June 2007 Archives

In 2005, VEGAS.com, one of the largest city destination travel websites in the world, installed Interactive Intelligence’s Customer Interaction Center (CIC) software in its customer service center. Two years later the company won Contact Center World’s “Best Technology Innovation Award,” which was presented during the “Best of the Best in Americas” conference held earlier this month in Orlando, Fla.

VEGAS.com won the award after undergoing two rounds of judging by industry peers. It was reportedly one of 200 entrants vying for the award.

In order to win, entrants had to present “findings,” presumably showing how their contact center software helped them gain efficiencies, cut costs, improve agent performance and boost customer retention.

As a winner, the company can now enter into Contact Center World’s “Best of the Best in the World” award competition, to be held at an upcoming conference later this year.

During the awards ceremony held during the “Best of the Best in Americas” conference, VEGAS.com’s director of customer contact Rob Cate said the company saw a “dramatic return on investment” after it started using Interactive Intelligence’s contact center software.

“Before we deployed the Interactive Intelligence software we had 128 agents who handled about 37,000 calls per month,” he said. “With CIC’s ability to consolidate multiple systems and interfaces, we now employ 48 agents who handle about 90,000 interactions per month. That’s a 57 percent reduction in agents, and a 117 percent increase in interaction handling.”

Cate said the software also reduced agent errors by 90 percent, sped-up service and reduced the number of abandoned calls.

VEGAS.com uses the full Interactive Intelligence unified communications suite, including its CIC software, as well as add-on modules for multimedia recording, quality monitoring, e-mail response management, Web self-service and workforce automation.

Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown said in a press release that VEGAS.com’s experience with the software “is an incredible illustration of the benefits a company can realize by migrating from a traditional phone-only call center, to an ‘intelligent’ multi-channel contact center using open, standards-based architecture.”

“Now unrestrained by technology limitations, VEGAS.com is fully realizing its commitment to the customer experience – from its ability to timely respond to customers regardless of the communications channel used, to automated quality monitoring for superior customer service,” he said.

For more information, visit www.inin.com and www.vegas.com.

Contactual has launched a new reseller program to help it attract new domestic and international partners who in turn will be able to quickly and easily distribute its innovative hosted contact center solutions to their customers all over the world.

The company has already formed tight partnerships with leading IVR and CRM providers (including NetSuite and Salesforce) for product integration, joint marketing and contact center product licensing; as well as with service providers (including NEC Business Solutions, Australia, and Qwest) to develop joint-marketing and product solutions that create value-added solution enhancements for existing XSP products, as well as new revenue streams for XSP businesses. It has also forged important partnerships with major companies in Japan and Australia which are hosting its comprehensive on-demand contact center solution and selling it on their own.

Now, Contactual has launched a new Authorized Reseller Program to further expand its global reach.

One of the first companies to join Contactual’s new reseller program is BayanTrade, a leading knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) company in the APAC region. According to BayanTrade’s president and CEO, Dante Briones, joining the new program has enabled the company to “deliver the benefits of high impact, customer interaction management solutions to our customers and clients.”

In a recent interview with TMCnet, Mansour Salame, CEO of Contactual, said BayanTrade is one of about 10 companies which have already signed up for the new partner program.

“There’s a bunch of other ones that we’ve signed up so far – and we’re closing three more by the end of June,” Salame said. “So we’re signing up about two to three distributors a month – and lot of them are international companies. It’s a really good play for us because we can leverage our infrastructure internationally, without having people to worry about – you know the old model of ‘hey, how many licenses and hardware do I need from you to resell in the Philippines?’”

“The thing with BayanTrade is, they’re leveraging the Internet, they’re leveraging our servers here, and they’re leveraging our software, so it’s a very efficient model – much more efficient than the traditional on-premise call center technology model,” Salame added. “If we were on on-premise technology company, at the stage we’re at, we probably would not be playing in the Philippines – we couldn’t afford it – whereas now [with the hosted model] we can sign up anyone, with very little thought, and get that reach.”

As Salame explained, Contactual’s reseller program is unique in that it is much less restrictive, in terms of who can join, plus it enables resellers to start selling the software immediately, so they can start gaining from the benefits of partner status without having top put up a lot of cash up-front.

