Outsourcing: Rick Ferry, COO of C3 (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is your sense of what will happen to the call center industry in the U.S. over this decade? Obviously, the cost structures are changing in Asia. For instance, the cost structure for India is changing substantially. There is some level of burnout going on because of the time zone issue. You can talk about what’s happening in the Philippines as well. What do you think is going to happen to call centers catering to U.S. customers, based on those dynamics, and what is a trend that you see? >>>

Outsourcing: Rick Ferry, COO of C3 (Part 2)

SM: What kind of outsourcing work do you do?

RF: It’s primarily complex customer service interactions and primarily voice.

SM: So, it’s a voice contact center?

RF: Correct. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 4)

SM: You mentioned naming projects. If you’re getting 100 different names, how does the payment work? There’s no more work to do after the naming is done.

RK: The wrap-up for naming projects is simple. When you pick your favorite name, we pay the person who recommended it. So that you understand, we are sensitive to intellectual property issues both in simple writing projects like naming and in complex projects. It’s one reason why we work with more big brands and agencies than all of our competitors combined. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 3)

SM: So, you said half of your over 109,000 [freelancers] are from the United States. What other countries do you see a lot of representation from?

RK: We have a very strong representation, obviously, from English-speaking countries. We have strong representation from Canada, from the United Kingdom, from Australia. We see a lot of designers from Asia, Malaysia. We see a lot of designers from India. But generally, we see a varied mix. So, if we were to look, for example, at 2011 and the winning designers in our projects, there are probably between 75 and 100 different countries represented in terms of winning designers from those countries. >>>

Outsourcing: Rick Ferry, COO of C3 (Part 1)

Customer service can make or break some businesses. Yet customer service is something that businesses often outsource to companies like C3. C3 handles customer communications for corporations that see customer service as one of the most important aspects of their businesses. C3’s leadership team has about 30 years of customer management experience between them. C3 has locations spread throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia, but the company’s corporate office is in Plantation, Florida.

Sramana Mitra: Hi Rick. Let’s start with an overview of C3, your background and just some general context. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Today, you’re about a $10 million a year company, right?

Ross Kimbarovsky: Roughly in that range. We’re a private company, so we don’t disclose.

SM: A range is fine. Now, you said 109,000 designers and freelancers from various nationalities. Talk a little bit about which nationalities are represented. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 1)

We’ve covered outsourcing sites before, like Elance and Freelancer.com, which are open to all kinds of freelancers, from telemarketers to virtual assistants to graphic designers to bookkeepers. But some, like Chicago-based CrowdSPRING, specialize. CrowdSPRING dedicates itself to serving the needs of creative individuals, like graphic designers and writers, and those who need their services. Founders Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson wanted to create an outsourcing environment, using a crowd sourcing model, that would safely open the world to new possibilities rather than limiting small business owners, or whoever needed creative services, to people in their own countries or communities. >>>

Latin America Measures Up Well Against China as ITO Hub

By guest author Dan Berthiaume and Kirk Laughlin

Despite Latin America’s increasing prominence as a provider of IT outsourcing services to North American companies, a popular perception remains that Latin America serves as a second choice to China. However, when the relative advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing IT functions to Latin American providers are compared to those of Chinese providers, the results indicate that Latin America can effectively compete with China as an IT outsourcing hub, and in many instances may even prove the superior choice. >>>