Customer Service Center Will Rise in Indian Land
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By Taylor Bright, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.  Feb. 4--Let's begin this week with some brick and mortar news out of Lancaster County. A 22,000- square-foot customer service center for Kennametal is being built in Indian Land.
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Michael Brightman is reminded daily that workers in New Delhi do the same job he does. His Indian counterparts routinely direct AT&amp;T customers to him for long-distance billing problems that the New Delhi workers can't answer.
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The biggest wireless service provider keeps getting bigger
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Wipro Ltd., one of the biggest IT firms in India, is finishing up plans to build a 1,000-employee development center in Atlanta -- the first of four such facilities planned for the U.S.
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US Cellular vows to create hundreds of jobs when it opens a new Bolingbrook call center next year in a facility vacated by a competitor.
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By RICHARD METCALF Journal Staff Writer  An Ohio customer service provider is in negotiations to bring 500 call center jobs to fill AOL's nearly empty building near Jefferson and Osuna NE.   Convergys Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Unisys is opening two additional global service delivery centers in India as part of its plan to expand its offshore resources to 6,000 people by 2008. Unisys, which already has a facility in Bangalore, is setting up a second facility in the cityâs suburbs. The site will be operational next month, the Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, company said. It is also setting up another facility in Hyderabad, which is expected to be in operation in the second quarter of next year. Hyderabad is emerging as a popular location for hi-tech companies because it has fewer infrastructure bottlenecks than Bangalore, and it is also easier to hire staff in the city. Microsoft, for example, has a development center in Hyderabad as do many companies that set up operations in Bangalore, but have expanded in Hyderabad. The new facilities will enable Unisys to tap into a broader talent pool while providing customer service capabilities, such as further backup and disaster recovery for the first facility in Bangalore, the company said. Unisys did not however disclose how many staff it was adding in India. A number of multinational IT services vendors including IBM and Accenture have set up Indian delivery centers to take advantage of the country's skilled and low-cost staff. Earlier this year Unisys opened centers in Budapest and Shanghai. The company opened its first global services operation in Bangalore in 2004. Staff in India work on software application development and support, systems integration, IT and business process outsourcing, maintenance of existing software and internal administration functions. Unisys' strategy in India is to deliver services by a combination of in-house staff and staff from partner Indian services companies.
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The local phone giant is ready to enter new territories with business-class voice and data services.
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Errand Solutions, a unique provider of concierge services as an employee  benefit, was experiencing rapid growth and needed an upgraded IT  operation to keep up with customer demand.
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More round-the-clock centers to provide service and support for business customers are planned for Europe and Japan.
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Internet phone service, a burgeoning technology that allows people to make cheap calls to almost anywhere over broadband connections, is getting a boost from retailers.
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Revenue from cellular services is expected to jump by more than 18 percent each year for the next five years.
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Dell Inc. plans to open several Enterprise Command Centers during the next few months in a bid to improve its service delivery to customers worldwide.
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This global IT services provider is seeing more growth as its sector makes a comeback.
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Barclays&#39; credit card business in the U.S. has struck a five-year deal with Indian outsourcer Firstsource Solutions to run a call center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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Red Hat&#39;s new CEO plans to keep the company focused on its core Linux OS and middleware business while also improving the service it offers to customers, he said Thursday.&quot;It&#39;s a very exciting time for Red Hat, we have a very bright future in front of us. Our business model is strong and our growth remains very, very robust,&quot; said Jim Whitehurst, who was speaking in Tokyo during his third week in the job.Whitehurst came to Red Hat from Delta Air Lines&#160;where he served as chief operating officer for two years. During that time he gained experience of being a customer of major IT vendors and says he knows well what is expected of companies like Red Hat.&quot;From a user perspective an absolute focus on service is critical. Based on talking to customers so far, one observation I have is that we need to re-double our effort working with our various partners in service,&quot; he said.Because much of Red Hat&#39;s business is done through resellers and the channel, there can sometimes be disconnects in customer service. For example, Red Hat might end up telling a customer to contact the partner while the partner refers the customer back to Red Hat, he said.But is Whitehurst the right man to be talking about customer service? After all, he came to Red Hat from an industry that is the subject of frequent complaints from its customers.&quot;I think airlines only beat out cable TV operators in customer satisfaction surveys so I&#39;m certainly not going to defend the airline industry&#39;s record on customer service,&quot; he said. Experience at Delta taught him the need to pick a small number of things and do them well to improve overall satisfaction, he said.&quot;The Delta situation was the fastest major bankruptcy ever and during that situation our customer service numbers actually went up quite significantly. We did it by focusing on a couple of things. In the airline industry it&#39;s clean airplanes and on-time, those were the two things we focused on. I know those sound like two little things but they significantly impact the customer experience,&quot; said Whitehurst.For Red Hat he said he is still working on which areas will be the priorities that he focuses upon.&quot;I understand the importance from the customer&#39;s perspective of excellent customer service in IT,&quot; he said. &quot;As an industry, information technology is not known for excellence in serving our customers well and I have been adamant from day one that everything Red Hat does will be viewed through the eyes of the customer.&quot;
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The wireless phone provider's focus on business spills over into the consumer market.