“If you look at Avaya, or any of these other call center companies, you see a very limited engagement where Avaya would be providing the technology to the partner, and the partner would be going into the market making the investments and level 2 support while at the same time supporting the product,” Salame said. “This is a much different model.”

David Sohm, president & COO of Contactual, said what really distinguishes the reseller program from others is the fact that there are “fewer hurdles to jump” in order to join. In other words, the program is much more “partner friendly.”

“One of the key things is, the ‘buy-in’ is quite easy to join the program,” Sohm said during the interview. “There isn’t a slew of partner fees and you don’t have to fly here and spend a week in our training center, or anything along those lines.”

Sohm said the reseller program is very flexible in that it allows partners to start out with a simplr model whereine they simply supply sales leads – all the way up to them distributing the software on a “white label” or privately-branded basis.

“We have a variety of levels in the program - so a partner can start out by just referring leads to us, based on knowledge of what we do, and then grow in the program as their knowledge of our application grows,” Sohm said. “So they can step all the way up to a private branded service, which we could do for them, if they like. That means a partner can start at whatever level is convenient – or whatever commitment level they want to make. Later, they can take on the responsibility of representing the product and closing the orders – and we’ll handle the on-going back-end support and implementation. And if their professional services group or support group wants to step up into that – they can do that as well.”

“I know that with some other company programs out there, they’ll tell you ‘we’ll take title to the thing before it passes on - we’ll handle the implementation - and we’ll handle the first, second and third level technical calls,’ and boy the investment for getting started in that type of program can be quite a lot,” he added.

Sohm said the new partner program is very flexible and can be tailored for different types of partners.

“For example, for a telephony carrier or a hosted IP-PBX carrier we can provide a SIP trunking connection between their PBX switch and our switches - so we can really tightly integrate the telephony flow as well, if we’re moving to somebody who is in that category of partner,” he said. “But if it somebody who is a systems integrator, or a reseller of long distance, that has the customer relationship - and the customer has a need for a contact center - it is very, very simple to get started on the Contactual-branded service.”

Sohm added that Contactual has multiple partners that are in the private label category right now – including some of its partners in Japan and Australia.

“These partners are hosting our application themselves,” he said. “They’re taking our technology, building out their own hosting centers and operating them by themselves. So they’re really at the high end of our partner program.”

He said in total the company has about 25-30 partners, ranging from ones “which take our technology and operate the environment themselves - to the ones that are in the reseller category – to the ones which we would call outsourcers (companies which provide outsourced call center and help desk/order desk services). That’s a great part of our partner program because they can scale up and scale down very quickly based on the requirements of their customers.”

Contactual’s OnDemand Contact Center is an all-IP solution featuring interactive voice response (IVR), skills-based routing, call monitoring, historical reporting and multimedia capabilities, among other features. The solution offers quick and easy integration with the leading on-demand CRM software packages – including salesforce.com and NetSuite. Additionally, it comes integrated with Footprints, an award-winning help desk automation solution from Unipress Software.

OnDemand Contact Center’s “multi-media queue” is fully customizable and therefore enables you to quickly route customers to the most appropriately skilled agents, reducing the number of times the customers are transferred. The software also sports a customizable reporting function, as well as call monitoring and SLA management. Thus it enables you to consistently meet the service levels you desire for your customers.

Because it is a hosted solution, Contactual’s OnDemand Contact Center let’s you get up and running in as little as six hours. There is no required hardware or software, nor will you need a technical team to set up the system and then help you run your call center. Facilitating the quick and easy set-up process is Contactual’s hands-on “JumpStart” training program.

Another huge advantage of this hosted solution is that you only pay for the seats you need – based on the amount of time per seat. In this sense, the service works much like a utility. Furthermore, the service is highly scalable and therefore can grow with your company. This flexible model lets you start small and grow as fast as you are able. Best of all, no capital expenditure is required, thus you can simply trial the applications with very little risk.

Another key selling point for this hosted solution is that it enables you to “virtualize” your call center through the Web. That means not only does it let you manage multiple contact centers which are spread out in different locations from one central point of control, it also lets you deploy at-home agents, which is one of the hottest new trends on contact center right now. Reagrdless of where your agents are located, they will be able to have all contacts – phone, email and Web chat – routed to them quickly and efficiently.

