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  Call Centers as a Competitive Advantage, a 21st Century Vision
 
Call centers have become a critical asset for businesses. As it has become more difficult to differentiate products and technologies, customers are increasingly relying on customer service--specifically exceptional customer service--to distinguish between products and companies and are using it as the basis for establishing and maintaining a business relationship. Vendors, too, are seeing customer service as a competitive advantage, but one that takes attention and care to maintain.
 
That care and attention can be a challenge. The Internet has had a profound impact on call centers. The past few years have seen an explosion of applications and technologies to improve and automate customer service - especially in the realm of self-service. But the fact is, customer empowerment and improving business-to-customer relationships requires personal, productive, and competent interactions. That means people effectively communicating with people and doing it efficiently. And, therein lies the challenge.
 
The cost of hiring and training enough good people to effectively accommodate the increasing support demands is high. Many companies report that the average call center representative requires 8-12 weeks of training before they are proficient. Now, couple that with the rate of change businesses are experiencing. New products are coming to market faster than ever; companies are merging at a tremendous rate; and globalization is a fact of life. All of these factors contribute to the challenge of how businesses maintain their pace, transfer knowledge and provide new skills to their call center representatives without dramatically increasing costs. E-learning is a potential answer to this challenge.
 
At its simplest, e-learning is using the Web to learn. I prefer to define e-learning as the ability of learners or students to learn what they want, when they want, in the form that best suits them in the modules or "chunks" that they want. Let me give you an example. I am a call center rep for a software application company that is releasing a new version of a product in two months and it will run on PDAs. So, I have to get up to speed on the new version and learn about PDAs. Fortunately, the company is an innovator and offers e-learning lessons. First, I go onto our corporate intranet and take a short test. The test assesses that I know our product line well and tells me that there are only three modules I need to take to learn about the new version. I can go to a class being held over the next few week or I can take the lessons online or do both. That test also recommends two different lessons I can take to learn about PDAs. I commute by train, so I opt to take the CD version of the PDA lesson while riding home. I don't have time to travel to attend one of the classes, so I take the new version lessons online. I take a final test to certify my readiness to support the new version and earn a bonus, because I was one of the first five people in the department to do so.
 
By accommodating learner preferences, the learning experience is fundamentally enhanced and typically makes the learning more effective. Trained people are more confident, which makes them even more effective and productive.
 
E-learning can provide tremendous cost savings because people do not have to attend a class to learn, they take the class just-in-time - meaning when they want it, not when a class is held. With good e-learning, a student spends time learning only what they don't know, and they can go back and review information at any time. Accessible training makes for more knowledgeable people. Increased skills can increase the number of calls a rep can handle by decreasing the amount of time spent researching solutions. Faster response times also make for happier customers.
 
As CEO of OutStart, Massood Zarrabian brings over twenty-five years of technology and management experience. He most recently served as President of the eService Division of Broadbase Software, a leading provider of eCRM solutions. Prior to that role, he served as President and CEO for Servicesoft Technologies, a leading provider of intelligent eService solutions. As CEO of Servicesoft, Massood led the development of the corporate strategy and focused all operations including sales, marketing, product development and professional services on the execution of the plan.