Thought Leaders in Outsourcing: Interview with John Meyer, CEO of Arise Virtual Solutions (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You are providing a certain set of outsourced services to small businesses. Is that the business?

John Meyer: We actually do crowdsourcing. We strike a relationship with a very large telecom company. They say, “I have a need to have people answering their phones for me, either in customer service or in technical support, and I need 500 of these people.” We would go out and crowd-source people who have those specific skills and capabilities, we would certify to make sure they have those skills, and then we would contract with them to become part of our network in support of that telecom company. Typically these individuals work around 20 hours per week. You can see that it is a part-time role for them. But what they are able to do is work when they want to work. Let’s say that company wants 500 full-time equivalents; we would typically certify 1,200 to 1,400 individuals. Then they would work when they want to work and fill in the associated hours in support of that plan.

SM: So you are gathering a bunch of freelancers and putting them on projects, essentially managing that on behalf of large corporations. Your clients are large corporations, and you are staffing your operations with home-based freelance workers.

JM: Home-based independent business owners. We call it crowdsourcing. We didn’t know we were doing it when we started the business, but the truth is that this is what we do. One of our first telecom customers said, “We want all of those 600 people you bring on to be our customers.” We have the ability to go out and say, “If you want to work for this particular customer, you need to be a customer of theirs.” We had people where geographical location was important to them, so they had the right accents in America or in Britain. Or we were looking for people with experiences or even health issues, because the companies were saying, “We would like to have people with diabetes to talk to our clients, who happen to be people with diabetes.” We were able to source with these criteria because we are dealing with independent businesspeople.

SM: Let’s take the example of a few of your clients. Tell us where they are sourcing from, how many people are in that pool, and of those people, how many are independent businesses.

JM: One of our oldest customers is Carnival Cruise Lines. When you see their $499 cruise, you call a 1-800 number, and there is an almost certainty that you are talking to one of our individuals, who are at home. What happens technically is you call the number, it goes into our switchboard, and based on patented technology we route the calls to individuals who happen to be independent business [owners and are] working at that particular time. We route the calls to their homes if they are available and they can take the call.

SM: Who are these people? How many individual reps are Carnival Cruise Lines using from you?

JM: It is in the range of 1,400-1,500 reps. They are typically about 40 years old and they are either raising a family, are retired, are military spouses and haven’t been able to get a full-time job because of all the moving they do, or are students. About 28% of them have college degrees and about 75% are women. When you compare that to the demographic of a typical call center company, you will find that the skill levels and capabilities our individuals have far outweigh any potential capabilities of individuals in typical call centers.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Outsourcing: Interview with John Meyer, CEO of Arise Virtual Solutions
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