"Saw another article in the New York Times alluding to inconsistency in educational achievement and standards in high school (see 'Governors Seek Rise in High School Standard,' Feb. 23, 2005; 'A High School Test in Basic Job Fitness Looms in New York,' Jan. 29, 2005).

"It raises the issue of how well job applicants for call centers have mastered basic 3R skills (Reading, wRiting, and 'Rithmetic) and the common practice of using high school diploma as a criteria for agent hiring. Sadly, I would caution hiring managers about relying on education attainment and consider using a basic skills pre-employment test as a direct measure of these important skills. It can be used as a fair yardstick from which to compare and qualify applicants coming from different backgrounds. Good luck everyone." Posted by Keith Dawson at February 18, 2005 NYC: Leading Edge of Civic Centers

Not many people think of New York as a place that's in the vanguard of the call center industry (and in truth, it's not). But we do have one of the more interesting experiments in civic call centering going on: the city's three year old "311" line, for constituent services.

The 311 Citizen Service Center took in a whopping 3,774,900 calls from July through October, 2004, compared with just over 2 million in the same period the year before.

And as you would expect, higher call volume results in higher waiting times: average waiting time for callers needing help with parking tickets doubled, to 11 minutes, since 2002. Overall, the number of calls that the city classified as "complaints" (as opposed to information-seeking calls) increased by 15% over the previous year.

(These figures are from a report put out by the Office of the Mayor.)

Posted by Keith Dawson at February 14, 2005 Reader Query: Michigan Bound?

A reader writes:

Iron Mountain, MI is located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, two hours north of Green Bay, Wisconsin with approximately 15,000 to 20,000 people who live in the surrounding area. We believe we have a pool of employees to draw from for a Call Center. We also have a rather large building in Iron Mountain with the ability to house up to 50 agents in cubicles. In 2008, we have another building currently being leased that can house another 250 agents if need be. We have the cubes, equipment and space to host other companies who are looking for rural area's to start or house a call center. What is your suggestion to get the word out on this? I can send pictures or whatever is needed. I'm also contacting the State of Michigan in regards to this possibility. In your opinion are there companies looking to relocate a manager somewhere to start and run a call center if the concept and price is right?

What say you, call center industry? Any takers? and I'll forward to the gentleman in Michigan. Posted by Keith Dawson at February 08, 2005 What Should Egypt Do?

One meeting I had last week at the CC Dallas show was with folks from Raya - a large company from Egypt that has involvement in call centers and other BPO operations. The pitch, more or less, was that Egypt wants to attract a portion of the American offshore outsourcing market. They argue that the government is heavily behind it through subsidies and incentives. They also argue (somewhat implausibly, to my mind) that the English language ability of the population is superior to India.

No harm in trying to take a piece of the market, but it left me wondering: why the US? Wouldn't it make more sense for a country like Egypt that has no visible footprint in the call center market to try to work with the more geographically - and culturally - friendly Europeans? Aren't there more ties there? I asked them this directly, and the answer was simple: the government prefers to go after the US market. There seems to be little room to maneuver out of the box that put their efforts into, because there are a lot of places that are competing for the US offshore dollar, and "we're better than India" doesn't make a lot of sense for such a volatile part of the world.

Instead, I would make the argument that Egypt has an educated, multilingual population that can certainly practice call center work, has close ties to many countries in Europe and could upgrade their tech infrastructure pretty quickly if motivated. They argue that they already have several important call center clients. Fair enough, and one of them is Microsoft.

What do others think? I don't want to bash Egypt, because in a globalized call center industry, every nation and location should be part of the equation for site selection. I just don't think they have articulated the rationale as well as they could, and I think they are going to be very disappointed in the results if they go down this path. I think they need to build a reputation as a niche provider of quality services to a broad basket of European companies before they can assert a strong pull on the American market. This is the path that other nearby nations (Turkey, Algeria, even South Africa) are taking.

Can we help them articulate a message that makes sense? Am I imagining the difficulty that lies ahead of them? I feel like I've seen this mistake made before, only then it was by Belgium and El Salvador.

Email to comment: kdawson@cmp.com

UPDATE: March 1

A representative of Raya contacted me with a rebuttal to my questions. Here, in its entirety, is what Nevine Soliman had to say:

In response to the article titled "What Should Egypt Do?" published on February 8th, in Call Center Magazine Web log by Keith Dawson, speculating why Raya is targeting the US offshore outsourcing market, we would like to provide the audience with the actual rather than the speculated reasons.

