united states tag
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Oh Canada: eBay Closes B.C. Contact Center
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.
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 help from TransLink, Metro Vancouver's transit agency whose buses and nearby rapid transit line serve the eBay site can help. It offers an online telework kit.
Handling The Next Telemarketing Regulations
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.
