially those that don't mind them working the gray areas in boosting results.

The CMA has shown one way forward and that is to create or set the basis for doable legislation. Most of the CMA's best practices, including calling hours got adopted into Canada's revamped telemarketing laws.

In doing so the CMA has followed the route of many other organizations in creating consensus rules and standards that have become accepted and enforceable regulations. For example the offices that we work in have been wired in accordance with legally mandated electrical codes and government workplace safety regulations that have their origin in private consensus standards such as ANSI in the U.S. and the CSA in Canada.

To ensure that the next set of regulations that will be coming down the pipeline from legislators are fair and effective the telemarketing industry needs to devise some solutions of their own, use their self-regulatory mechanisms to test them and build consensus and at the same time sit down with lawmakers to go over these issues. That the industry is already taking proactive steps to come up with answers that could offer them guidance acknowledges the pain the lawmakers are getting from their constituents, which gets them onside.

In that fashion, by working together the industry and government will have a fair set of future rules that address needs which everyone can live with.

UPDATE:

The Canadian government has introduced Bill C-27, Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA) designed to deter spam but which also repeals the Canadian Do Not Call List, which has been criticized by privacy advocates for not doing enough to stop unwanted phone calls.

One important difference that could shape telemarketing as the legislation winds itself through Parliament: the ECPA is opt-in wheras DNCL is opt-out, as pointed out in Michael Geist's article in today's Toronto Star. I wouldn't be surprise to see telemarketing made opt-in to get rid of both the DNCL and the issue of reaching cellphones.

One more company, this time Primus Telecommunications Canada is repatriating its customer care from an unnamed outsourcer in India back home.

The company announced Tuesday that it will no longer have any of their customer service or technical support calls handled by offshore agents. This is in addition to the exclusive Canadian-based customer care that Primus' Wireless and TalkBroadband VoIP customers have received for some time.

In turn and to handle these calls Primus is expanding its Edmundston, New Brunswick contact center creating 113 new jobs, adding to over 200 employees currently in place. The provincial government will provide Primus Telecommunications Canada with a forgivable loan of $7,500 for each of the new positions.

"Every company with customer service operations that are partly outsourced, has heard some complaints from customers, for a variety of reasons, with respect to dealing with customer service representatives located overseas," says Rob Warden, VP Residential Marketing for Primus Canada. "Our customers have told us they prefer to deal with Canadian representatives and we're responding to their feedback.  While we hold all our representatives - wherever they are located - to a high standard, we have also come to believe that the best way to serve our customers is to locate as much of our customer service operation as possible in this country.

"We are also delighted to be able to play a part in local job creation during these challenging economic times."

There is irony in this news. New Brunswick, and Ireland, helped begin the move to nearshore/offshore contact center operations from the U.S. and other countries like the U.K. by offering their communities as berths with plenty of willing, able, educated, and low-cost labor. Both Ireland and New Brunswick are essentially rural, have many workers but too few opportunities; their best and brightest were being lured elsewhere to Britain and to Ontario respectively.

Former provincial premier (and later ambassador to the U.S.) Frank McKenna had seen what Ireland had done in attracting contact centers and followed suit, attracting outsourcers but also in-house customer service and sales. Other provinces saw what New Brunswick had accomplished and began seeking contact centers as well.

Unfortunately, New Brunswick, and by extension much of Canada (and other countries) that sought out contact centers had missed the lesson of Ireland, and that is to aggressively capitalize on contact centers as gateways to higher-value/higher-paid IT jobs. This is a lesson that India, despite being suffocated by decades of stifling neosocialist rule coupled with a notoriously slow bureaucracy has learned well.

Ireland and India, despite being battered by the downturn, have therefore moved on to become tech hubs in their own right. That is why there has been no major hand-wringing in India and in Ireland at the loss of contact center jobs as they have moved on.

Unfortunately, Canadian provinces like New Brunswick, and Canada has a whole have not taken advantage of the unique opening that nearshore contact centers had given them to make their economies more higher-valued through a stronger IT focus.

