call centre needs some help or ideas

[Irina_Komar]

I work in a call centre in Ukraine, Eastern Europe. We do business with an American telephone company who is outsourcing their inbound and outbound calls to us. And I am looking now into any possible opportunities to get some English company to be interested in cooperating with us. We are a bunch of young, educated and enthusiastic people, who have already some experience in telemarketing and customer service line support, have got our own fully equipped 30seats premises. If anyone has got any ideas or comments on what strategy I could use to get someone interested, plz let know ...
irina :)
for a better idea of us, plz visit www.sofy.biz (sorry for the mistakes in there...we are still working on it)

[SmallBizSoftware]

jeez, another one.

I despise outsourcing offshore, I think that it removes jobs from the UK, means data is taken outside of the 'safe' euro zone from a data protection point of view and every call I have made to an offshore call center has been a nightmare.

My anti-offshoring posts will prob get me banned from this forum but I don't care, I despise it and I am allowed an opinion!

[10 Yetis]

I think your post is a tad harsh Smallbiz (and I think it is the first time I have found myself saying that on this forum :( )

Regardless of our own opinions they are just looking for help, like the rest of us on here.

Irina,

If you are looking to appeal to a Uk audience, probably best to get the basics right before you market yourselves.

Start off by maybe tidying up your website a bit so it looks more professional and the text reads correctly for a UK audience.

The UK has an in-built fear of overseas contact centres (thanks to UK media hype) and you could use your home page to counter these by trying to cover the main fears that Uk companies have about off-shoring. These being, sending data overseas makes it more liable to corruption (yeah, cos we have no corrupt people in the UK), the language barrier (there are some very odd regional UK accents!), the set up costs etc etc.

Maybe get some case studies and testimonials on the site to from UK companies (you may have to do some cut price or free work to get these).

Once this is all set in place then maybe start looking for a more pro-active marketing campaign using other methods...

If there is anything else you would like help with, feel free to get in touch.

Hope this helps as a starting point and best of luck.

[Jayne]

It's Tony Blairs fault that people are looking for cheaper business outside the UK. Why pay £5.05 per hour, when you can get it done for £2.50 an hour etc..

We need to bring business into our country as well as out, wages and rates etc etc are going way over board now here.

So good luck to the over-seas companies cashing in on it, why not :D I'm sure many businesses here would, given the chance :lol:

Jayne

[JoyDivision]

While in the mean time the UK will come to a halt becuase all the industry is out sourced. One of my prime objectives will be to not outsource unless there is really no other alternative.

[Jayne]

It's the world wide web, that means the world is your compertition I thought...

Maybe we should stop buying designer clothes and shoes etc, most of them are from abroad, get rid of BMW's and re-open Rover UK. :D

Plus these countries are trying to help themselves by working, which is good..they are probably sick of charity we send them.

Jayne

[alex_bpo]

Hi Jayne & Andy,

Can you please direct me how to walk in the right path to get a client.... I have put up a post in Introduction........

Best Regards,
Ganesan Ramaiah

[ukanalyst]

I agree with Jayne.

We need to stop complaining about the progress the asian and eastern european markets ahve made and re-focus on getting the business back to the UK.

Companies want high quality services and it's something that we in the UK take for granted too often.

One of my best friends is a Sales Director, having just left our company and now works predminantly in the UK selling Indian call centres to UK companies - why - because he can.


As more call centres open in the overseas markets, i think the standards will start to slip, of which i have seen reports, and the business will start to filter back - not as quickly as it left, but we in the UK need to start winning the business back.

Regards

Chris

[Astaroth]

To be honest I think the UK market would be very difficult for you to break into given the current climate here and the size of your operations.

There is a large backlash at the moment here about both outbound telemarketing and in particular against offshore call centres with a number of large companies having recently anounced that they are pulling out of india etc because of customer objections.

The second concern I would have is the fact you have a 30 seat call centre which is already handling one client. I worked in the call centre industry for about 8-9 years and can only think of one call centre that was as small as yours is and then it was only dealing with a single client. Others can correct me if I am wrong, but certainly my impression of the term "call centre" is certainly something a lot bigger than that and also something that is more limited to larger organisations.

Whilst certainly some smaller companies do have teams of telephone staff I dont think these types of organisations naturally think about cost cutting my outsourcing over seas and it will take a lot of effort on your part to make them aware of the opportunity and comfortable that there wouldnt be a customer boycott of their company because of it. I would also imagine that many think the process of setting it up would be very complex.

