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WSTA
Convention Report
By
Dirk Moeller
December, 2002
At
the Western States Telemessaging Association (WSTA) convention, we tried
something new this year by having a magician at the opening cocktail party.
Sixteen-year-old Patrick Lorenz amazed and wowed us with his
magical artistry.
Bernie
O'Donnel of
Performance Intel shared with us a tool that he sells for profiling
both good and bad employees. Before
candidates are hired, company officials can ask them to log on to the
Performance Intel Web site and answer a few questions.
This helps prevent hiring a candidate who doesn't fit with the
organization. Other call centers
are doing this, and it can more than pay for itself by helping companies cut
down on inappropriate hires.
Mike
Mattsen of
Vcustomer Corporation discussed his offshore call centers in India.
Yes, the employees have accents, but typical wages are about $1 an hour
and they're college graduates. Offshore
call centers can provide service to America for costs ranging from 28 to 40
cents per minute. There was also
a gentleman in attendance who runs a call center in Africa where English is
the national language. Beginning
this month, his call center will be answering the second and third shifts for
a medical answering service on the East Coast of the United States.
The
switch shoot-out was a great demonstration of several different telemessaging
systems. Telescan representative
Patty Anderson remotely logged on to Marcy Hewlett's system; Amtelco
representative Bob Bennett logged on to Steve Diels'
system; and Alston Tascom representative, Bill Cortus, logged
on to a remote site for his demonstration.
Professional
Teledata
has now entered the telemessaging systems market.
Dale Schafer made a nice presentation; the company hopes to be
installing its first system in the first quarter of 2003.
Randy
Ripkey of TASBiller
and Dale Schafer of Professional Teledata demonstrated the
latest Windows-based billing and profitability enhancements to their
respective software packages.
Several
vendors demonstrated their Web-based appointment scheduling software. Alston Tascom offers a platform-independent hosted
service. Time Trade's offerings
include a feature-rich version, and the company is working on a simpler, less
expensive system in conjunction with Professional Teledata.
Last, but not least, Almond Hill offers its cost-effective Turbo
Schedule package.
An
ATSI update was provided by the organization's president, Tedd
Smith. The ATSI 59th Annual
Convention and Expo will be held from June 18-21, 2003 at Disney World's
Contemporary Resort in Orlando, Fla. For
more information, visit www.atsi.org.
Tedd also encouraged attendees to consider ATSI's call center
certification program and discussed one of ATSI's most popular benefits, the
Award of Excellence program, which provides independent evaluation of agent
courtesy and quality.
Richard
Floegel of
Gema Tech asked what our plans are in the event of a flood, hurricane,
tornado, fire, or anthrax contamination.
What would we do if we couldn't answer calls for several hours, days,
or weeks? For a moderate cost,
Gema Tech can re-route your traffic to anywhere in the world.
This would also be a method to re-route after-hours calls to a
different call center across town or across the globe.
Attorney
Dale Crandall shared his matrix comparison of three different E&O
policies: USLI, Hartford and Lloyds of London.
All three policies had different strengths, but in total comparison it
was a very close contest.
For more information, contact WSTA Executive
Director Dan L'Heureux, at 877-754-4103, Dan@CallConsult.net,
or visit the WSTA Web site at www.WSTAonLine.org.
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