On the security side, Contactual uses professional data center facilities, encryption protocols, and world-class security procedures to provide the highest security levels possible. In fact, the company claims its security measures actually protect data better than most on-premise solutions. Naturally, Contactual offers full, round-the-clock support for its solutions. In addition, the company offers a money back guarantee, should it fail to meet its Service Level Agreements.

“Through the Contactual Authorized Reseller Program, we are committed to sharing our technology and know-how with our partners to deliver our award winning product to the market,” Salame said. “We believe that combining the respective strengths of Contactual and our partners such as BayanTrade, will give our end users the freedom of acquiring the Contactual OnDemand Contact Center through their preferred channels.”

Contactual made news on TMCnet earlier this month when it announced its latest product offering, Contactual Desktop Sharing. The new product offers remote support for clients and places agents in a position of power to address, fix and share information, among other possibilities, remotely. As such, Desktop Sharing further improves the interaction between agents and customers. With this new software, agents can not only improve the customer experience, but also increase sales and technical support.

Contactual is a winner of the Frost & Sullivan 2005 Global Excellence in Technology Award, TMC Labs’ Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine 2005 Innovation Award, and a berth in the 2006 Red Herring 100 North America list of the top 100 privately held technology firms.

For more information, visit www.contactual.com.

We’re staying at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, Calif. this week, going around and making our "pitch" to the various software vendors and other companies in the call/contact center space located throughout the Bay area.

 

The other night, me and my co-worker wanted to get the lowdown on which area restaurants we should go to (oh, yes, ahem, and which ones were “affordable” too), so we asked the girl at the front desk, who in turn said we should ask the concierge, who also has a desk in the main common area, across from guest services. When we asked what the concierge’s hours were, the girl at the front desk said “she works 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.,” but when we looked at the concierge’s desk and saw no one there, we asked “well … where is she?”

 

“Oh she’s there … she’s a virtual concierge,” the girl said.

 

We looked again, and lo and behold there was the “virtual concierge,” on a large flat panel mounted on the wall right behind the concierge desk (at first we thought it was just a TV). So we went over to meet her.

 

It turns out that the concierge, “Anna,” has worked at the hotel for more than 10 years, but when she recently had to move about 80 miles away, she came up with the idea of “virtualizing” herself through a videoconferencing solution. She explained that it was no longer practical for her commute to work, so she proposed the idea of “virtualizing” herself and handling guests remotely from her own home (in other words, becoming a home agent) to her bosses. Well, apparently her bosses liked the idea – and being the call-center-technology-junkies that we are, we like the idea too!

 

Anna was as pleasant as a concierge can be - and her presence was almost as strong with this videoconferencing solution as it would be if she was standing right there, serving us in person. With a good microphone, speaker set, monitor and camera in place, Anna both looked good and sounded good too. The conversation flowed well and the video kept pace with the audio quite nicely, thus creating a truly “personalized” experience. I must admit I was impressed.

 

 

Anyway, after our nice discussion, Anna recommended a restaurant where could get a “good burger” and then printed out a set of directions for us on the printer which was right underneath the monitor. Pretty neat!

 

Later, when we got back from the restaurant, we saw Anna again as we walked through the front common area. Amazingly, even though we were about 25 feet away, she saw us too, and gave us a polite wave and smile – again, just as if she was standing right there! Amazing!

 

Even though I have my doubts that “virtualized customer service reps” will work in every industry, this experience gave me confidence that in certain industries it is going to work a lot better than any of us realize.

 

Now, the next step is for Anna to find a way to present her self as a hologram, instead of on a flat panel … hmm, maybe that is coming sooner than I think!

I’m in California this week (for the first time in my life) and I’ve been cruising around the Bay area and meeting with execs from some of the many software companies serving the call/contact industry. I have to tell you that I am absolutely amazed at the number of tech companies that are concentrated between Santa Cruz and Oakland. I mean, I always knew they were here - but actually seeing how many there are has really made an impression on me.

