Contact center broker suggestions?

[Matthew Van de Voorde]

We are a WA State based nonprofit organization with a call center looking for a project. We have some work in the pipeline, for 1st and 2nd quarter next year, but want to start a crew on something sooner. I generally do the business development, but I will be tied up on another account most of this month and half of Nov. I'm considering using a broker to get what I need in the time frame I desire.

Orion was founded in 1957 to enhance the careers of people with disabilities. Our teleservices division started last year with a vocational training program that has seen a fair share of success. In August, we opened a multichannel contact center and immediately started servicing our 1st account (inbound/outbound/web-based customer service and sales contacts). Our current agent and management staff is ICMI Certified. We have 50 seats, 5 supervisor stations, and an applicant pool of several hundred to fill them all up on short notice.

I'm looking for any recommendations with brokers that you have worked with before. Any horror stories? Tips? Please let me know if you have any insight to share.

-Matthew Van de Voorde

[James B]

I'm seeing a lot of down-line opportunities these days that fall short of legal compliance, particularly satellite TV, lending, and health card campaigns, where brokers want telemarketers to commit to a min. of 25 stations, using their own SAN and own Caller ID.

The problem with these is that the broker has no solution for sharing client specific Do-Not-Call requests received by the parent company, let alone the various telemarketers. That's usually because they have no direct relationship with the parent company. The demand often comes from an aggressive distributor who works through a broker. Corporate control over compliance gets lost in this downstream and unscrupulous brokers don't care because it's the ultimate seller and the telemarketer who are under the microscope. A good red flag to look out for is: "I have clients with hundreds and thousands of seats doing this with no problem." Even with all that capacity, they'll be working you hard to convince you to join in the parade. It doesn't make sense that so many people are making so much money on this campaign, yet they have to work so hard to convince you to throw 25 agents on the project asap.

If you're pulled into one of these opportunities, run, don't walk.

Jim B

[Matthew Van de Voorde]

Thanks Jim!

Orion has the good luck to be financially secure in an unsecure time. I am looking for a project out of “want” vs “need” and wouldn’t hop on board a questionable operation out of financial desperation. Beyond this, as a nonprofit, we fund our mission through enterprise operation rather than fundraising or grants, so we have to take a great deal of care in deciding who to do business with. We also consider if the type of work makes for a good cultural fit with us. This ensures our employees remain fully engaged.

-Matt V

[Darren Prine]

Dear Mathew,

At your convenience, I would like to speak with you about some potentially exciting partnership opportunities in the future. My company is a provider of a hosted/managed Virtual Call Center platform but we are not in the "people" business; we are simply a vendor. Perhaps utilizing our platform and your people, we could create a very competitive "outsourced work from home" model that we could jointly market and sell. Please call me or email me if you would like to discuss this further.

All the best,

Darren C. Prine
Director of Strategic Partnerships
Northwinds Contact Solutions
www.northwindscontactsolutions.com
[e-mail]
602-515-0395

[Andrew Rzepczynski]

Darren, I'd like to hear more about your company's product. My associates and I are in the process of putting together a call center dedicated to working with the high end (affinity) type clients whose customers require the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

Thank you,

Andrew

[Ray Klostermann]

Andrew, I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you as well in regards to your strategies for providing the highest levels of Service Excellence to your high end clients.

Regards,

Ray Klostermann
VP, Centris Information Services
877.827.8788 Direct