Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Convergys Opens Bilingual Call Center, Demonstrates Commitment to Quality of Management

By Carrie Schmelkin
TMCnet Web Editor

One company that certainly believes in quality of management is Convergys (News - Alert) Corporation, as the business process outsourcing company recently unveiled its headquarters and contact center in Bogota –  a call center in which all call center employees are 100 percent bilingual.

Convergys has call and contact centers all across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia and began its operations in Bogota in January of 2011. At that time, it employed 400 people. By the time the Bogota center is fully staffed, Convergys will employ more than 2,000 Colombian men and women, who will provide a broad range of services including customer service, technical support, help desk, back office and IVR support to a diverse portfolio of Convergys clients and their customers, according to company officials.

The Convergys workforce in Bogota is 100 percent bilingual with employees speaking B1 or B2 (Intermediate/Advanced) English in accordance with the Common European Framework for languages.

In collaboration with Colombia's national training service SENA, Convergys set up the Compete with the World intensive English program. Invest in Bogota, a public-private investment promotion agency for Bogota, helped the company in its feasibility study and phases of investment, according to company officials.

Colombia is developing a reputation as a hot spot for multinational Business Process Outsourcing companies such as French Teleperformance (News - Alert) and Spanish Digitex setting up in Medellin and Manizales respectively.

In other industry news, last week Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) (ALU) received a binding offer of $1.5 billion for Genesys, an ALU company focused on quality of management, from a company owned by the Permira funds. According to the press release on the offer, “The closing of the deal, expected by the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012, is subject to review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), as well as to all necessary prior approvals and consultations in various countries. The purchase price of US$1.5 billion would be paid in cash on a debt/cash-free basis.”