Thomas (Tom) Cardella is a teleservices industry veteran. In 1995 he founded Access Direct, an Iowa-based outsourcing firm, growing the company into a quality provider, winning many awards including from TMC (News - Alert).

Cardella sold to PRC in 2000 and in 2003 become the global company’s chair and CEO. In 2005 he retired from PRC, and in 2007 formed Thomas L. Cardella Associates (TLC&A).

Today TLC&A is a fast-growing company, with four expanding contact centers in Iowa plus a set of home-based agents near its sites.

We approached Cardella to share his insights on the trends affecting teleservices and contact centers in general, and in the teleservices industry. Here are his views on:

 

 

“The economic conditions are having a very positive outcome on the teleservices industry. Outsourcing is a very efficient way to conduct contact center business: customer service, support, and sales, for business-to-consumer and business-to-business interactions. It enables our clients to better manage their costs, to give them flexibility to respond to changing needs without tying down scarce capital assets, while maintaining and improving customer service.”

 

 

“There are a lot of companies bringing their programs back onshore and keeping at home many of those that would have otherwise gone offshore. The key driver is a decline in the quality of the offshore worker pool available for contact centers--it isn’t what it used to be—coupled with rising prices. The best and the brightest employees are tapped out; many of them are leaving contact center sector to work in higher-level better-paid BPO and IT positions that have become available in these countries as these firms locate there.”

 

“Contact centers have to as a result drill deeper into lower level labor supplies. When I was at PRC we had 3,000 people between India and The Philippines and it became more difficult all the time to get and keep great people.”

 

 

“There are more home-based agents, driven by growing client demand. Home agents offer considerable flexibility, such as the ability to handle short sharp volumes spikes on quick notice, which saves money because you do not have to provide the space and workstations for them.”

 

“At the same time there are challenges with home agents. Clients are concerned about the quality, namely the ability of agents to get and convey their brand identity, along with background noise, and training. We launched our home agent program in 2007 and addressed those issues up front. We carefully screen candidate employees for suitable facilities and environments, such as pets both theirs and nearby. We also require our home staff to be within a reasonable driving distance of one of our centers and to come in periodically for training, to meet with colleagues and supervisors, and to develop and maintain acculturation with our clients and our firm.”

 

 

“There has been much hand-wringing about the effects of the national Do Not Call list, which went into effect in October, 2003. 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.”

 

“I support the Do Not Call list because it was and is good business. I said so at the time on Dateline NBC. Do Not Call did what it was designed to do, to stop people from receiving harassing phone calls, which is a great thing. It helped clean up the teleservices industry, forcing many firms to dump bad practices like untargeted indiscriminate calling and high abandonment rates leading to annoying dead air calls that were destroying our field. It also changed nature of teleservices business from predominantly business to consumer to an even split with business to business, and outbound to inbound. It prompted clients to target campaigns smarter and to drive marketing traffic to other and more effective channels, such as inbound direct response.”

 

 

“Too many companies have made and are making the mistake with outbound voice messaging and notification that they did with outbound telemarketing: overuse to the point of customer annoyance. Already I am seeing reports of plummeting response rates, which is what happened with telemarketing.”

 

“What is especially aggravating is when these calls end up on cell phones, which you have to pay for. I don’t give my cell number out yet I’ve had survey calls and maintenance followups on my device.”

 

“The issue is challenging because more people are transferring calls from their landlines to cellphones and porting their numbers. Increasing numbers of people are abandoning their landlines altogether. Companies and their teleservices partners may not know that they are ringing cellphones.”

 

“The Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on outbound voice messaging for telemarketing. Beginning Sept.1, 2009 marketers must have express written consent from customers before they can transmit such messages to them.”

 

“The best practice I see is to assume that every number is a wireless number, and to obtain prior consent before transmitting any message: voice, e-mail, or SMS.”

Inbound IVR and speech recognition

“Automated DTMF/TouchTone IVR still drives people crazy, and I’ve seen firms abandon them for live agent handling. Speech recognition is on the other hand much better than it used to be, enabling us to manage the simpler calls for our clients but the call trees and menus are still too complex and time-consuming to navigate for more complex calls.”

 

“My preference is for live agent handling for all inbound and outbound calls. If you are bothering enough to spend the money to market to me and to call me then respect me enough to have a person speak to me. A lot of the same sentiment is for offshore. If you want my dollars then respect me enough to understand me and that I can understand you.”

Teleservices future

“There has been a commoditization of service and price amongst many teleservices industry suppliers, which is a trap because clients will find ways to force you to lower your rates which cuts into your margins and profits. While the largest companies can and will survive with this strategy because they have the economies of scale, midsized and smaller firms cannot afford to follow suit.”

 

“Teleservices firms must focus instead on quality and value such as by creating and maintaining brand loyalty for clients via their customers through excellent, needs-identifying-and-meeting service. There is a strong future for those companies that take that approach.”

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