Canada failed to move on the very low Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. currency 7-8 years ago (it was at one time 1/3rd less than the American dollar) to draw and lock in higher-valued, more stable, and less easily moved IT investments. It did not strongly promote the country in coordination with other provinces especially in comparison to other nations including Australia, France, and the U.K. There have been no coordinated educational/economic strategies.

As a result New Brunswick, rural/northern Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and interior/mid-north coastal British Columbia especially have remained mired as technology backwaters at a time when the forestry and mining industries that they have depended on have taken a beating and may never come back.

And unfortunately that is typical of Canada, a nation that despite the prowess if mixed of companies like Bell, Corel, Mitel, Nortel, RIM, Rogers, and Telus, can never seem to get beyond being a branch plant 'hewers of wood and drawers of water', with a cautious, decidedly unentrepreneurial culture. One that prefers that others take the risks and live on the residuals, seeking instead the safer investments of finance, real estate, resources (other than oil/gas--too risky), transportation, and utilities.

Ireland and India have taken in contrast the nothing-to-lose mentality. Irish and Indian entrepreneurs are hungry and will do what it takes. I've lost count how many offers I've had for trips to India; I could have ended up living there (if I had been covering this field earlier I would have been in Ireland--I have a maroon EU passport via my British citizenship and my roots are in Eire with a name to match).

Canada's culture won't change. The country, even in the current downturn, is still too comfortable. The one upside of its cautious approach is that its domestic markets haven't tanked to the same extreme as that in the U.S., leaving it with a still troubling but more secure financial and real estate sectors.

There is a tide against nearshoring and offshoring, but there are shoals for nations that offer strong and unique contact center value propositions: in education, skillsets, and languages, such as Egypt, Guatemala, Honduras, and, if/when there is lasting stability, Sri Lanka. Other countries with smart, educated workforces such as Kenya and South Africa are posed to jump more into the IT/higher end BPO space directly.

These nations should look at Ireland and India, and at Canada when formulating their economic development strategies, adopting and adapting from the first group and avoiding the errors of the latter.

One of the highest 'time/ROI' communications products TMC has is our Webinars. I've moderated quite a few of them over the past year.

From my behind the scenes seat, preparing and giving the intros, working with the presenters and equally if not more importantly fielding the questions from the attendees/participants I've found every one worth while.

The topics and discussions have led to more than one article and have enriched many others. Some of the subjects covered are still generating heat and interest many months later.

Here are three Webinars coming up over the next two weeks that promises to be in this league: in timely information, knowledge, and insight:

* Selling in Tough Times: Increasing Your Sales Productivity, Not Costs (April 22, 2pm ET). Presenter: Martin Schneider, Director of Product Marketing, SugarCRM

This event focuses on doing more with less, and on how new Web-based solutions written to commercial open source software can help firms do just that. The applications discussed identify leads, segment customer bases for targeted marketing, and use Web 2.0 technologies to leverage more data and build customer relationships.

* E-LOAN's $2M Annual Payback with Speech Analytics (April 23, 1pm ET). Presenter: Michael Miller, VP Customer Care, E-LOAN

This webinar, sponsored by Utopy, is an instructive case study of how E-LOAN, a subsidiary of Banco Popular NA, has seen a 41 percent improvement in sales conversion and a $2M increase in incremental revenue annually by applying speech analytics. E-LOAN used this tool to identify the contributing factors to successful sales conversions and determine the skills that differentiate the top from the bottom performers and to fine-tune the sales process and the training program. The financial services firm also used it to coach and measure the effectiveness of the training on agent performance and to recruit and evaluate new agents.

* 5 Ways To Stop The Flow Of Money Out Of Your Contact Center (April 28, 2pm ET). Presenters: Elizabeth Herrell, Forrester Analyst and Steve Pollock, TuVox Founder

This webinar will provide timely tips on helping contact centers cope with customers calling while both revenues and budgets are down, putting them in a squeeze. The event will explore ways to dramatically reduce service costs without compromising quality and how next-generation IVR has changed the way customers are engaged. It will also examine new market research and customer service techniques.

Check and clear your schedules and register today!

