CJ Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 So here's a thought. Many companies now outsource their inbound call centres to far away lands such as India as the salary savings can be huge. But can this idea be taken further? As you know, I am off to Kos on June 2nd and have already agreed to work with my old company (I finish today - woohoo!) for one hour a day, 5 days a week just keeping in contact with customers and following up mailings. They are going to pay me the grand sum of £15.00 per hour with me supplying and paying for the Skype calls. They were obviously delighted with this as it is a very cheap source of telesales. I too was happy as calls to the UK can be as low as 2p per minute and the cost of living is incredibly low out in Kos so that £75 per week goes a very log way. That got me thinking about whether this could be expanded to more businesses in the UK? I am sruggling to see a downside here unless the Skype connection is so bad it becomes impossible to have a conversation. What do you peeps think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rico2006 Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Skype is poop - well, maybe its a bit harsh to say that, but its not a proper phone system and has problems as it tries to compress the DTMF tones and due to their own protocol things like .info and out of band signalling arent available to Skype. 2p is very high as well, we pay around .53p. If you think Kos is cheap, our Telesales guy is in Thailand! Cost of living for him is £93 a month!!!! Its also good fun to go visit him Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted May 25, 2007 Author Share Posted May 25, 2007 I used 2p as a quick figure. The actual figure is more like 0.003p per minute with a 1.3p single connection fee. Can i ask you what phone system your thai chap utilises? Is it just a normal phone system? Are there better systems than Skype available? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Col, if you wanted to do, you could have a VOIP gateway here in the UK and use a internet adapter with a real phone and have a proper UK number anywhere provided you have internet connectivity.. Somebody like voipfone.co.uk do that sort of thing, but I reckon Carl0s may be able to give you more accurate info on VOIP providers in the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted May 25, 2007 Author Share Posted May 25, 2007 Cheers Gav, I will give him a shout. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rico2006 Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Normal phone lines out there were far too expensive. Skype works ok when it works, but for business calls it never really cut the mustard as the lag and echo was just too severe. It really all comes down to how good the bandwidth is in your location - our Guy Matt now uses a normal SIP phone connected to our network direct, but recently Thialand lost one of their seabed routes and now the connections are reall bad: weve had to resolt to mobile calls as a cost of around £1 a minute. SIP providers have a few extra tricks available to them to get you the best quality call but hey, it all depends what works for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted May 25, 2007 Author Share Posted May 25, 2007 Thank you for the info old fruit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamanC Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Just a post to eccho the thoughts on skype. Its pap for business use imo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted May 25, 2007 Author Share Posted May 25, 2007 Luckily, the old company has said that should skype prove to be cack, they will supply a business phone card for me to use on their calls only. I will ask Carlos is there a betterer system available that give betterer quality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 We use VoIP at home and it's not BT 'landline' standard, a little fuzzing, but I'd still imagine it's a world of quality than the lines that come out of Kos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted May 25, 2007 Author Share Posted May 25, 2007 We use VoIP at home and it's not BT 'landline' standard, a little fuzzing, but I'd still imagine it's a world of quality than the lines that come out of Kos Surprisingly, the landline quality is not that bad. Not as good as over here but accepatable. Unfortunately, that is too expensive if we are going to try to roll this out to other businesses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 It'll be fine Col... technology moving all the time etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveK Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 I'm surprised at the comments that Skype is crap. I used it quite a bit when my g/f still lived in France and found it completely reliable and far clearer than a normal landline call. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 edit : oops... wrong thread... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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