 

Anyway, I have a keen interest in speech technologies and one of the companies we met with today was Voxify, which has its headquarters in Alameda. This is a small but very progressive company which has developed some very hot, cutting-edge speech “self-service” applications which are used to improve business performance and reduce call center costs. I don’t want to say that these applications are one day going to replace agents – but in a way, that is what it is coming down to. In fact, Voxify even refers to its products as “Automated Agents.”

 

You see, speech technology has now reached the point where the applications are capable of interacting with customers in a surprisingly natural way. For example, a sophisticated speech engine such as Voxify’s “Conversation Engine” can now ask a customer an open-ended question, like “What can I do for you today?” and then accurately “interpret” the customer’s response and complete a transaction without an agent ever picking up the line.

 

Of course, these apps are still used to simply “steer” a call to the agent with the best skills to handle it – so I wouldn’t go so far as to say that droves of agents are soon going to lose their jobs. But in many cases, if it is a fairly simple transaction, the app itself is now sufficient to handle the customer’s needs. Thanks to the increasing sophistication of today’s speech algorithms – plus the ever-increasing speed of today’s processors – these new engines are not only capable of asking a question and the interpreting the response, they can actually provide a set of “options” to choose from. Furthermore, if the engine isn’t entirely sure what you just said (for example, there are many words in the English language that sound similar), it can repeat what it “thinks” you said and then confirm your response. What this basically means is that we have reached the age where speech apps now have the “artificial intelligence” needed to carry on natural conversations and intuitively “know” what a customer wants – even if the customer speaks less than perfect English!

 

What’s also cool is that Voxify’s speech engine can be readily “programmed” by a user with very little IT knowledge or skill to, for example, adhere to certain business rules, or perhaps to interpret certain words or “slang” terms that are common in a particular region or among a particular group of customers (“… like, dude man, whoa …”). This ease of customization is key because, let’s face it, not every company does customer service the same way – and not every company’s customers are the same as another’s.

 

Many of Voxify’s clients are big names in the customer service industry – Ticketmaster, Expedia, Priceline and RiteAid, to name a few – and for them, Voxify’s “automated agents” are ideal for handling relatively simple customer service tasks, such as taking reservations, selling products or answering account requests (the types of calls where the customer already knows what exactly they want – the ones where there really is no “geez, why are you calling us?”). Amazingly, Voxify claims it can deliver an integrated, completely customized enterprise speech self-service application to any size company in less than 8 weeks (!).

What’s also interesting is how these apps are now being used for outbound calls. For example, Roger Nunn, the company’s VP of sales, told us about how RiteAid is now using Voxify’s “automated agents” to deliver “reminder” calls to customers whose prescriptions have run out and may need to be refilled. He said RiteAid and other pharmacies have discovered through research that a high percentage of people have a tendency to forget about getting their prescriptions re-filled when they’re supposed to. In RiteAid’s case, the company is using the automated agents to call a customer and remind them that their prescription needs to be refilled – and then ask them of they wish to refill it. This enables the company cash in on what might otherwise have been a lost sale – plus it results in higher customer satisfaction.

 

I think we can expect to see a lot more of these outbound speech apps in the future – and not just ones that will give customers “reminders.” I think the day is fast approaching when we will start getting “cold calls” from retailers using automated agents to sell their wares – and this is something that stands to completely revolutionize the entire telemarketing industry. For one thing, an “automated agent” always delivers its message in same cheerful tone - whether it is the first call of the day or the one hundredth. An automated agent never gets tired, never calls in sick, never eats or sleeps or goes to the bathroom … never complains that its headset is hurting its ears … well, you get the idea. Some retailers are no doubt salivating over the idea of using automated agents to bring in new business and boost sales among their existing customers – but I guess the big question is, how many of us are ready to start receiving these calls?

Alliance Data Systems, a provider of marketing, loyalty and transaction services, celebrated the opening of its new call center facility in Ennis, Texas, today with a ribbon cutting ceremony that was attended by company and city officials.

The new “best in class” facility, which started operating in March, already has 225 employees and the company reportedly plans to hire an additional 355 over the next three to five years. It has reportedly already handled 40,000 calls since it opened just three months ago.

