This has been a question I have encountered many times over the past 25 years. It seems to make so much sense find a call center with counter-cyclical volumes and seasonality to your own and swap or share staff. The article in the Wall Street Journal on Monday April 10th, cites the example of 1-800 Flowers and Choice Hotels who have done just that. I suspect there will be many more centers experiencing volume surges in Q4 than any other quarter, but I'm sure there are some who have peaks elsewhere throughout the year. This discussion may help some organizations find suitable partners

So I wanted to find out what everyone else thinks about...don't be shy.
Is this a viable idea?
What are the risks (training, security of data, etc.),
When are your centers peak volumes,


Colin Taylor
ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com
www.thetaylorreachgroup.com

Absolutely Colin,

I have worked for many companies that incorporate this sort of behaviour and it is really to everyone's benefits. I don't see there being any more risk's involved with this method.

On a much smaller scenario this can also be done in 24/7 operations through load balancing. Have 4 call centres worldwide, all 9-5 local time would provide you complete coverage.

I know a few call centres that operate this kind of setup for business continuity purposes.

Obviously, there's never enough resource to be able to offer service up to the normal standard, but it's considered that the ability to handle calls poorly is better than not being able to handle any calls at all.

YMMV.

Since I created this post and have spoken to a few people I have a couple more examples of shared partnership where company's are effectively 'sharing' staff.
One example is a federal bank handling bond purchase and redemption and the second a catalogue company that has huge Q4 spike (they hire 800 seasonal agents) who has partnered with a lawn care and equipment company whose business really runs from January to Sept.

I am running a poll on my website ( www.thetaylorreachgroup.com ) and here are the (unscientific) results to date. We asked which quarter you receive at least 35% of your calls.
Poll Results
Q1: 0%
Q2: 8%
Q3: 17%
Q4: 67%
No Seasonality: 8%

Colin

Heresy.....no-one escapes the Spanis... sorry... Outsourcer acquisition.

Isnt this still outsourcing by another name, the staff are employed by one company who receives payment from the other company for the time they are used by the other.

Outsourcers employ staff and charge (directly or indirectly) the client company for the time those staff have been employed on their contract.

If the staff are all agency then the agency is the outsource partner.

"Are you Mary Queen of Scots"- Julian, no gender comment intended here just following the Monty Python theme.

If I have staff on my payroll and share them with you for the four months a year where I don't require them and you pay me simply their wage/benefit cost is this outsourcing?

It may be in the purest sense, but I don't think it really is the same, since there is no outsourcer margin.

The result is I get to keep the staff and likely reduce my turnover and recruitment expense and together we get more calls answered.

Colin Taylor

Isnt this still outsourcing by another name

In some respects, yes it is. You'll still have to cover the problems that you'd expect with an outsourcer: getting the calls in the right place, ensure remote sites have access to the systems they required. Ensuring that agents have been trained to an acceptable level and the corporate message is kept the same.

However, the benefits are that you're not tied into minimum spend/minimum term agreements, and the other organsation (as Colin points out) aren't trying to make money out of you.

I suppose the most important thing is to ensure that the spirit of the relationship between the CEO's (or whoever set the agreement up) trickles down to the staff at the coal face. I could give plenty of examples where the Directors of two companies think they work in "Synergy" but the staff did everything they could to pi55 the other company off.

I agree it is only outsourcing in it's purest sense and the margin will be reduced, but what private company would not want to make some sort of profit out of lending it's resource to another company - there is a an element of risk to such endeavours and a profit margin would mitigate this. These staff wont move sites when transferring to the other company so any margins on overheads will still be there to cover return on investment, it wont be done on a marginal cost basis.

Outsourcers also use such tactics to increase margin as we will move staff around contracts to meet demand peaks - easier to re-deploy then employ but it does depend on a good mix of contracts with differing peaks. If you have two home shopping clients then both will have the same peaks, but add in a travel company and something with a focus on summer activities not planned months in advance and you have the makings of a demand management strategy.

In practice sometimes the staff physically moves to the second client location sometimes they don't. This process when it works well is effectively 'job-sharing' across two organizations and as Julian points out is not dissimilar to what outsourcers do in cross-training and deploying staff to multiple programs. This variety can be seen as a plus for the staff as they get to handle different types of calls and deal with different customers. The challenges are those you would expect when anyone new handles the calls; training, quality, motivation etc. These can be more of a challenge if the work is not completed in your office. In the latter case this become more like 'home agents'.

Colin Taylor
ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Yes, cross functioning does really help in various process and of course that also behaves as a plus when there are growth opportunities; this is being positive at the same time one can also say that all this while there was job-sharing happening because of which the appraisals are not so great and the over all performance of an agent is not mapped which in turn affects the staff. The staff level he would think of short-term growth and might leave but if he sticks up with the company then there would be chances of him being the pilot for the later staff to come.

I really wonder if this option will work for us in the telecom sector in Nigeria. The competition is so fierce that I doubt if it would be considered in the next 10 years. Our peak periods runs all through the day. Guess we never sleep here...
Seriously though, the industry's still very young and we are still battling with keeping/maintaining standards.