Israel call centers provide unequaled telemarketing customer service and value due to its highly educated and talented staff.

CALL CENTERS IN ISRAEL

Jerusalem-----December 2002......Israel has earned a highly respected, worldwide reputation for its potent performance in Hi-Tech. From this performance certain elements have recently translated into providing high quality Israel Call Centers for domestic and international use.
Out of Israel's critical and essential need to defend herself against neighbors who seek her destruction, Israel has secured the finest human resources of intelligent and creative citizens to enhance her defense.
Private and commercial industry in Israel has benefited directly from those who have set out from the defense establishment and changed their uniforms for ties and suits.

The most recent innovation that Israel has witnessed has been in the establishment of Israeli "call centers" throughout the country. These Israel call centers have played an important role in providing employment during a time of severe recession and have kept Israel in direct contact with commercial and non-profit organizations around the world.

WHAT IS A CALL CENTER AND WHY DO I NEED ONE?

For much of the last decade, the primary way companies have chosen to translate the mass of data from their medley of databases and applications into understandable information that customers value, and vice versa. In a traditional call center, integration of the back-end applications is done by the customer service representative on behalf of the customers. What is a Call Center? Let's face it, not everyone knows what a call center is.
When was the last time someone asked what you did and you said: "I work in a call center" and the response you got back was a look like you had plant growing out of your head! So here is a definition of "call center":
Call (verb): to make a request or demand.
Center (noun): a point, area, person or thing that is most important or pivotal in relation to an indicated activity or interest

The definition of call center is changing in our e-business world but the core fundamentals of a customer making a call (via a phone, email, web site, IVR or fax) to a center (point, area, person or thing (e.g. IVR)) will remain constant because the customer views the call as an important or pivotal activity to themselves. Call center, contact center or customer interaction center - by whatever name you give it (we still call it a call center) -
operate on near identical principals of meeting customer needs in real-time or near real-time.

Israeli Call centers have emerged as the critical link between domestic and global companies and its customers. The result has been that the global call center industry is growing at an annual rate of over 20% per year.

Quality management and staff are the most valuable assets in any Call Center Operation. This is what truly distinguishes Israeli call centers from those in North America, Europe and Asia. Israel has an abundant pool of highly educated and talented people, who because of the severe recession are eager to work in Israeli call centers. This provides for unequaled customer service and performance.

Israel call center customer services include:

  • Call Center Services
  • Telephone Answering Service
  • Custom Message Delivery
  • Offsite Receptionist Call Center
  • Overflow Reception Call Center
  • Live-e-Support Call Center
  • Order Taking Call Center
  • Help Desk Call Center
  • Brochure Fulfillment
  • Market Research Call Center
  • Telemarketing Call Center
  • Reservations Call Center
  • Emergency Response
  • Call Center Dispatch Service
  • Appointment Booking
  • Database Management

PROFESSIONAL FACILITY FEATURES OF ISRAEL CALL CENTERS:

  • Computerized Information and Referral (I&R) database with call tracking capability. Relational for the ability to share data.
    Specific staff employed for Information and Referral database maintenance.
  • Structured routine for updating Information and Referral database information.
  • 24 hours by 7 days accessibility for callers to connect directly with an information specialist in live time, either at the center or through collaboration with another agency for after-hours coverage.
  • Interactive Web application.
  • Measures all access points to call center information, i.e. telephone calls, web hits or directory requests.
    Access to a telephone reporting system either on own switch or through local and long distance telephone companies.
  • Employs the use of a Web site reporting system.
  • Automated Call Distribution (ACD) capability or the ability to upgrade to one.
  • Teletypewriter (TTY) and Multi-language accessibility, on site or access to translation services.
  • Employ a structured training curriculum, e.g. ABC's of Information and Referral.
  • Accredited by the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems, inc.
  • Appropriate staff to call volume ratio
    [e.g. 1 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) for every 3,500 calls annually]
  • Publicizes Israel Call Center services and is able to educate the public on an on-going basis.
  • Handles crisis calls on site or linkage through protocol with a local crisis center
  • Ability to handle volunteer/donation request calls or linkage through protocol with an appropriate clearinghouse agency.
  • Membership and participation in emergency government and volunteer response services.

Call Center Technologies Buck The Depressed Economic Trend

London, 28 November, 2002 - Where vendors of customer relationship management and other enterprises have seen their revenues decimated, a new report just published by independent market analysts Datamonitor (DTM.L) is predicting sunny skies ahead for vendors of call recording, computer telephony integration (CTI) and interactive voice response (IVR), saying they will buck this trend as it is these add-on technologies that call centers will invest in over the next five years.

The report 'Contact Center Component Technologies to 2007' predicts the global call center technology market will grow at a steady 6% from 2002-2007, when it will be worth $5.5 billion. Overall, adoption of new technologies will be faster in Europe than in the larger and more mature North America market. The report predicts that between 2002-2007, the European market for five core component technologies - namely ACDs, CTI, IVR, predictive dialing and call recording - will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.5% compared to just 3.8% in North America over the same period.

Advances in sophistication will spur growth in specific technologies. For example, call centers will add speech recognition to existing IVR systems and make greater investment in CTI to integrate new contact types, such as email and web chat. Furthermore, call centers without IVR systems can now buy them from a greater number of vendors, because of the shift from proprietary hardware to open-standards based software needed for the IVR solution. As a result, Datamonitor believes that Customer Interaction Management (CIM) suites will become more popular, which include the complete range of component technologies, such as queuing and routing of calls, CTI, IVR, predictive dialing, multimedia contact management and call recording.

The largest vertical market for call center spending in Europe and North America is currently financial services, and this will remain the case in 2007. However, in EMEA the fastest growing vertical market will be the public sector where spend will grow from $36m in 2002 to $66m in 2007. Other rapidly growing verticals include outsourcing and healthcare.

Value of traditional ACDs to see an actual decline in 2007 as European call centers adopt new technologies such as Internet Protocal and multimedia

IP-technology will grow much faster, as greenfield call centers look for lower cost solutions for setting up full multimedia contact centers and existing call centers begin to replace traditional circuit-switched ACDs with packet-switched IP-ACDs.

Datamonitor predicts therefore that by 2007, the traditional ACD market will actually see a slight decline as ACDs are replaced by IP-ACDs. Adoption rates will be faster in Europe than in North America. The proportion of IP-ACDs to traditional ACDs will be more than twice as high in Europe as in North America. In 2007, IP-ACDs will account for 27% of the market value in Europe, compared to 13.3% of the North American market.

Technology spend among smaller call centers will be the fastest growing segment. According to Datamonitor, by 2007, more than half of European call center vendor revenues will be derived from call centers with fewer than 100 agents. Many vendors have responded by introducing "lite" versions of their solutions and changed pricing strategies to attract smaller call center projects.

Spending among smaller call centers will be driven by the availability of new technology solutions, such as IP and networked call centers, and the subsequent declining cost of the technology making it more affordable. In addition, many large call center projects (101-250 agent positions) are now being transferred to off-shore outsourcing locations, such as India.

"While many technology markets have been battered by frozen IT spending budgets and tough economic conditions, spending among call centers is and will remain consistent because of the long term growth in demand for call center services. This is driven by customer contact centralized in one location, demand for customer relationship outsourcing and a need to match existing investments in applications with technology infrastructure," says Andreas Kolind, technology analyst at Datamonitor.

ISRAEL NEWS AGENCY