Sprint Outsourcing Won’t Affect Oklahoma City Call Center

Feb. 5–An outsourcing deal between Sprint Corp. and IBM Corp. will not affect employees at Sprint’s customer service center in Oklahoma City, the telephone carrier said Wednesday.

The call center at 8525 Silver Crossing employs about 1,100 people who handle questions about Sprint’s wireless services.

In a bid to improve its customer service, Sprint said Wednesday it had signed a five-year agreement with IBM Business Consulting Services. The pact is expected to save Sprint $550 million in the next three years.

IBM will take over management of Sprint’s 21 third-party call centers and a Sprint call center in Nashville, Tenn.

Sprint will keep operating its remaining call centers, including the one in Oklahoma City, said Sprint PCS spokeswoman Roxie Ramirez.

“The Oklahoma City center will have no changes, and it is business as usual,” Ramirez said. “Customer service is obviously very important to us, and this is our effort to try to turn the corner.”

Meanwhile, the carrier will consolidate 325 jobs at a Dallas call center into a larger Sprint PCS call center in Fort Worth.

In an example of the fractured world of outsourcing, Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati said Wednesday it had signed a subcontracting deal with IBM to help service IBM’s Sprint contract. Convergys will take over Sprint’s Nashville, Tenn., call center and its 1,110 employees.

Convergys runs a call center in Moore that employs 1,400 people. Company spokeswoman Emily Wallace said operations in Moore will not be affected by the Sprint-IBM-Convergys agreement.

In Tulsa, Sprint customer service calls handled by DecisionOne also will not be affected, DecisionOne spokeswoman Paige Lewis said.

Almost half of DecisionOne’s 1,600 call center employees in Tulsa answer Sprint customer service calls. In an unrelated announcement, DecisionOne said last week it was adding another 450 jobs in Tulsa.

“IBM is going to provide consultative services for things like ‘hold time’ and implement those changes across Sprint and across the vendor centers,” Sprint’s Ramirez said. “Whatever we do has to be across the board, and IBM is going to be the central nervous system for that.”

Independent telecom analyst Jeff Kagan of Atlanta said with the telecom industry in transition, many companies are focusing on their core businesses.

Cell phone number portability and a multitude of voice and data options have led to complex billing platforms and higher customer complaints industrywide, he said.

“Customer care is getting to be its own cottage industry,” Kagan said. “That’s just a general industry trend. We’re seeing companies really focusing on what they do best and farming out the rest.”

Kagan said that trend will spread to other industries as customers expect — and demand — better service.

“Technology has been a great enabler, but we’ve used it badly in customer service,” Kagan said. “In the ’80s and ’90s, we just threw money and technology at the problem without thinking it through. When you can partner with a company that does it well and it saves you hundreds of millions, it seems like an obvious decision.”

IBM also manages customer care services for wireless carrier Nextel Communications Inc.

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