Call Center For Dummies

E-Trade Financial Corp. is closing its customer-service and operations center on South Stream Boulevard in south Charlotte, effective July 18.

According to a filing with the N.C. Department of Commerce, the closing will end 248 jobs.

The closure is a result of the company's decision to reduce expenses.

Affected employees have been offered severance packages, career-transition services and extended medical coverage.

A company spokeswoman was unavailable for comment.

New York-based E-Trade Financial (NASDAQ:ETFC) markets financial services to retail and institutional customers worldwide. Its online brokerage handles trades for equities, currencies, futures, options and mutual funds.

Customers calling NSW electricity retailers will be urged to contact their state MP to implore them to vote against the power sell-off.

Call centre workers fear privatisation of the state's power sector will send their jobs offshore and hurt customer service.

The United Services Union (USU) says about 600 of its members working in call centres at the three retail companies - Integral Energy, Country Energy and Energy Australia - will begin making the request from 1pm (AEST) Thursday.

They hope it will force the NSW government to rethink the sell-off of electricity retailers as part of its plans, which also include leasing out state-owned generators.

"In a few months this call may be answered by someone in India because the NSW Premier Morris Iemma wants to sell off your electricity," the call centre workers script reads.

"Call centres like ours will probably be sent offshore.

"The United Services Union wants to make sure your calls are answered in Australia. Please tell your MP to stop the sell off and keep power in our hands."

Many of NSW's 1,400 retail electricity call centre workers are based in regional centres such as Port Macquarie, Newcastle, Queanbeyan and Leeton, the unions says.

USU secretary Ben Kruse said the workers were usually reluctant to take industrial action but felt the government had ignored pleas not to privatise state power.

"Our members are now going to go direct to the public and make a final plea with them, and hope they in turn will place pressure on the premier," Mr Kruse said.

"These call centres can receive tens of thousands of calls a day, so it will hopefully be an extremely effective response."

Mr Kruse said he thought the action would resonate with people often angered about the service from companies with offshore call centres.

"Our members pride themselves on a very high level service. They have knowledge of their local communities and knowledge of the service they are actually providing," he said.

Mr Kruse said he did not believe the short message from workers would cause any irritation or inconvenience to customers.

A subsidiary of the world's biggest insurance firm has been fined £640,000 by the City's watchdog for failing to carry out proper checks on its call centres.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said UNAT Direct - owned by US giant AIG - had allowed nine centres to start selling general insurance without the necessary due diligence on their suitability.

In one case, UNAT had not completed proper checks on a call centre more than 250 days after it had begun selling, while another sold 4,000 policies for six months without FSA authorisation, the regulator said.

Croydon-based UNAT sold more than 150,000 insurance products - mainly personal accident policies - through the nine UK-based centres before calling a halt in March last year.

Margaret Cole, the FSA's enforcement director, said: "Selling general insurance products to consumers through call centres involves greater risk. UNAT was aware of the higher risk but failed to carry out proper checks on the call centres it used.

"UNAT's failure to have effective control over its due diligence process exposed customers who bought policies from the call centres to an unacceptable level of risk that they would not be treated fairly."

The company would have been liable for an £800,000 penalty, but its co-operation with the FSA earned it a 20% reduction.

UNAT has been working with the regulator since the discovery of the issues to ensure that none of its customers had lost out.

A spokesman for the firm said: "We take our responsibilities in relation to our customers extremely seriously. When we first identified these issues we informed the FSA and immediately undertook our own extensive investigation.

"We can confirm that we have since implemented improvements to ensure our controls in this area are working effectively."

Vonage is planning some aggressive customer outreach, according to a press release from Five9. The VoIP provider has begun using Five9’s Virtual Call Center in several divisions to manage its marketing campaigns.

“We needed a quick, easy-to-use, easy-to-manage call center system to support operations in multiple divisions. We turned to Five9 for software features, implementation services, and training to get our departments operational in four days,” said Vonage Customer Support Director, Lev Rejanovinshi. “Using the Five9 system enabled us to execute several campaigns that produced winbacks and generated revenue. And we measured customer satisfaction using the Five9 system for polling.”

Five9’s virtual call centers have solutions for outbound, inbound and blended operations. The platform uses VoIP, enhanced functionality and a dedicated implementation team to get operations up and running quickly. “We collaborate with our customers during initial implementation and throughout their use of our service, including the ongoing introduction of new features and capabilities. We are proud that Vonage is getting great results and using the Five9 solution in innovative ways,” said Marissa Ramsey, Vice President of Customer Success at Five9.

Customer service levels at call centres in the UK have fallen significantly in the past decade, with people having to wait two-thirds longer on the telephone, a study has found.

The average time taken to answer the phone has increasing from 23 to 38 seconds over the last ten years, according research by Dimension Data found.

A study of 300 call centres around the world, including 59 in the UK, found that customer service levels had fallen “significantly”.

The best centres were in the travel industry and the worst were in technology and the media, study found.

Customers abandoned their call quicker than a decade ago if it remained unanswered, including those told they were in a queue.

The image of the industry has not been helped by the mounting pressure on businesses to deliver customer service to increasingly expectant customers, said the report.

Alex George, of Dimension Data, said: “The increase in demand, coupled with the need to contain costs, has put significant pressure on contact centres, and is not always matched by the investment or the resources required to meet expectations.”

More than a third of all calls are now dealt with by automated information or messages, without customers speaking to an employee of the centre - a huge increase on a decade ago.

A study by Citizens Advice earlier this year, found that energy and phone companies were still providing customers with shockingly poor customer service.

Gas supplier call centres are the worst among energy companies, with 81 per cent of people dissatisfied with how their last call was handled.

Eighty-nine per cent of those questioned were dissatisfied with the way their last call to a landline provider had been handled. Of these calls, 87 per cent were to BT.

“Utilities such as gas and telecoms are essential services that people need to survive in the modern world, “ said David Harker at charity Citizens Advice. “It is vital that people are able to contact their providers effectively when they have queries or problems.

Some British companies have started to bring their call centres back to the UK in an attempt to win over dissatisfied customers.

HSBC has repatriated all its centres for its business customers to Leicester from India.

May 23, 2008 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) -- -- Apptis, an IT services, communications, and solutions provider to the federal marketplace, announced that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has selected Apptis to provide ongoing services for its central call center operations.

"We are honored to have been selected to the FDIC to play a key role in helping it provide timely and accurate information to consumers," said Bert Notini, Chairman and CEO of Apptis. "We look forward to bringing our award-winning skills in call center management and solutions to the FDIC and being a partner to meeting its customers' needs."

The FDIC call center handles approximately 20,000 calls each month. It plays a role in providing information or referring calls from around the nation on a wide range of financial and banking related topics.

Under the terms of the agreement, Apptis will implement and support the FDIC Central Call Center mission and deploy personnel and services for nation-wide support. As part of doing so, Apptis is required to provide a business continuity and disaster recovery solution to ensure uninterrupted service levels within FDIC's infrastructure.

Starcomms, Nigeria's fourth-largest telecommunications operator, has outlined plans for a new offering for pay-phone call centers in the country.

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