WEST CORPORATION

'West Corporation' (formerly 'West TeleServices') provides outsourced customer relationship management (CRM) services based in the United States. West Corporation is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. and currently employs upwards of 29,000 people. The company has locations spread widely throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

Contents

History

Operations

At Home Operations

External links

History

★ 1986 – West Corporation was founded as an inbound telemarketing service. Initially West was made up of a number of call processing centres utilizing "agents" and sophisticated call processing technology.

★ 1989 – With the introduction of the now widely used Interactive Voice Response (IVR) processor the company was able to establish itself as a recognized leader in the industry. Not too long afterward live-operator, outbound teleservices were being offered to large volume sales campaigns.

★ 1990s – The company went public in 1996, but the co-founders retain ownership of approximately 70% of the company. With introduction for the ability for full account management and integrated customer care support allowed large clients who employed West Corporation to expand their own customers need for support. This led to a "boom" in the customer service industry especially large companies and even more so telecommunications companies. In more recent years the addition of natural language speech recognition systems to the older IVR platform as well as a range of internet based customer services platforms have also increased the before-mentioned "boom" in the industry.

★ 2003 – The company opened a call centre in Victoria British Columbia, Canada, taking over the former facilities of JDS Uniphase

★ 2004 – The company opened a branch in Makati City, Philippines.

★ October 24, 2006 – West, which had been publicly traded since 1996, announced the completion of a recapitalization of West Corporation by an investor group led by Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. and Quadrangle Group LLC. [1].

★ September 10, 2007 – The West Work At Home Agent (under the subsidiary company name of West Telemarketing, L.P.) program converts to West At Home, converting the operations to another business subsidiary (West At Home, LLC), as well as converting its staff, formerly independent contractors, to direct employees of the new subsidiary company. Some former independent contractors were not selected to continue (and thus their contracts were terminated) as staff on a state-by-state basis, including large numbers of contractors in California and Pennsylvania.

★ West at home contractors seeking other work at home jobs. West has provided them with no advice. Contractors in California and Pennsylavnia will all be terminated. If this is not the case they will notify them via email.

Operations

West Corporation services include processing of customer initiated contacts, automated voice response services and direct marketing services, over the telephone and Internet. Today many of North America's Fortune 1000 companies are aided by West and other companies alike in the growth of not just the business at hand, but the telecommunication industry in a whole. West has built a network for business solutions through inbound/outbound, interactive, internet, collections, and conferencing services. By doing so the corporation is a definitive and well known leader for the provision of care services. Recent growth has been largely through acquisitions; between 2002 and 2004, West acquired Tel Mark Sales, Inc, Dakotah Direct II, LLC, Attention, LLC, and Intercall. As of 2003, they had approximately 24,000 employees.
Every year 20 billion minutes of telephony based transactions are processed through West's teleservices for today's leading companies. West also has recently entered in the technical support arena by providing out-source customer and technical assistance for many major internet service providers, such as Earthlink and Yahoo!/SBC.

At Home Operations

The company uses many at home '"Virtual Agents"' to support many of its clients.
Some of the major at home clients include:

★ HSN

★ ShopNBC

★ Virgin Mobile

★ ProFlowers

★ Sears Home Repair

★ Whirlpool

★ Toys "R" Us

External links

★ West Corporation

★ West Interactive Corporation

★ West Business Services

★ West Asset Management

★ West at Home