Outsourcing Law & Business Journal™ – July 2012
July 25, 2012 by Bierce & Kenerson, P.C.
OUTSOURCING LAW & BUSINESS JOURNAL™ : Strategies and rules for adding value and improving legal and regulation compliance through business process management techniques in strategic alliances, joint ventures, shared services and cost-effective, durable and flexible sourcing of services. www.outsourcing-law.com. Visit our blog at http://blog.outsourcing-law.com.
Insights by Bierce & Kenerson, P.C. Editor. www.biercekenerson.com.
Vol. 12, No. 6, July 2012
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1. Outsourced Call Center Violates Consumer Protection Laws: Bank Liable for $200 Million.
2. Humor.
3. Conferences.
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1. Outsourced Call Center Violates Consumer Protection Laws: Bank Liable for $200 Million. Do you have a “Compliance Management System” to prevent “unfair deceptive abusive acts and practices” (UDAAP) by your call centers? You might need one now, especially for credit cards, and other consumer financial products.
Businesses that use, manage or deliver call center services (and other “service providers” to financial institutions such as transaction processors) now have a new roadmap for operational excellence. If they neglect the roadmap, they risk legal enforcement action against unfair trade practices, illegal sales scripts, booking sales to unqualified buyers, deceptive bill collection services and abuses in marketing credit cards and other consumer financial products. The roadmap was set forth in a Stipulation and Consent Order against Capital One Bank (U.S.A.), N.A. (the “bank”) in July 2012. For details, click here.
2. Humor.
Script, n. (1) the wording of a planned conversation to guide call center agent’s conversation with a consumer; (2) a tool for unfair deceptive and abusive acts and practices; (3) the path to the consumer’s demand to speak to a call center manager, since the call center agent has no discretion or authority to deviate from the plan.
Compliance Management Program, n. (1) a program to guide the Compliance Officer and all others to avoid deviant, deceptive or illegal behavior; (2) a cottage industry for managing one’s “monkey business” through efficiency experts, process designers, software developers, dashboard readers, process monitors, lawyers, accountants, business advisors, internal and external auditors, whistleblowers, regulators and class-action plaintiffs.
3. Conferences.
September 10-12, 2012, IQPC presents its 13th Annual eDiscovery West Coast Summit, San Francisco, California. Across all industries corporations are experiencing exponential growth in the ESI volumes that must be collected, reviewed, and in some cases, produced in litigation. Requesting, preserving, collecting, processing, and reviewing social media content presents new challenges for organizations of all sizes in litigation and day-to-day records management. IQPC has paid particular attention to these dynamics in crafting this year’s program. You will benefit from an unparalleled mix of thought leaders and industry movers who will shape the future of E-Discovery for years to come. This is a must attend event to keep your organization up to speed on the developments and new horizons in this critical field. For more information on speakers and sessions, click here, download the brochure here or email zachary.weiner@iqpc.com to have it sent straight to your inbox.
Oct 25, 2012, Global Sourcing Council presents 3S Awards 2012, New York, New York. The Sustainable and Socially responsible Sourcing Awards, was conceived by the Global Sourcing Council, a non-profit organization, to honor and celebrate 3S actions taken by the sourcing industry. The GSC 3S Awards recognize exceptional achievements in the global sourcing marketplace by individuals and organizations who exhibit a combination of positive social and economic leadership. The 3S awards will bring to the forefront individuals, start-ups, and companies (e.g. suppliers, buyers and advisory organizations) that have worked to innovate, implement and improve communities/peoples and the environment through Sustainable and Socially Responsible Sourcing practices. Submissions will be accepted until September 1, 2012. Click here for more information.
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FEEDBACK: Since 2001, Outsourcing Law & Business Journal™ has been addressing legal issues in operational excellence in business services through effective sourcing practices and service integration for global and globalizing enterprises. Covered operations include business services in IT, HR, finance and accounting, procurement, logistics, manufacturing and customer relationship management. Send us your suggestions for article topics, or report a broken link at wbierce@biercekenerson.com. The information provided herein does not necessarily constitute the opinion of Bierce & Kenerson, P.C. or any author or its clients. This newsletter is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Reproductions must include our copyright notice. For reprint permission, please contact: wbierce@biercekenerson.com. Edited by Bierce & Kenerson, P.C. Copyright (c) 2012, Outsourcing Law Global, LLC. All rights reserved. Editor-in-Chief: William Bierce of Bierce & Kenerson, P.C., located at 420 Lexington Avenue, Suite 2920, New York, NY 10170, 212-840-0080.
