Archive for October, 2010

How to Find Jobs in Call Centers from Home

Posted on Oct 14, 2010 09:08:12 AM

Finding jobs at call centers can prove to be a great opportunity for you. However, you do need to know about all that is needed of you when working for a call center outsourcing company. You need to have a fairly good idea of the various skills sets, the types of call center jobs and the qualifications you need.

Call Center Outsourcing Jobs: What You Need to Know
To find the right kind of call center outsourcing job, you need to know about the following things:

• Types of Call Center Jobs: there are basically two types of call center jobs you can apply for:
  1. Outbound Call Center: The outbound call center jobs will require you to make calls to customers, based on a given contact list and using an already written sales script. This process is sometimes also known as telemarketing. In outbound call centers you may be involved with direct selling or trying to book appointments for follow up by outside sales agents. You may even need to promote or up-sell additional services or products.
  2. Inbound Call Center: The inbound call center jobs will require you to answer customer queries through incoming phone calls. Here the job is more unpredictable as you will not know what the next caller wants from you, whether he is calling to get his queries answered or he has some complaints. You might even need extensive technical knowledge as some inbound call centers require you to troubleshoot problems for customers.
• Your Role: Your role will be to directly interact with customers both outbound and inbound through telephone, text chat, emails, fax and mail. You will also need to take care of transaction processing using computers.
• Skills Required: By far, the most important skill required in call centers is communication. This is because the way you communicate will create an impression of the company in the customer’s mind. The way you articulate, your voice quality, grammar, listening skills, proficiency in computer usage, conflict management, multi tasking and telephone etiquette are a few areas which you need to stress on.

Keeping in mind these things will help you land up a great call center outsourcing job.

The Disadvantages of Call Center Outsourcing

Posted on Oct 14, 2010 08:57:10 AM

In recent times, there has been an increasing trend towards call center outsourcing to foreign countries. Many businesses have chosen this option to lower their overheads and staffing costs. These call centers often provide crucial services for businesses, such as technological troubleshooting, customer services and sales. While it always pays to reduce costs, there are certain disadvantages that one should be aware of before making the decision to outsource.

Call Center Outsourcing: Disadvantages
Here are some of the disadvantages of call center outsourcing services:

• Language Issues: If the customer base is mainly English speaking, and the call center operations are outsourced to other countries, customers tend to become frustrated when their queries are not answered in fluent English or if the call center employees speak in an accent that is difficult to understand.
• Less Control over Operations: When you move your call center operations to some other country, you are putting these operations farther from your home base. This tends to put you in lesser control of these crucial operations, however cheap they may be. The efficiency of your operations and service standards becomes dependent upon the vendor company.
• Confidentiality Issues: If your company deals with sensitive and confidential information, outsourcing these services may increase the risk of breach in confidentiality. You must ensure that the operating processes of the vendor company are secure enough to eliminate this risk as it can have very far reaching effects on your company’s credibility.
• Elimination of Jobs: When companies outsource these call center operations to foreign countries because of cheaper services, they usually need to eliminate jobs of existing employees. Though the company might be saving on labor costs, it puts the livelihood of long term employees in jeopardy. More importantly, the elimination of jobs can harm the company’s public relations in its home country.

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Healthcare And Offshore Outsourcing Services: Insights

Posted on Oct 11, 2010 10:48:40 AM

Healthcare and Offshore Outsourcing Services: Insights

Offshore Outsourcing has proved to be a successful initiative to deliver services at an affordable cost. Healthcare outsourcing is gradually emerging on the scene along with the success of IT and customer care outsourcing services.

The need for outsourcing healthcare services emerges with the rising cost of providing health services. While employees have to face with basic minimum healthcare services, employers struggle to make copayments and deductibles required for group health insurance plans. Thus, outsourcing has emerged as a welcome relief for both employers and employees.

Scope of Healthcare Outsourcing Services

Healthcare as an offshore outsourcing service started with medical transcription outsourcing in the early 1990s and has evolved at a high rate. The healthcare services that are outsourced include:

• Electronic medical records: Manage customer data for insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical firms.
• Health animation and illustrations: Preparing high quality medical animations and illustrations for medical colleges, pharmaceutical companies and health professionals.
• Health insurance claims processing: Working for medical insurance providers, external service providers and adjudicates claims forwarded by the customers. The process involves validating a claim against set parameters, such as eligibility, duplicate claims and medical history analysis.
• Transcription services: It involves developing transcripts from audio files containing medical data provided by the client company.
• Healthcare software: Dedicated software to manage different tasks of the healthcare industry, such as patient database, automatic claim processing and service delivery.
• Healthcare coding: It involves preparing medical bills and coding for physicians and hospitals for the purpose of claim reimbursement.
• Healthcare customer services: Answering customer queries related to healthcare programs in which they have enrolled or wish to enroll.

Experts also believe that outsourcing is a boon for the healthcare industry. This is because the industry is highly dependent on maintaining customer records and conducting basic analysis.

Thus, healthcare as an offshore outsourcing service is expected to grow in the near future. This trend will also drive the healthcare sector of developing economies like India, which possess quality medical infrastructure and expertise.

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The Era of Medical Tourism with Offshore Outsourcing Services

Posted on Oct 11, 2010 09:55:00 AM

Medical tourism has emerged as a new segment of offshore outsourcing services to provide high quality services at reasonable prices.

The high cost of health care services in developed nations has given rise to medical tourism.

Developed nations have a high demand for high quality healthcare service at reasonable rates. With their sound infrastructure emerging countries, like India, are catering to these global demands.

What is medical tourism? What are the Benefits of Offshore Outsourcing Services

Medical tourism involves traveling to a foreign destination for a medical procedure, such as surgery, dental implant or organ transplant. The cost factor is the biggest benefit of offshore outsourcing services that promotes medical tourism.

It has evolved into a full-fledged industry because people are seeking alternative routes to expensive medical relief in their own country.

According to statistics available with the National Coalition of Healthcare, more than 500,000 Americans went for surgical and dental relief in a foreign country in 2006.

With growth in medical infrastructure in developing nations such as India, Thailand and Malaysia, it has become possible for patients to enjoy services at considerably lower rates. A majority of patients come from western countries because these countries have a highly inflated healthcare sector.

Countries promoting medical tourism have low wait time periods. For example, a hip replacement surgery in the UK can have an average wait period of six months. However, patients can visit India and have the operation done almost immediately. The low wait time period is crucial in certain diseases, which grow worse as the time passes.

Since 2000, health insurance expenses have highly increased. However, the service providers do not include several surgeries, such as orthopedics and cosmetic in the insurance cover. Individuals are opting for foreign destinations to undertake surgeries excluded from insurance coverage. Considering the economic significance of medical tourism, countries like India are boosting healthcare infrastructure to provide international quality services through the latest medical equipment and well trained professionals.

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