The opening of the new call center was a joint effort between Alliance Data and the city of Ennis. During the ceremony, Mayor Russell Thomas and City Manager Steve Howerton were recognized for their efforts in assisting Alliance with the opening of the new center. A report in the online version of the Waxahachie Daily Light doesn’t mention anything about a tax incentive. Officials from Alliance’s top client, Direct Energy, were reportedly also on hand for the celebration.

In the report, Laura Raymond, vice president with Direct Energy, said she was impressed with the level of customer service the employees deliver at the Ennis center.

“The customer’s opinion of Direct Energy is based upon the level of customer service they receive from the employees here at the call center,” she was quoted as saying in the report. “We have 1 million customers in Texas alone and we look forward to continuing a successful relationship with the people that work in this center and Alliance Data Systems Inc as a company.”

The news follows Alliance’s announcement yesterday that Roins Financial Services Limited (RFSL) has signed a multi-year agreement in which its affiliates, Royal & SunAlliance and Johnson Inc., will become national sponsors in Alliance Data’s Canadian AIR MILES Reward Program.

The AIR MILES Reward Program is one of Canada's leading coalition loyalty programs, with roughly two-thirds of Canadian households participating. AIR MILES collectors earn reward miles at more than 100 leading brand-name sponsors representing thousands of retail and service locations across Canada. AIR MILES reward miles can be redeemed for more than 800 different rewards, such as travel, movie passes, entertainment attractions, electronic merchandise and more.

The deal enables Royal & SunAlliance to offer the AIR MILES Reward Program through a large network of independent insurance brokers representing Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Company of Canada and Western Assurance Company. Eligible collectors will receive reward miles on premiums paid for home or auto insurance policies underwritten and distributed through participating RFSL affiliate companies.

Dallas-based Alliance Data Systems manages over 120 million consumer relationships for some of North America’s most recognizable companies. The company currently has about 9,000 employees spread across 60 locations worldwide. Alliance’s customized solutions enable its clients to “create and enhance customer loyalty to build stronger, mutually beneficial relationships with their customers.”

United Kingdom antitrust regulators today cleared Verint Systems’ $950 million purchase of Witness Systems Inc., citing that the deal will not result in a “substantial lessening of competition within a market or markets” within the UK.

Verint is a leading maker of call recording and speech/data analytics solutions, while Witness is a purveyor of workforce management, quality monitoring/recording, back office, IP telephony, customer feedback and eLearning solutions. Verint’s acquisition of Witness officially closed on May 29.

Together the two companies offer the broadest portfolio of software solutions for the contact center and enterprise performance market. With more than 2,500 employees spread across 18 countries worldwide, the new company will be among the 30 largest software companies in the world. It will boast more than 5,000 customers in 60 different counties, including many Fortune 100 companies.

Earlier today, TMCnet had the opportunity to do a brief phone interview with Ryan Hollenbeck, VP of global marketing for Verint’s new division, Witness Actionable Solutions. He discussed some of the details of the merger and where the combined company is heading from here.

“So as of last week we are officially closed and one company, so good news there,” Hollenbeck said enthusiastically. “As you know it takes a while to get through a merger of this size but we’re officially through all the regulatory approval, which is a good thing for the customers - and for everybody.”

Hollenbeck said not only does the deal give both companies a significantly expanded global footprint, it also provides both with an extremely broad customer base which “scales all the way down to very small businesses and all the way up to Fortune 100 companies … so it really is a very disparate group of customers.” Markets served by the combined company include financial services, telecom and insurance.

Hollenbeck said in terms of combining the customer base, “we’ll be protecting all customers’ existing investments – so we have a commitment that we’ve already stated in writing that we will continue to support all existing applications and platforms.” Plus he added that “both companies have a history of innovation, so we’ll continue to enhance the solution set and you’ll have an upgrade path – as a customer – to new solutions.”

In terms of support services and R&D, Hollenback said the new company “will have much greater scale” than the two had individually.

“If you look at the global R&D function of both companies - and at the support services as well - as a combined unit we’re in a real strong position,” he said. “We will be able to continue to bolster our support organization worldwide - plus with all the new R&D personnel that we’ll have, we are in a great position to deliver new innovative solutions to the market.”

