|
Selection: Picking the Right Partner
After the holiday debacle, 1-800-Flowers decided to parcel out its call center operations to four vendors. The company decided to stay with a higher-cost, U.S.-based workforce because it worried that an offshore one might struggle to meet head count targets at the expense of language quality.
So when the company started to look at vendors, it pursued only U.S.-based operations with a minimum of 200 seats. Technological compatibility was also an issue. "We have a thin-client environment and use Genesys for call routing," says Orsi. "We wanted to avoid proprietary CRM [customer relationship management] systems, as we've had some problems with compatibility."
The company now uses four vendors from different parts of the U.S.: Alpine Access Inc., L&S TeleServices, American Customer Care Inc. and Choice Hotels International Inc., the last of which shares a call center with 1-800-Flowers.
Sealock says that distributing call center services to multiple partners gives a CIO leverage to motivate vendor behavior. "You essentially have the ability to create a competitive marketplace for your services," he explains, "by shifting volume to or away from individual vendors within your vendor portfolio based on performance."
Another reason to spread contact center functions around is to play to the strengths of different providers. "You may want to send technical traffic to a provider that is the best at complex, technical support," Sealock says, "and general information calls to another, cheaper provider that is capable of handling the less complex transaction."
When an organization has enough volume to allow each provider to hit cost structure efficiencies, using multiple vendors works best. "These economies of scale let you get far enough along the tiered-volume-discount curve that you aren't giving up too much on unit cost for the sake of vendor diversity," Sealock says.
|
