Kunnect Nation,

If you have been working with most of the Tier 1 carriers, like Qwest, Verizon, etc.., then you have undoubtedly received notices in the past 18 months about “short duration call” penalties. Why are they so diligent about monitoring your call completion rate?

One would think that operating a call center has its fair share of challenges, so why do carriers no longer want to place your calls? I’ll tell you why.

Over the last two decades, the Sales division of carriers ran the show. Sales reps were making hefty commissions on all your calls…everyone seemed happy. Times have changed!

Firstly, most tier 1 carrier sales reps don’t even get commissions on your calls anymore. Now the IT department runs the show. All carriers have been converting their infrastructures to be VoIP enabled in the last 7-10 years. This means that even your T-1 (TDM) calls are being processed (at some point) by a session border controller (SRC – which manages VoIP calls). These machines are very costly, and given the fact that margins on long distance calls are way down, spending money on infrastructure isn’t very popular.

Carriers are making most of their money on bandwidth, not long distance calls. Telemarketing is a sacred American tradition and employes of over 300,000 agents around the country. It needs to be protected.

Fred Cote