Who needs India? Call centers come home

Where are the jobs? For the call-center industry, the answer now is the United States, not India or other foreign countries.

Today Jobs4America, a coalition of call-center companies, committed to creating 100,000 new call-center jobs in the United States over the next two years.

The announcement was made at a new call center under construction by Accent Marketing Services in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which will handle customer calls for clients such as BJ’s Wholesale Club and Charbroil. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski was on hand for the event because expanded access to broadband in the United States is behind the move toward locating more of these call-center jobs here, instead of offshoring them.

“The Internet is helping create more jobs in this industry,” he said, even though most people wouldn’t think call-center jobs are an “upside of broadband.”

Thanks to broadband, an increasing number of call-center agents are based in their own homes—60,000 at last count. That represents 17 percent of all call-center positions. That share will increase, because 80 percent of U.S. companies plan to use at-home agents in the future. Thanks to broadband, these at-home call-center agents can use video conferencing and social networking to improve the customer experience.

Broadband access also is encouraging U.S. companies that want full-fledged call centers to locate them in the U.S., not abroad. A BDO USA survey of 100 chief financial officers found that only 12 percent of their companies now have offshore call centers, down from 35 percent two years ago.

“We are in the midst of a broadband evolution that is transforming the notion of the traditional contact center,” said Accent Marketing Services CEO Tim Searcy. “Through the expansion of broadband, our engagement specialists now have the flexibility to perform these new jobs at our engagement centers or through connectivity at home.”

“Today’s announcement is a big deal, but it’s just a start,” Genachowski said. “We do have a lot more work to do.”

Around 100 million Americans still don’t have broadband connections, he said. About 20 million of these people live in parts of the country where they can’t get broadband even if they wanted it. That’s why the FCC is continuing to push for expanding broadband access by opening more spectrum and by reforming the Universal Service Fund to focus on bringing high-speed Internet networks to rural areas.

“Bringing broadband to your town and home in the 21st century is like bringing in electricity in the 20th,” Genachowski said, “connecting you and your community to the larger economy and opening up new worlds of commerce and opportunity.”

Jeffersonville was Genachowski’s first stop on his national “American Innovation Tour,” which will promote the benefits of broadband technology.

Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech-observer/2011/08/04/call-centers-seen-to-increase-jobs-in-united-states#ixzz1UbebQPb1