As reported last week on TMCnet, sweeping changes to the U.S. international tax code being proposed by President Obama could result in many U.S. firms bringing their call center operations back home.

The proposed changes, if approved by Congress, will make it so many companies can no longer afford to offshore their operations. President Obama wants to close tax loopholes that permit -- and actually incentivize -- U.S. firms to send jobs overseas.

While Datamonitor analyst Peter Ryan warns that this could have negative implications for both outsourcers and the companies which rely on them to hold down operating costs, it could also spell good news for contact center technology companies doing business here in the U.S., as it will open up new opportunities for them to sell their solutions to companies establishing new call centers here.

One contact center technology provider, Orlando-based Datanautix, Inc., is already positioning itself to assist companies in making this transition.

“President Obama’s call to end the tax advantages that make overseas operations so much more profitable will likely convince many U.S. companies to bring their contact center operations back home,” said Sanjay Patel, chief executive officer of Datanautix, Inc., which provides call recording/speech analytics/quality assurance solutions. “And that means many more jobs for Americans.”

 

He pointed out that Delta Airlines recently announced its decision to do just that.

“Typically companies tend to consider offshore alternatives such as India and the Philippines when the cost differential is at least 30 percent,” Patel said in a release. “When you couple wage inflation in those geographies with a significant reduction in the tax-sheltered status of offshore operations, the economics change in favor of locating more contact centers domestically.”

But, as Patel points out, this will require U.S. companies to put an even stronger emphasis on reducing call center operational costs -- while at the same time improving customer service. He says his company’s call center quality assurance solutions will help U.S. firms ensure that service quality is the best it can be, in light of a reduced workforce, and this in turn will help drive brand loyalty and customer retention.

“When a customer goes to your competitor because of a poor service experience with you, you are now at the mercy of your competitor giving that customer a bad service experience so they might switch back to you,” Patel said. “That is a poor position to be in – it is strategically smarter to ensure your customers do not have a poor experience. By helping companies provide better service in a manner that is cost effective for them, we are in an exciting market position.”

A recent study by Accenture (News - Alert) shows that customer service, not price, remains the top cause of customer churn.  The study found that 68 percent of customers that switched service providers did so because of a bad customer service experience.

Datanautix -- which just recently launched its DIAGNOSTIX solution to help companies better manage the customer experience -- claims its quality assurance solutions can drive customer satisfaction up by 10 to 20 percent. What’s more its proprietary software solutions can reduce contact center operational costs by as much as 20 to 30 percent by increasing the productivity of contact center workers.
 
“We can thoroughly analyze contact center operations to eliminate non-productive efforts and streamline the entire process,” Patel said. “Contact center managers can instantly determine which tasks are most successful and focus their efforts on tasks and assignments that require their expertise.”

Datanautix is a client company of the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program -- a collaboration in economic development between the University of Central Florida, Orange County, the City of Orlando, Seminole County, the City of Winter Springs, and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council. Since its inception in 1999 the program has helped more than 100 emerging companies (including nearly 70 current clients) create over $500 million in annual revenue and more than 900 new jobs with an average salary of $59,000.

Quality assurance, also known as quality monitoring, solutions have become central to contact center performance. These tools record agent-customer interactions and, using speech analytics technology, can automatically detect when an interaction has gone awry, in near real-time, thus allowing contact center mangers or other automated systems to intervene on the call and steer the interaction toward successful fruition. The speech analytics capability can also be used to “mine” volumes of recorded interactions to uncover trends in customer behavior and agent performance, thus enabling companies to make key business decisions and/or changes in strategy and react more quickly to changes in the marketplace. These systems can also record the agent’s computer screen to ensure the agent is properly using software and systems to deliver the best customer service possible.

Recently TMCnet’s Brendan Read interviewed two longtime industry experts, Lori Bocklund, founder and president, Strategic Contact, and Keith Dawson (News - Alert), senior analyst, Frost and Sullivan, to get their advice on how best to source, buy and enable QM products.