Choosing to target the US market is a pure business investment decision that was based on the infinite potential for Raya to succeed in the US. It is far more cost efficient to target a large population that speaks one language (as in the US) than to target a variety of nations with different languages (as in Europe). Another factor is the presence of approx. 3.5 million Arab Americans with a buying power of $104 billion, which can be considered as an excellent means of market penetration for Raya. Raya possesses a competitive linguistic advantage over other service providers in the US, adding to the fact that the average wages in Egypt is $367 (Source: http://home.aigonline.com/country_view/0,4605,1326,00.html) per month in comparison to $2,838 (Source: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/AWI.html) in the US. Given such staggering differences, we can realize why Raya chose to target the US market in regards to outsourcing call center services.

Capitalizing on Egypt's geographical location, at the intersection of Asia, Africa, Europe and the US, Telecom Egypt participates in a number of international networks, making the country an international telecommunications hub. The location has provided Raya with a 24x7 flexibility to handle traffic during non-standard US working hours.

Moreover, the political and trade ties between the US and Egypt cannot be undermined in such a decision. As an example, you can read about the latest QIZ agreement between the two countries or Bill Gates last visit to Egypt at the following site: www.amcham.org.eg

Raya chose to enter the US market as it is easier to penetrate new markets where we have a better understanding of their local culture. Due to the ever-expanding effects of globalization, many aspects of American culture have undoubtedly become an integral part of Egyptian daily life. Although national language in Egypt is Arabic, Egypt is known for its educational system that graduates student who can speak fluent foreign languages (mainly English) with a very clear/neutral accent. With the human element and communication being the strategic component in the success of the call center industry, it is quite reasonable to assume that there will be a smooth communication with US clients.

Egypt has a vast amount of potential in the field of information technology. With 1133 IT companies, 2.5 million skilled technicians, and 200,000 university/ masters graduates every year, Egypt has witnessed an enormous development in this field, with Raya emerging as one of the largest IT companies in the Region. Raya's ISO and ICSA certified call center clients include some of Fortune's 500 companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Vodafone, Unilever, P&G and CocaCola. Raya contact center provides inbound/outbound services and database services for Intel Middle East, North Africa and Levant. It provides tele-marketing and tele-sales, services for Microsoft Egypt (Source: http://www.rayacontactcenter.com). We are committed to expanding our success stories to other countries in the world and the US is an important step in our journey.

Finally, we would like to invite Mr. Keith Dawson to visit Egypt to further explore Raya's capabilities and reasons behind expanding to the US market. Perhaps such a visit would help enlighten him to formulate more informed opinions in the future. Posted by Keith Dawson at February 07, 2005 Housekeeping

I envisioned this blog as a way to have an ongoing two-way conversation with the industry. However, the malicious gremlins that produce comment-spam have conspired against me. It's impossible to keep an open forum open in the era of viagra - so I closed the comment areas in this blog. Here's what I will do: anyone who wants to make a comment should email it to me at kdawson@cmp.com, and I'll treat it like a letter to the editor, and post it alongside my blog entries. Let me know in your email if it's ok to use your name and affiliation. Posted by Keith Dawson at Quick Thoughts on Returning From a Call Center Show

And speaking of our Dallas experience, let me note a couple of the buzz-worthy issues that emanated from conversations with people on the floor and in the conference rooms.

Agent development is gaining some traction. The idea that all call center problems stem from flawed management of agent issues was popping up everywhere, and it's no surprise that the most interesting technologies talked about all faced the agent in some way. Nothing captured the spirit of the argument more than Art Schoeller's trenchant comment that "as an agent, the last thing I want is to be 'optimized' - but I do want to be 'developed'." Hear hear. Let's stop using the dehumanizing (and therefore unproductive) term workforce optimization. Doesn't it just reek of condescension, as though the workers were just another cog in the great big wheel of commerce?

Hosting is bigger than I'd imagined. More people are playing with it as a way to deliver services and call center tools than I'd expected. And more people in the marketplace were willing to consider it than I thought.

There's more of an IT presence in the call center industry than a lot of people realize. More on this as I gather my information, but I think this is a developing, critical issue.

Posted by Keith Dawson at Call Center TV

My colleagues and I just got back from Dallas, where we were attending the Call Center Demo show last week. In case anyone needs proof that these things involve real work, and not just goofing off and hanging out, we have video¡­

The first piece to take a look at is Joe Fleischer's interview with Paul Bertin, Genticity's CEO. More will follow in the next couple of days as we edit and select the really good bits from our voluminous video collection.