A possibility is to rebadge the service more as a virtual call answering service etc to try and distance yourself from the natural associations with the words call centre

[telemax]

I work in a call centre in Ukraine, Eastern Europe. We do business with an American telephone company who is outsourcing their inbound and outbound calls to us. And I am looking now into any possible opportunities to get some English company to be interested in cooperating with us. We are a bunch of young, educated and enthusiastic people, who have already some experience in telemarketing and customer service line support, have got our own fully equipped 30seats premises. If anyone has got any ideas or comments on what strategy I could use to get someone interested, plz let know ...
irina :)
for a better idea of us, plz visit www.sofy.biz (sorry for the mistakes in there...we are still working on it)

Hi

Good luck to you, ignore the negativity on here. People in the UK should be ashamed of themselves. Ukraine has been in poverty for decades, someone is now trying to lift themselves out of it and all people on here can do is complain about how they are stealing UK jobs.(that no one wants to do anyway)

Jonathan

[successprabu]

Tidy Mart Sourcing & Outsourcing Company situated at India, creates Profitable & Sustainable Call center, BPO, IT, ITeS solutions for Businesses that need to Source & Outsource Customer service, Telemarketing and Lead generation, Technical support, these includes Inbound & Outbound, Data Services, Software Development both offshore and near-shore.

Tidy Looking for reliable associates in the US, UK, Europe, Australia, Singapore market etc... We always believe in long term relationship, Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes called Experience which leads us to success... The world will provide us with stones everyday; what we build out of it is our outlook - A bridge or a Wall, Lets together will build a Bridge where we can go travel together to achieve our goals.

Thanks and Regards
TidyMart

[Irina_Komar]

I think your post is a tad harsh Smallbiz (and I think it is the first time I have found myself saying that on this forum :( )

Regardless of our own opinions they are just looking for help, like the rest of us on here.

Irina,

If you are looking to appeal to a Uk audience, probably best to get the basics right before you market yourselves.

Start off by maybe tidying up your website a bit so it looks more professional and the text reads correctly for a UK audience.

The UK has an in-built fear of overseas contact centres (thanks to UK media hype) and you could use your home page to counter these by trying to cover the main fears that Uk companies have about off-shoring. These being, sending data overseas makes it more liable to corruption (yeah, cos we have no corrupt people in the UK), the language barrier (there are some very odd regional UK accents!), the set up costs etc etc.

Maybe get some case studies and testimonials on the site to from UK companies (you may have to do some cut price or free work to get these).

Once this is all set in place then maybe start looking for a more pro-active marketing campaign using other methods...

If there is anything else you would like help with, feel free to get in touch.

Hope this helps as a starting point and best of luck.

thank you soo much for the kind words and advice. dont know where to start explaining why it took me 4 years to reply....... sometimes life throws you in a totally opposite direction to only bring you back after some time.....

[sm1]

How are things then, 4 years on?

[Irina_Komar]

Hi :)
well, im still in outsourcing business. It is now (apart from call centre) a software development outsourcing. hope to see what is the oportunities are in UK.
How is it going for you Stefan?

[sm1]

That's good to hear - good thanks :)

[midgetman]

Well all i can say is that in 4 years the overseas call centres have come a long way:)

I only use indian call centres for my work, and have been both highly dis-pleased and also highly delighted at the results, it comes down to finding the right ones and building trust etc.

I have just come back form a week in kolkata visiting centres and can hand on heart say that they work damn hard to please, no fag breaks every 15 mins, no sitting around chatting about last nights boozing etc, just solid head down work. I only wish we in th UK had that work ethic (and i have had staff here so know).

[gillb]

We are interested in talking to you about a campaign we are to trying to run. Please ring me on 0845 373 3953.

Gill

[midgetman]

We are interested in talking to you about a campaign we are to trying to run. Please ring me on 0845 373 3953.

Gill

who? me?:):)

send me a pm with what you do

[Irina_Komar]

Well all i can say is that in 4 years the overseas call centres have come a long way:)

I only use indian call centres for my work, and have been both highly dis-pleased and also highly delighted at the results, it comes down to finding the right ones and building trust etc.

I have just come back form a week in kolkata visiting centres and can hand on heart say that they work damn hard to please, no fag breaks every 15 mins, no sitting around chatting about last nights boozing etc, just solid head down work. I only wish we in th UK had that work ethic (and i have had staff here so know).

hi there,

so why have you used ONLY indian call centres for you work? how about checking out what much closer destinations have to offer....mmmm...like Ukraine :)?
also i deffinetelly agree on the finding trust and finding the right people, but would you care to share what made you "highly displeased"?
i can bet on the fact that ukrainian people can work as hard..... one is talking to you ;)

[cartergarth]

Hello there. We are a Business Process Outsourcing Company offers high quality and cost effective call center services and all aspects of Accounting, IT and BPO services. We covers a wide range of solutions for different concerns. Through our expertise and right execution, we are able to exceed our Clients Expectations through Sales Performance and Customer Satisfaction. We're currently looking for a UK Campaign that is willing to cooperate on us. visit us at takingyouforward[dot]com