Hosted Solution Powers Call Centers in Philippines and Los Angeles
A financial services company offered American consumers a new way to repay credit card debt and avoid bankruptcy and foreclosure. As the company was getting started, they faced several challenges. Among them was how to reach their target market with this innovative, patent-pending program and how to cost-effectively deploy a customer service infrastructure. Referred by a business contact that ran a call center in Panama, one of the company’s principals reached out to DOW Networks for answers to these questions.
The new financial services company envisioned a multi-site call center operation. Agents in the Philippines would take inbound calls from potential clients then screen and qualify them for the program. In Los Angeles, calls from consumers enrolled in the program would be routed to debt counselors who would analyze their financial statements and determine their ability to repay debt. Both locations would also need outbound calling capabilities to make follow-up calls to applicants or to contact creditors to negotiate debt settlements. The company wanted the ability to start with only a small number of agents in each location then quickly ramp up with additional agents based on consumer response to the program.
After analyzing the company's technical and business requirements, DOW Networks designed and implemented a hybrid / hosted solution that offered inbound and outbound call center features and functionality. An Asterisk PBX was installed at the Philippines site to help mitigate the costs and complexity of international bandwidth. Agents and supervisors there were linked via IAX (inter Asterisk exchange) trunk to the call center application hosted at DOW Networks in Atlanta. At the Los Angeles site, the PBX and call center functionality was delivered from a hosted services platform in Atlanta.
Prospects, clients and creditors contact the financial services company via U.S. toll-free (0800) numbers from DOW Networks and their calls are routed to agents in the Philippines or Los Angeles based on voice menu selections (i.e. sales, support or credit help). The phone system, programmed by DOW Networks, enables customers to easily reach their assigned agent. Plus, if an agent is on another call, a customer can choose to wait for their designated agent or leave the agent a message.
Today, the company runs two shifts with 65 agents each and it continues to grow, thanks in part to favorable publicity it recently received on a national television network news program. It has also begun marketing its program through U.S. law firms that specialize in bankruptcy. To support these affinity partners, DOW Networks has reconfigured the solution to allow agents to recognize inbound calls from consumers referred by the law firms. Customers experience the brand of the individual law firms, versus that of the financial services company.
The hybrid, hosted solution allowed the financial services company to avoid most of the upfront capital investment that would have been required for a premises-based solution. At the same time, per-month pricing provides them with a predictable monthly operating expense and a way to quickly and cost-effectively add agents to support increased business volumes.
