FCR

first call, or first contact, resolution,with the goal that agents do all they can to resolve cases on the first touch so an individual is not forced to call in again.The trouble is that, all too often, the quality of the customer experience is jeopardized when service is rushed, quality is compromised, or the in- teraction is not handled thoroughly.Various studies have shown that customers often feel frustrated with the quality of their interactions with custom- er service representatives, citing such concerns as agents lacking sufficient knowledge of the subject, being placed on hold for too long, and repeated requests for the same information. Some of these problems can be attributed to either offshore con- tact centers with different cultural conditions, or large, domestic centers with undertrained or poorly motivated support agents. FCR, or First Call Resolution, is an Oregon-based provider of outsourced, live agent, contact center and business process solutions,with the majority of its current call center operations located in the Pa- cific Northwest. FCR offers its customers the highest possible quality services,with none of the problems endemic to many of today’s overseas and/or large call and contact center locations. It serves the high- tech, internet, e-retail, telecom, healthcare, finance, travel, transportation, insurance, and other various sectors of the “new economy,” and its specialty is creatively working alongside its clients’ existing operations and support desks, helping to fill in gaps in their sales and back office services. Recently, Business ViewMagazine spoke with MatthewAchak, Co-Founder of FCR.Achak has been involved in the outsourcing industry in some form or another for almost 20 years. Before co-founding FCR, he was the Director of Sales for a $4 billion multinational provider, and prior to that he was the Executive Vice President of Sales for a mid-sized, domestic-based outsourcer.The following is an edit- ed transcript of the conversation. FIRST CALL RESOLUTION BVM: Can you talk a little about the genesis of FCR and the early days of the company? Achak: “FCR was started in 2005 bymy partner, John Stadter, and me.He and I had a history, already, together; we had worked for another outsourcer, called 800 Support and, in many ways, the DNA of that company was built into FCR.The overall, over- arching methodology and philosophy was to find small towns in the Northwest, towns that maybe had seen better days, towns like Roseburg, Coos Bay, Veneta, Independence, and Great Falls,where the work that we were targeting could be brought back from overseas to these small towns. “The concept was to pay better wages, provide health benefits, a much better working environ- ment and more fulfilling work, allowing our people to build careers, thus bringing real opportunity to towns where none had previously existed.Many of these towns have been almost forgotten.They have renewable industries that have stopped renewing, such as mining, farming, fishing, and timber. John and I started with one town in 2005–Roseburg. That was going to be our test scenario to see if we could convince companies,which at the time were moving a lot of work overseas, to bring that work back to the U.S. “So,we began by looking for companies that we believed would appreciate our focus on higher quality,U.S.-based labor.We looked for programs that were more interesting,where culture was a good match with the cultural philosophies that we were hard wiring into FCR.And John and I got lucky