Call Centers 24x7 provides affordable U.S.-based support through a network of rural call centers, as well as a range of development and maintenance services. And if you want to sell your call center, this company may want to buy it.

by Jeff Goldman [August 2, 2006]

Shane Miller founded Call Centers 24x7 in November of 2002. In the years prior, Miller had worked as a middleman in the call center business, placing contracts in India—and he realized, he says, that there was a strong business case for "providing call center services specifically provisioned within the U.S., and doing so in a way that's cost-competitive with offshore outsourcing."

In the time since the company was launched, Miller says, Call Centers 24x7 has been focused on integrating various technologies to make that business plan work, including the development of a network of interconnected call centers in rural America. "There's been a lot of R&D time, and we're happy to be past that point now," he says.

Call Centers 24x7 Voice: (360) 452-4527 Toll Free: (800) 516-4276

The infrastructure costs required to build a call center used to be so high, Miller says, that it only made sense to build a call center in an area with a large labor pool—but he says that's changed, particularly with the ability to network a group of smaller call centers together. "The fact that we're able to quickly move resources around, and add resources onto our network from remote locations with as little as a reliable high-speed internet connection, gives us the ability to access all of rural America as our labor pool," he says.

That network is currently made up of just three rural call centers, but Miller says the plan is grow to several dozen within the next two years, largely through acquisitions. "Rural communities historically have been served by local answering services, and for the most part, they're not going to be able to compete with some of the changes take place in the industry—so I'm looking at them as a target for acquisition," he says.

A remote rural workforce
The company's system uses the internet to route calls, but not to carry them. "We're not using VoIP," Miller says. "We use analog lines as the carrier, but then route them through hosted exchange servers. It took quite a bit of time to get the right combination of technologies there, to get the reliability where we needed it to be, since we're focused on inbound and really can't have things like dropped calls."

Quality control, of course, presents the biggest operational challenge in managing a remote workforce. Miller says basic technologies like call monitoring help, but it's also crucial to work with call centers that are already small and well-run. "The call center needs to be the right size," he says. "There needs to be a core group of people who are able to have the synergy of working together in an office."

Call Centers 24x7 does currently use some work-from-home telecommuters to supplement their call center support staff, but Miller says they try to minimize that. "I believe it's important for people to spend time in the office collaborating," he says. "That really makes a difference in the success of all the processes, including getting feedback to our customers on how they can improve."

That kind of feedback, Miller says, is one of his company's key strengths—in addition to basic reporting, customers get direct feedback about end users' experiences with their services. "That's one of the things that we're finding our customers believe is most valuable about working with us," he says. "They're really happy to get feedback about how they can improve and where the problems are, rather than having a call center that simply takes calls and doesn't do much with the customer interaction."

Web development and maintenance
The company currently offers first tier support for ISPs, though Miller says he plans to launch second tier support soon. The expertise to do so, he says, is already there, since most of the people in the call centers are providing web services as well as technical support. "A call center that's just modeled on answering the phone needs to have their operators busy more of the time to be profitable—whereas we've got things to do with some of our staff even when they're not handling phone calls," he says.

Those web services include everything from basic site maintenance to higher-level web development, with a focus on the former. "We're able to provide really rapid turnaround on website maintenance and content updates at much lower costs that what it traditionally costs to hire a web developer to do it," Miller says.

Pricing is generally per minute, though companies with more complicated requirements can pay per dedicated agent, using a day rate. If you just look at the per-minute costs, Miller says, Call Centers 24x7 may cost more than an offshore provider—but if you factor in everything from language issues to security concerns, he says the additional cost is more than worth it.

Miller says security should really be a major reason to keep outsourced services within the U.S. "The industry isn't paying enough attention to that," he says. "I think one of the reasons is that a lot of the time people just haven't been to these offshore locations and don't realize how little rule of law there actually is for things like protection of intellectual property. But that isn't what's been driving the market for us—the overall quality of the customer experience and the feedback that we get to our clients have been our two real driving forces."

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Related articles:
	[Dec. 27, 2002]	We Need Cheap Overnight Tech Support
	[Jan. 22, 2001]	When Your Help Desk is Distant
	[June 2, 2000]	Building an ISP Business Plan Part 4: Operating & Organizational Plans

Online resources:
	Outsourced Customer Support Directory
	Quick Reference Chart