Call Centers and Customer Relationship Management
October 16, 2009 by Bierce & Kenerson, P.C.
Thanks to Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) software and low-cost, high-speed international telecommunications, a call center can be located anywhere in the world. While the legal issues in offshoring of any outsourced service can be complicated, the business issues are generally the same.
Who Should Outsource Call Center or CRM Functions?
Call centers connect your enterprise, its goodwill and operations, to your prospects and customers and, if you wish, even influencers of consumer behavior. Any high-volume consumer industry can benefit by outsourcing call center functions. These might include, for example:
- health care
- automotive
- retailing
- services to the household, such as oil and gas deliveries, electrical utilities and telecom providers
- consumer electronics
- wireless communications
- financial services, including banking and brokerage
- insurance
- travel and hospitality
- media
Scope of Services:
Since a call center can deliver any type of services that are capable of being done by telephone, enterprise customers need to classify the possible scope of services. This classification will suggest the key parameters for defining and achieving the intended goals of the call center. The following list is only an indication of some basic classes of outsourced call center services.
Customer Service and Support.
This type of service can be as simple as advising your customer about the information he needs from your data base, such as account balance, unpaid amounts, deadlines and credit balances. Or customer service can involve a complex decision tree involving a script that you prepare to determine your customer’s needs, complete an application or request for change of information, and execute your customer’s orders.
Technical Support / Warranty:
In helping your customers solve problems relating to your products or services, you want to be able to resolve all problems in the first call. Achieving high first-call resolution rates with lower per-call handle times can make a significant cost difference. To some degree, you remain responsible for success because of the way in which you plan the interaction based on manuals, scripts and decision trees. Technical support (or “telephone help desk”) can provide invaluable in retaining customer loyalty and avoiding costly product returns or service cancellations.
Sales, Bookings (travel reservations) and Customer Retention:
Your telesales department needs to convert inquiries into sales, and to retain customers upon expiration of subscriptions or upon other termination events in your customer relationship. Telesales are useful both at the beginning and the end of your customer relationship life cycle. As a tool for proactive outreach, customer retention programs can help sustain your bottom line.
Marketing Surveys and Research:
Outbound calling can identify potential customers, identify an existing customer’s interest in possible new products or services from your company and conduct inquiries about consumer preferences as to pricing and features of existing and new products. This can help your market positioning, promotional campaigns, product design, pricing and sales approaches. Outbound calling can also be used to clean up duplicates or stale information in your “old” data bases, validate existing information, for “data base scrubbing.”
We would welcome any suggestions to make our list more complete, and to identify any special needs that are suggested in the following list.
Ownership and Control Issues: Outsourcing vs. Captive (or “Shared Service Center”).
Call centers come in various shapes and types. You can outsource, or you can create your own foreign call center. Outsourcing is probably cheaper and faster to get started, but establishment of captive call centers can be achieved using external service providers to create the infrastructure, train the employees according to your requirements and help you manage the entire operation.
Criteria for Selecting a Call Center / CRM Service Provider.
Enterprise customers shopping for a call center or CRM service provider should identify key performance indicators (“KPI”) relevant to their industry. On a generic basis, enterprise customers should consider whether prospective CRM service providers offer any unique strategic insights that streamline operations, the strength of any IT-enabled data-driven relationships to your customers and, over time, the degree of continuous process improvement.
Countries.
Effective call centers are in Philippines, India, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico and Canada, are the typical suspects. Many foreign call centers will be integrated with domestic call centers for backup, problem escalation and culture-sensitive situations.
Legal Issues Affecting Enterprise Customers for Call Center Operations
Outbound Calls (from the Call Center to the Customer):
Outbound calls can be intrusive. For public policy reasons, such intrusions should be limited and targeted, as well as complying with applicable restrictions on calling. Legal issues in outbound calls include:
- privacy of data and data protection
- fair trade practices, including invasion of privacy, consumer protection and other local laws and regulations restricting access to the target customer or prospect
- Force majeure, including terrorism, act of war and natural catastrophes
- Currency exchange fluctuation
- Termination conditions
Inbound Calls (from the Customer to the Call Center):
All Calls:
Any contact with a customer could build or harm your goodwill. Call centers needs to comply with the rules of etiquette as well as laws relating to abusive relationships.
International Outsourcing:
Offshore outsourcing contains a suite of unique risks. International risk management needs to be planned into the outsourcing contract and the methods of service delivery.
If you need any coaching, planning or legal advice, please let us know.