Whenever there is a downturn either within the economy and/or within an enterprise the first people to be let go, hours reduced, and/or wages/salaries hacked are almost invariably those who produce the goods and services that enable the firm, and the economy to be in business.

Only when enough of that blood--and usually too much of that for the organization's and the economy's own good-- has been allowed to gush out only then are the supervisors and managers led to the chopping block. These are the ones who don't generate directly the goods and services.

The first supervisors/management to go are usually the ones that know what they are doing. The others: the cube/office spaceholders who have risen to and roil around in the Peter Principle's 'level of incompetence' and who often stay to the end: making sure they suck every cc of blood from their host they can before they crawl off to infest another body.

The hard reality is that in many organizations is that there too many managers who drive performance down because they make lousy decisions and who waste scarce resources. These personnel lack the abilities for their jobs. What typically happens is that they get hired or recommended because they were good at their production tasks: which has nothing to do with how they will perform in supervisory rules. That sets up the "vortex of incompetence": bad longer-time managers bring on board underperforming newbies--they would never approve someone who is equal to or who outperforms them--who when they get promoted selects the next generation of nincompoops.

The one thing poor managers are good as is self-preservation, in blamedeflecting and denials, kissing the right people and their body parts, and in making themselves look good. They act like viruses fighting off T-cells as they infect and debilitate the rest of their host organizations.

Contact centers are an excellent illustration of management incompetence at (dis)work. The number one cause of high staff attrition, escalating costs, and terrible performance are poor supervisors and managers. Individuals who should never been hired or promoted in those jobs in the first place.

No wonder why contact center agents bolt at the first opportunity they can to work from home. At least they don't have to see or smell them around their hairlines or what remains of them.

And one wonders why too many firms, and government departments, are poorly run and deliver lousy ROI. Why they are slow on the uptake when it comes to adopting new methods and solutions that could benefit them.

Like teleworking. The methods, technology, and ROI are there. Instead the biggest obstacles are the manager and management who think they need to 'see' their people and breathe down their necks at no notice to be assured that they are working: despite having tools like IM, e-mail, QM, and performance measurements at their disposal.

What firms and departments commonly do not understand is that managing is not a skill that can be learned, like how to write an e-mail or use a new application. It is instead a talent, namely leadership that only a very small subset of the population has.

You can't teach someone to be a leader. They either have it or they don't. Leadership training for someone who lacks it is equivalent of teaching computer programming to someone who has never used a computer and who has no skills in logic.

Herein is a prescription to help companies and the economy pull out of the downturn: take a hard look how they are managed and who is managing them.

* Deploy management-by-performance, to objective realizable standards rather by some arbitrary manager-to-worker or other ratios. Set goals and expect your staff to meet them. Bring management-by-performance to the HR level by hiring and keeping only those experienced either internally or brought from outside staff who are independent motivated self-starters who are also team players (think sports like basketball and hockey with stars).

With management-by-performance you can slice your administrative overhead (i.e. lay off managers and cobweb their offices and cubes) while boosting output. Home-based contact center agents are an excellent illustration of this. Firms that deploy them can achieve agent to supervisor ratios as high as 22:1 as opposed to 12:1 or as low as 8:1. Why? Because to work from home successfully you must be independent, self-motivated, and know how to meet objectives.

* Develop and implement proven effective management screening including assessing for leadership. Leadership need not be equated with career experience. Look for, for example whether they have coached a team, led a choir, or organized a fundraiser. You can also source e-screening simulations that sift for leadership talents. Once you have your cadre--chances are that it will be much smaller than before--then provide them with training that enhances what they have, like conflict resolution.

Then evaluate the existing management stock, mark for elimination those that do not make the cut, and give them a choice of returning to the line work that they had started from or lay them off in a downsizing or restructuring--such as when implementing management by performance.

* Minimize the expensive perqs that also draws poor managers like five-day-old fruit to flies. Mothball or sell to condo developers the ego-baths known as Class A offices. Keep a nice but small showcase office space if you need this for investors and customers, though the smart ones will appreciate not wasting their money. Limit your buildings for manufacturing, R&D, and shipping/receiving, and telework or put in smaller, less fancy space the rest of your functions. The true corporate status symbol is no longer the corner office but the home office. Managers who cannot see you, and you cannot see them, but they know where you are and what they are doing are more effective than those who are visible like the spectre that is there and present.