He added: “If you look at what our portfolio looks like out of the gate, it is one of the broadest portfolios around contact center, WFM and actionable intelligence to have ever come together. And if you look at the sets of tools that a contact center needs to manage to excellence - and by that I mean the tools needed to gain efficiencies, build customer loyalty and increase revenue – we will be the new market share leader.”

Hollenbeck said the two companies, which have been partnering for years, are an almost perfect fit and that there will be very little overlap in terms of the two companies’ product sets. He said prior to the merger, “Verint customers were asking for WFM, eLearning, and customer feedback solutions … whereas Witness was being asked for speech and data analytics. So coming together made a lot of sense for both us, because now we can bring all those solutions to market.”

But what about integrating all of these solutions together? How will that process take place? Hollenbeck said basically it will be a “three phase approach.” He said in “Phase One” which will start “right out of the gate,” customers can expect to see “package solutions,” where you’ll be able to purchase “speech analytics and recording tools combined with eLearning that you can’t purchase from anyone else.” Phase Two of the integration process, he said, will involve the “integration of certain products into on combined product;” and Phase Three (in 2008) “will be the development of a single, integrated platform supporting all of the products.”

Hollenbeck said although there will be a lot of work involved in doing all this, the two companies have already been planning a roadmap for the past several months, “behind the scenes” as they prepared for the merger. In this planning phase, they closely analyzed the integration process, “looking at every project going on in product development and marketing and support,” and developed a detailed strategic plan for gradually integrating both product portfolios.

Meanwhile, he said, the two companies are fortunate enough to have worked together for while, which means their products are already compatible. In fact, he said both companies “had already begun the process” of integrating their apps – so quick integration capabilities are already built into both product sets. So, some of the integration work is already done.”

“Fortunately, there’s a lot of technology out there today that makes it much easier to make applications work together - things like SOA for example - so while not all of the platforms are identical, there are enough similarities to allow us to carry forward,” he said.

In terms of facilities, Hollenbeck said the company will continue to maintain the two corporate headquarters (Verint’s headquarters in Melville, N.Y., and Witness’s headquarters in Atlanta, Ga.) plus the offices Witness acquired when it acquired Blue Pumpkin in Santa Clara, Calif., and the office in the UK it acquired when it bought Eyretel in 2003. “So its kind of like we have hubs in each of those areas … and we’ll continue to have those on a going forward basis because we have so many engineers and support personnel in each of those locations,” he said, adding that the company will likely consolidate some of the numerous field offices it now has in India.

And what about the people picture? Well, obviously it’s always hard to say, but Hollenback said “to Verint’s credit, they’re really trying to bring the best of the two companies together … and the two really do neatly fit toagther … so I think we’re looking at single digits, if at all.”

Witness currently has about 1,000 employees, while Verint has about 1,500.

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Patrick Barnard is Assignment Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.

Hi, I’m Pat and this is my call center blog. It’s all about call and contact center technology and how it makes life better for all of us … or not.

At times I might address other topics that are either directly or indirectly related to the call and contact center industry - such as CRM, speech technologies, VoIP, unified communications, wireless technologies, video, workforce management, headsets, call center furniture, etc. - and how these make life better for all of us … or not. I might also occasionally discuss how technology in general makes life better for all of us … or not.

So what makes me qualified to write about call and contact center technology, you might ask? Well, for one thing I’m a journalist with about 15 years experience contributing to various publications. Currently I’m associate editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, the leading magazine covering the call and contact center industry. I’m also assignment editor for TMCnet, the leading website covering IP communications. I also happen to be a former call center agent, having worked part time in a variety of outbound call centers during the 1980s.

As long as we’re on the topic of my relevant work experience, let me share with you some completely unnecessary details about my call center experience. Looking back on it now, it was a great experience – not to mention a great way to supplement my income - but little did I know then that it would also end up becoming useful later in my role as associate editor for CIS. For me, it is interesting how work experience you gained when you were younger can sometimes be applied again later on in life.

So, here I go: During college, primarily to pay to pay for pizza binges, I took a job with a market research organization. Located on the second floor of an old brick building, the company was typical of the call centers of the early 80s: rows of cubicles, each with a standard AT&T phone and not much else (headset? What’s a headset?). There were no computers or auto-dialers – to make a call, agents picked up the handset and dialed the numbers provided on dot-matrix print-outs. These numbers were generally purchased from list brokers. They were also highly unreliable, sometimes resulting in the following scenario:

Call recipient: “Joe’s Pizza.”

