ABSTRACT
We also saw the beginnings o f a disjunction between the operating philoso phies of outsourcers and in-house call centers. Though much of the rest o f the corporate world sees the two as interchangeable, they are clearly not, with differ ent priorities and modes o f business. In 1997, at least one significant segment — Wall Street — learned the hard way that outsourcers, though powerful and sophisticated, are not an “index” for the call center industry as a whole. One after another, we saw outsourcing companies take hits in their stock prices because (I believe) financial analysts mistakenly assumed that call center growth and out sourcing growth were the same thing. They work in tandem, but, alas, there
appears to be an oversupply of outsourcing capacity in North America now, despite a voracious appetite for in-house call center services.