By taking this harsh medicine now organizations, perhaps like yours, will have a great likelihood of getting better, and so will the economy.

To get a full view of your customers to utilize your CRM systems so you can retain and obtain more value for them, especially in this challenging and highly competitive economy you need realtime access to complete quality data on your customers.

Yet for too many organizations this may not be happening. And the reasons lie in both too-complex processing and in the sometimes inaccurate customer information that these systems have to work with i.e. "garbage in..."

One of the biggest barriers to getting value from CRM initiatives is this need for improved customer data management, according to William Band, Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester Research.

One set of solutions, data warehousing, he says fails to deliver the real-time access, and end users compensate by deploying myriad purpose-built data marts. Mega data warehouses often fail in the eyes of business users because they become too complex and take to long to build. They often become 'boil the ocean' type projects.

"These limitations, along with poor data integration between CRM and enterprise resource planning systems, result in fragmented views of customers," Band points out.

Business intelligence (BI) applications offer the promise to be the focal point to customer intelligence across multiple data sources, says Band. But BI efforts often highlight poor customer data quality. When users try to apply powerful analytics tools they find the source data is lacking, and not properly managed, leaving users scrambling to fight a losing battle to keep customer data clean and updated.

Band recommends that companies look at customer data handling up front, before putting in CRM applications, and resolve any matters that have arisen. This can save time and aggravation, and help you get the results you are seeking.

"Don't wait to address customer data issues until the latter stages of your deployment; it might be too late to resolve problems at that point," says Band.

Contact centers seemed to have weathered the downturn better than most sectors thanks to the need for firms to retain and attract scarce customers and their wallets with quality service, the unfortunately growing demand for collections, and in a slowdown in and in some cases a reversal of outsourced nearshoring and offshoring.

These are also excellent times for contact centers to expand. Retail closures and layoffs have created plenty of available customer-service-skilled people and modern, well-situated buildings. The financial services industry meltdown has led to similar opportunities, including vacant, well-wired, move-in ready contact centers. Home based work has finally emerged as a viable cost-effective and arguably more productive and greener alternative to traditional, and expensive employer-subsidized facilities.

Unfortunately if reports are accurate, contact center turnover continues to be higher than one might have expected in these difficult times. Even in communities where larger and better-paid employers have been cutting back, contact centers aggressively recruit for staff. In at least one city where there are several contact centers some of them have resorted to placing portable billboards near the entrances of their competition to lure agents and supervisors.

And where communities are prosperous, contact centers seem to lose out. One firm is closing its contact center in a small Midwestern city because it could not find enough workers to fill open positions even after several months of trying.

At the same time the bar has been raised on contact center employees. Customers who cannot find the products/services they want or solutions for their issues via the self-service demand, and rightly so, truly intelligent agents to help them: individuals who can communicate on their feet both verbally and in writing at the customers' level. It is no longer enough to have a pleasant voice in today's contact centers. Yet when positions require more skills it shrinks the applicant pools.

To fix these issues a contact center makeover may be needed. A good hard look at why those that are experiencing staffing issues cannot attract and retain the quality people they or more accurately their customers need, and take steps to address the problem areas.

The first place to examine is supervision and management. Staffing experts and experienced managers agree that the top reason why employees voluntarily leave their employers is because they work underneath terrible supervisors. Individuals who zero in and blow up out of proportion minor matters rather than focus on the key issues and who coach by berating staff as opposed to employing constructive criticism and showing better ways of accomplishing tasks.

The chief culprit is the age-old mistake of management, which is to promote the best line workers without any examination of whether they have the aptitude and skills to lead and supervise colleagues. Managers who themselves should not be in those roles. Then again stupidity breeds, well...