Agent: "You mean this isn’t the DeCola residence?”

Call recipient: "Look, do you want to order a pizza or not?"

Agent: "I was hoping you'd like to tell me how much you love your new deluxe floor mats for your car."

Stalemate. You get the picture.

Political surveys were my favorite. It was fascinating to hear people express their views so freely – which was more common back in those days, since telemarketing was still relatively new. People were sometimes actually happy to take a call from a stranger and have the opportunity to express their views.

And computerized scripting? Not a chance. We used response sheets that included a series of multiple choice responses with check boxes. Sometimes we had to write the responses free-hand. If we couldn't write fast enough, we had to summarize as best we could after the caller hung up. (“Responder said, ‘Walter Mondale is awesome!’”). The scripts we did have were typically posted on the walls of each cubicle in brightly colored paper – each color representing a different “canned” response we delivered in a perky and friendly manner on the first and second call, and in deadly monotone by the fortieth call.

After college, I took a call center job doing direct selling. The company was a bit mysterious (to me, anyway) and the project I worked on involved “selling” networking events that were a blend of corporate executives, cocktails and fine art for sale by budding artists. Although doing direct sales has never been one of my strengths, I was making $9 an hour, which was respectable at the time. The project lasted only a few months, then suddenly and without explanation, the company let everybody go. It was my first and only experience with the dreaded “sudden call center closing” that has become all too common these days in poorly managed organizations.

My next step on the call center rung involved doing consumer satisfaction surveys mixed with some sales for a busy call center engaged in what was a fairly common practice of over-hiring agents and then “weeding out” the under-performing ones. I missed a shift or two in the first two weeks – a major no-no for anyone who wishes to continue a promising career in a call center – so the company simply stopped offering me shifts. It started to dawn on me that maybe call center jobs weren’t so easy to land and retain after all.

Still, I took another part-time call center job working for another market research organization. This company was the right fit: they were professional yet casual; the schedule was flexible; and the pay was good. They had put together a good team of representatives: smart, dedicated people who knew what they were doing. Quality blossomed as we overheard one another’s calls and strove to compete after each successful resolution. By this time, I had developed my own personal style of handling calls and I had increased my comfort level with reaching out to strangers. Few people ever recognize the complexity of the skills possessed by top-notch outbound agents.

By the late 1980s, call centers and telemarketing companies were starting to get a really bum rap; probably for good reason. In those days before caller I.D., you often caught people off-guard - sometimes extremely off-guard. I once spoke to a man who was in the process of a vicious breakup with his wife…during the call. Every so often, when the man would pause, I could hear the sound of cursing and breaking dishes in the background. To this day, I still wonder how he was able to express his opinions of the product I was calling him about while his wife was in the background loudly detailing his origins, his mother’s reputation and where she wished him to put the couple’s marriage.

At other times, we found ourselves playing “counselor” to miserable souls who had no compunction about sharing their personal problems with call center agents. At other times, we played victim to pranksters whose only goal in life was to mess up your survey by providing fake and intentionally ridiculous responses. As outbound telemarketing's negative reputation was growing, it was becoming more challenging to obtain meaningful results and the amount of abuse we encountered daily was growing, as well.

Post-college, I took on other jobs and thus ended my “career path” as an outbound call center agent. Determined to put my bachelor’s degree to good use, I eventually approached journalism as a profession. Looking back, I believe that I took my lumps with dignity and learned a great deal. It’s possible that there is no other profession in the world that teaches a person more about human nature than outbound telemarketing.

In any case, I feel I’ve come full circle as I’ve now been able to link my second chosen profession with my first. Customer Interaction Solutions helped launch the early telemarketing industry in the 1980s, and while both the magazine and the industry have changed a great deal in the last few decades, one lesson remains: If you have high-performing outbound call center agents in your contact center, reward them. Cherish them. Unless you’re an overworked air-traffic controller, an emergency medical technician or a kindergarten teacher, your outbound agents’ jobs are more stressful than yours will ever be.