Hi folks.

Following on from another post, we want your feedback as to whether you would be interested in additional facilities which would be available to CallCentreVoice members - i.e. a multi-tier approach to membership).

Members would still be able to join 'Voice for free, but would have the option of joining as a 'Gold' member (Austin Powers' references aside) which would provide you with access to a 'Lite' version of the industry leading Call Centre Database listing, an entry in the Product and Service directory, and write access to the Advertising forum (plus the kudos of being a 'Gold' member, with your own icon ;)

'Standard' members would continue to be able to use 'Voice 'as is', i.e. with the various forums but with read-only access to the Advertising forum. You'd be able to see the entries in the Product and Service directory, but not have an entry in it, and you would have no access to the integrated call centre list.

Gold members could possibly have access to some new special interest forums in addition to the normal ones.

So, we're looking for your ideas, thoughts, opinions, suggestions and so on as to all or any of the following:

(1) Whether you'd be interested in these extra facilities
(2) Whether you'd be willing to pay to become a Gold member
(3) How much you'd be willing to pay for Gold membership
(4) What special interest groups you'd be interested in having access to

...and so on.

Please feel free to start a discussion here. For the record, any fees raised by Gold membership would be used to continue to keep CallCentreVoice operating as the premier call centre discussion community on the internet today.

John

Hi John,

It has been a long time!

I am interested, what are the costs going to be? We are actually reviewing our advertising and marketing budgets. So now would be a good time :)

Cheers, always look forward to new services on an excellent call centre resource.

Warm Regards,

Dean Saunders
Business Development UK & Europe
CC3 Contact Centres
dean.saunders@ask4solutionsgroup.com
www.cc3group.com

(Office) +44 (208) 255 6407
(Mobile) +44 (7966) 170 932
(Fax) +44 (7092) 355 490

Hi Dean,

Costs? Part of the reason for raising the topic is that we aren't entirely sure how much ourselves. Any decent call centre database would typically cost over £1000 to buy or access, yet we know that members wouldn't want to pay anywhere near that. Saying that, we don't want to make it too cheap and undersell what was a very expensive database to create - even as a 'lite' version it is of incredible versatility and value to any company working within the call centre industry.

So, we're open to suggestions...

John

Hi John,
I have a database of around 28,000 companies, around 8,000 of which have Call Centres in the EMEA. This information is not the kind of info you can buy and when you do try to buy it you will often find the information is out of date or the wrong company name or whatever.

There are companies that contact me all the time trying to sell us calling lists and databases but the costs are astronomical. We are not talking £1,000 we are talking £1,000 for 100-500 companies and contacts. Hence if you wanted a list like the one I have you would be looking at tens of thousands.

I would recommend you start a signing in type book were people can enter there company and the size of their call centre. In a couple of years you would have a pretty comprehensive list.

Cheers for now
Jason

Hi Jason,

As you say, good lists are expensive to buy but we own a good list and we've invested in it and as an incentive to get people to use 'Voice we'd be prepared to almost give the thing away (i.e. hundreds rather than thousands of pounds) - the end objective of this being to develop the list into the only list on the internet worth considering.

There are quite a few call centre databases other than the one that we recommend (The Call Centre Database, which we'd license for 'Lite' use in CCV) but they're either far too expensive (e.g. Call Centre Datafile, at £5000 per year) or full of holes and errors (no names mentioned ;-)

By effectively tying our list into the 'Gold' membership, we'd be able to help form a much better view of how this global industry works and take away the need for our members to purchase ridiculously expensive lists from anonymous vendors.

This can only be a good thing for all. So, how much would you be prepared to pay? We're thinking around the £400 mark per year, including your own business resume on CCV and access to the database, plus advertising permissions and 'Gold' level forums and potentially access to a 'trading area' for suppliers and call centres. Sounds good, eh?

John

Hi John,
Can you confirm exactly what we would get for £400 a year and also explain what Gold membership intails.

We'd offer something along the lines of the following:

Standard Membership

Gold Membership

Free membership Basic access to public forums* No ability to post to advertising forum No access to member email addresses

Paid-for membership Basic access to public forums* plus access to restricted forums which will allows special interest groups to operate Full access to an online searchable database of contacts and details for over 2000 UK call centres Free company advert in a product and service directory Ability to post to advertising forum Access to email addresses (where permitted by members) Other special, gold member only sections TBD etc.

Hopefully this sheds some light onto what it is that we'd be offering, but of course it's early days so this topic was created to allow members to help shape what you'd like to see. The purpose behind the gold membership would be to allow us to fund the further development of the site whilst adding some of the 'extra value' items we know a lot of you would find useful.

John

Oh, forgot to define the 'public forums' - i.e. those forums that everyone can see, regardless of membership level. This is intended to be an inclusive site at its most basic level, although the realities of keeping a site like this running mean that value-added extras allow us to keep the 'basic level' free to all, and without commercial bias.

John

Hi John,

I recently joined your extremely fantastic site which I stay on at least an hour a day nowadays trying to read up on posts, old and new, where I am learning about call centres what some people might in a few years, and, although it might be tough on the old wizards of the call centre industry, I would definetly appreciate it if partial contact information regarding public members and all postings are available to Standard members as well.

"Voice is such a great site for junior and middle level employess to learn not only about the industry but also read on topics and information which, hitherto unknown to them, might be useful or even affecting them directly.

It does seem very unfair to me that us middle and junior level employees at call centres should be deprived of the enormously benefitial information available on your site and be dependent on the organization to be a Gold Member.



So actually, all I ask is that you practise what you have preached in your first article and do not take postings away from the Standard members, if that thought arises.


Thanks

This looks as though it may be an old debate and we have just joined. We would certainly be interested in this though and would be grateful, if yoiu would keep us posted.
Kind regards
Graham Bailey
http:/www.emphatech.net