Yes, other service jobs like in retail and hospitality have the same bad supervision and turnover issues. Yet their environments make the idiocy a little more tolerable. Clerks and waiters can walk away and focus on customers whereas agents are haunted, even terrorized every second by their supervisors, over multiple channels, and with nowhere to run. Bullying managers have to keep their traps shut when they are facing the public.

A second troublespot is lack of staff empowerment and flexibility. Most contact center agents want to help those they are communicating with--doing so gives them tremendous satisfaction--but they get frustrated when they are tied down by bureaucratic red tape and procedures.

In today's world employees want and expect workplaces that work with instead of against their lives. That means enabling them to change and trade shifts, and giving them flexible hours, accommodating child and eldercare, and allowing them to work from home.

A third blotch is no community identity. In-house contact centers almost always rank higher than teleservices firms with potential hires because they have names and corporate images that they can wear as badges. Yet in all too few cases do teleservices companies have similar positive identities that their staff can be proud of. Not enough of them make themselves parts of their host communities such as by participating in charity or school fundraising, supporting local amateur sports teams, and in joining events such as holiday festivities.

Like being a homeowner in a subdivision it isn't enough to pay your taxes and mind your own business. You have to string your lights and take part in whatever else is taking place on your street if you are asked.

Lastly in thankfully fewer and fewer cases, some contact centers, especially the smaller operations still are situated in buildings that look like they have been condemned, or should be, and that is from the outward appearances: Diety knows what's behind the walls or under the floors or above the ceilings. There have been reports of instances that the sites have looked so bad that prospective clients have looked at the sales reps, said 'You gotta be kidding', and walked away.

Little wonder that elected officials have been able to punch through do not call and other industry-restrictive legislation in the past; deaf to the complaints of job loss fears. There have been politicians who fairly recently who have blasted contact centers because they create low-paid high-turnover jobs. If you act and look undesirable and you are not visible, and that you don't give others a reason to truly care about you, you get treated accordingly.

There is no reason why contact centers cannot become employers of choice, whether the workplaces are bricks-and-mortar sites or employees' homes. The solution lies, like in the hiring candidate agents, in facing the mirrors, getting their acts together, become interested in and taking part in what's around them, and in putting their best feet forward.

Remember the last time you played Monopoly (TM) when a big player in the game who owned Boardwalk and Park Place went bankrupt, and how you and your friends couldn't wait to buy these nice assets for dimes on the dollars?

That's what may be in the process of occurring to Nortel right now. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the communications firm, which is under creditor protection, has attracted several possible purchasers of its high-value enterprise and wireless equipment businesses.

According to The Canadian Press, the WSJ's website named Avaya and Siemens Enterprise Communications as potential purchasers of Nortel's enterprise product line according to well-placed sources. Cisco looked at the unit as well but is not expected to bid. Nortel is also is in talks to sell its wireless voice equipment division to firms such as Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia Siemens Networks, which long has sought to expand its presence in the U.S.

The dilemma faced by Nortel, which is under creditor protection, is that by selling its most valuable units, which posted $6.7 billion in sales last year, is what it has left worth continuing in business for?

``'What we are finding is that there may be a lot more value by selling rather than emerging,'' said an unnamed source quoted by the paper. ``'The company was surprised by the amount of interest and the number of calls.''

``Selling the wireless gear business, which generates most of the company's cash, would complicate any plans to emerge from the bankruptcy process as a stand-alone company.'''

Appropriately enough the WSJ story comes on the heels of Nortel's latest financial results, released last week. The firm reported a $2.1 billion net loss in the fourth quarter 2008 (4Q 08) compared $3.4 billion in 3Q 08. This improvement lies in the shadow of a net loss of $5.78 billion for 2008 compared to that of $957 million for 2007.

4Q 08 revenues were up to $2.72 billion from $2.32 billion in 3Q 08, but down 15 percent from $3.2 billion in 4Q 07. Full year 2008 revenues of $10.42 billion represent a 5 percent decrease compared to that in 2007. A portion of that revenue growth came from contract completion and with this realization of previously deferred revenues rather than from sales.

Nortel's orders paint a similar picture. They were $2.64 billion for 4Q 08, up from $2.02 billion in 3Q 08 but down from $3.24 billion for 4Q 07. It cited lower orders for wireless and enterprise equipment for the drop between 2007 and 2008.

The firm is still hoping to pull itself up without breaking apart but that prospect appears to be less likely. The Globe and Mail reports that debtor-in-possession financing -- the lifeblood of most bankruptcy restructurings -- has all but disappeared this year.

"'Banks aren't exactly lining up to finance a purchase of Nortel assets,'" a banking source told the newspaper.

TMCnet has been tracking this story. Watch our space for more developments.

Research firm Datamonitor recently came out with an intriguing report about Sri Lanka as a potential business process outsourcing (BPO)/offshore contact center hub.

Intriguing in that there may be a strong case for that island nation to become a BPO center despite its small (relative to neighboring India) population of 20 million.  Intriguing is that it has been the media lately on account of an ongoing civil war: which is not exactly the kind of development that assures potential investors and clients.

Datamonitor points out that Sri Lanka shares many of the attributes that has made India such an attractive location for BPO including an affordable and a plentiful pool of educated and English-speaking workers, high literacy levels, and a legal system that is based on a Western model.

The country through its IT trade organization Slasscom is wisely is focusing, however, on a few key strengths, such as accounting and finance (approximately 50,000 Sri Lankans qualify as accountants each year) rather than trying to be 'all things to all firms' that India's huge population can afford that nation to be.

Yet only farther down does the paper touch upon Sri Lanka's 20+ year old civil war, one like many such conflicts based on longstanding and deep-rooted issues between dominant and minority populations...after a discussion about costly telecom, doubts about cities outside its capital to support BPO/IT, and competition from other nations.

This is the wrong focus. Civil conflicts are top of media and top of mind. Because these are issues that must be addressed head on and up front in this post-9-11-01 world.

Here's what the CIA World Factbook says:

"Tensions between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil separatists erupted into war in 1983. Tens of thousands have died in the ethnic conflict that continues to fester. After two decades of fighting, the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) formalized a cease-fire in February 2002 with Norway brokering peace negotiations. Violence between the LTTE and government forces intensified in 2006 and the government regained control of the Eastern Province in 2007. In January 2008, the government officially withdrew from the ceasefire, and by late January 2009, the LTTE remained in control of a small and shrinking area of Mullaitivu district in the North....

"The 25-year civil conflict between LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka has been a serious impediment to economic activities. By mid February 2009, the LTTE remained in control of small and shrinking area in the North. The conflict continues to cast a shadow over the economy."

Yes, companies set up shop and do business with firms located in many dangerous and conflict-ridden parts of the world. That can include our own back yards. As was remarked to me when I was writing about Northern Ireland as a contact center location 11-12 years ago "you're safer in Belfast than in Boston".

There is, however, a difference between civil wars and criminal activity. Terrorism is a tactic to conduct warfare, including civil warfare. The state is the target, and to destroy or neutralize it or to force it to change policies or redress grievances terror is aimed at the institutions, infrastructure, the economy, and the support of its population through generating fear. The latter can also include tourists, and executives sent there to support operations.

In contrast, criminals don't care about politics. They want what others have and they do what it takes to get it.

I used to live in the UK during Northern Ireland's 'Troubles' including during bombing campaigns. I used to also live in Boston and have visited the city many times before and since, travelling throughout the city on its transit system and on foot. There is no comparison in the on-the-spot fear between being checked out on an MBTA subway train and the shuddering terror of having to evacuate a train station in Manchester, England.

And while firms often take such risks--with civil conflicts and with high criminality--on manufacturing, resource extraction, and trade the rewards are usually there to match. Can the same justifications to put staff and assets in danger be made for comparatively low-value BPO, which the Datamonitor report admitted can be and is done in other parts of the world?

I wish to see an end to the conflict in Sri Lanka. For the Datamonitor report is correct in that the country has strong potential, just like Northern Ireland has. There are firms such as WNS and RR Donnelley there. And yes it will take a long time for Sri Lanka's war to cease even when there is a settlement, as there will be factions that will try to undermine it, as demonstrated by a recent bombing in Northern Ireland.

There are reports of the Sri Lankan government's recent military successes. Yet as this article from the Financial Times points out, "Most analysts argue it needs to do this by following up its military success with measures that would bolster the position of minority Tamils in Sri Lankan society, which is dominated by ethnic Sinhalese, comprising 74 per cent of the population, and ease the ethnic tensions that gave rise to LTTE."

For a country or region to be truly successful in drawing easily transferable BPO/IT business there must be a commitment to stability including creating and maintaining a functional society. BPO/IT investments can firm that up by creating employment--which has been stressed in Northern Ireland to create work for large jobless pools --but the civil foundation must be there for these structures (like contact centers) to hold up over time. And that means taking steps including compromises with the sides involved to resolve the issues that had led to or exacerbated to the point of violence the civil conflicts in the first place.

One of the more sensible new mantras in the contact center field is call avoidance: namely taking steps to prevent calls from customers from occurring. Call avoidance saves money and bolsters revenue by reducing contact handling costs and by improving customer satisfaction and retention by tackling their issues head on before they become problems.

Outbound messaging and notification, which will be covered in the April issue of Customer Interaction Solutions is one technique.

Another, and much more effective, is discovering and preventing the problems and issues that prompted the calls in the first place.

In the spirit of aiding the already beleaguered airline industry and its roster of many fine people still working for it, including in contact centers, here is a great opportunity to practice call avoidance: flush into the 'blue ice' chamber consideration of charging customers to use in-flight toilets that was raised last week by Irish deep-discount carrier Ryanair. Yes, according to Reuters the airline's CEO may be making this stuff up to get PR: but the world is littered with dumb ideas that have taken hold because of someone's musings.

I am taking this pre-emptive move because if this idea takes hold, airlines, desperate for coin and cost savings, would bolt the devices to the washroom doors faster than a 737 taking off from that aircraft-carrier-disguised-as-an-airport known as LaGuardia. The irate calls, e-mails, and faxes that would, well...flow...are the teleservices firms and IVR/speech rec firms such as Microsoft subsidiary Tellme and other outfits likeWest Interactive ready?

After all, look at what happened with food, baggage, and other features once known as amenities--charging for which many people too had thought was stupid--and which take in cash, no doubt like the infamous ' plus sales and handling' on direct marketed items going back to the 'bottom' line. There are probably at this writing engineers working on CAD/CAMs with lightweight, difficult to tamper (or rip off) payment card-accepting devices for the toilets. The profits that can be made on transcon and intercom flights, and to family destinations like Orlando...to make the revenues (ahem) flow to less popular locales maybe the carriers can cut the price of beer...

There are other and customer-friendlier moves the airlines can make to cut costs. Among them:

* Partnering rather than fighting Amtrak (and VIA Rail in Canada) and the bus companies to provide single-ticket short-haul ground spokes instead of connecting flights. There are a few North American airports with rail access or decent proximity to rail lines, like Philly (the only one with a train station inside), Newark, BWI, O'Hare, Providence, San Diego, Sea-Tac, Montreal (Pierre Elliott Trudeau/Dorval) and Toronto (Pearson). The move would cut costs, and ticket prices with the dividends of reducing flight delays and harmful emissions. Short-haul takeoffs and landings chew up runway capacity and spew much more pollutants per passenger-mile than medium to long-haul flights

* Move airline customer service and reservations to a great source of low-cost/high productivity, and extremely knowledgeable potential at-home agents: retired flight attendants, pilots, and customer service personnel

* Devise a lightweight, ergonomically sound non-reclining seat. The recliners on board aircraft create more customer discomfort i.e. breaking the kneecaps and getting too up-close-and-personal with the customers behind than they are worth in supposedly adding comfort. And they are a maintenance headache

On the other hand, installing pay toilets on airplanes maybe just the kickstart the bus companies need to scoop up customers: Amtrak is already popular and the Obama Administration plans to pour more money into it. Such a move by the carriers would also make it a great time to buy shares in firms like Cisco and Logitech. One more reason not to fly and to conference and meet-by-video instead...