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the view from the saddle / nov 2013

VETERAN UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE CONTACT CENTER: AN AMERICAN STORYAn emerging cloud contact center vendor steps up to address veteran unemployment issues.

By Paul Stockford, Saddletree Research

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Chances are you’re reading this column sometime around Veteran’s Day, which is always celebrated with a national holiday on November 11th each year. As you know, Veteran’s Day is the one day of the year that we, as a nation, officially honor those who

have served in our armed forces. Since this column appears in the same month as Veteran’s Day is celebrated, I thought it was particularly apropos for me to revisit a topic I’ve written about many times before. That topic is the hiring of veterans in the contact center industry.

Longtime readers may remember my March 2011 column in which I first covered the issue of hiring our returning veterans, and particularly our returning disabled veterans, in the contact center (“From Social Media to Social Responsibility: Helping Our Veterans Get Back to Work...”). The rationale behind hiring veterans is fairly straight-forward. My argument was, and is, that veterans bring the same skill sets developed during military service to the highly structured customer service profession. Most veterans retain the discipline, dedication, professionalism, teamwork, ability to work under pressure, and desire to serve that they acquired during their military service. Even those who are no longer mobile due to service-related disabilities retain these desirable traits. Why wouldn’t the contact center industry want these individuals populating customer service positions?

In my July 2012 column, I wrote about my longtime friend and colleague John Reynolds, a Vietnam veteran and founder of Veterans2Work (www.veterans2work.com), a 503(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with the objective of helping find employment for veterans and service-disabled veterans with a particular emphasis on finding those jobs in the contact center industry (“Champions of Change”). John has been relentless in his determination to fight unemployment among the ranks of all veterans. His work on behalf of veterans led to John being recognized in May 2012 as one of 11 people selected by the White House as a Champion of Change under President Obama’s Winning the Future initiative.

Although unemployment among veterans has decreased since I began writing about it a couple of years ago, it is still a disturbing problem. Unemployment among all veterans is at around 7.5%, but unemployment among veterans under the age of 24 is a staggering 20.4%. The contact center industry’s response to veteran unemployment issues has also been stag-gering—staggeringly poor.

To be honest, companies that I thought would step up and do their part to address the veteran unemployment issue have not. My communications to them on behalf of unemployed veterans have been met with lip service at best, stony silence at worst. Apparently they haven’t made the connection between their being able to stay safely at home and generate millions or even billions of dollars in profits, and helping the veterans of the armed forces who fought for their right to generate those profits.

Although I may sound a bit disappointed, my faith was recently restored when I heard a story that couldn’t be any more American than if Mark Twain himself had written it. During a recent conversation with John Reynolds of Veterans2Work, he told me about an emerging cloud contact center vendor in the San Francisco Bay Area called Bright Pattern (www.brightpattern.com). Despite having limited resources to commit to the effort, Bright Pattern has embraced the veteran employment problem whole-heartedly, choosing to tackle a problem that continues to be mostly ignored by the financially blessed silent majority.

Why would a company like Bright Pattern choose to commit resources to a problem as large as veteran unemployment? According to Bright Pattern’s Director of Marketing David Howard, “We often hear customers and prospects ask us for help in staffing their contact center, and we’ve also had requests from a couple of non-profit agencies to help place their workers. It became obvious that, for little to no cost, we could establish a clearinghouse to match employers with a large, untapped talent pool. It’s good for everyone involved.”

Paul StockfordSaddletree Research

Veteran Unemployment and the Contact Center: An American Story

20.4%of veterans under the age of 24 are unemployed

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For those of you who have read this far and may be moved to the point of con-sidering bringing veterans to your work-force, the folks at Bright Pattern have put together a few pointers. First of all, look toward non-profits such as Veterans2Work for help. These organizations specialize in sourcing, training and placing veterans and those with disabilities that require them to work from home in virtual contact center jobs. They also have a large pool of able-bodied candidates that in many cases are already trained and are looking for an opportunity.

Also, make sure that you are aware of the abundance of financial and other ben-efits available to those who hire veterans

and disabled veterans. For example, there may be tax credits, wage subsidies or training grants available to those who hire veteran employees.

What about contact center technology suppliers that want to join Bright Pattern in supporting veterans’ issues? What can they do to become part of the solution to this uniquely American problem? Once again, we asked Bright Pattern’s Howard who said, “Vendors can educate their customer base about this pool of highly qualified talent and designate one person as the go-to subject-matter expert for sourcing veteran and disabled veteran employees. It doesn’t have to be a full-time job, just one hat of the many that all of us in the industry already wear these days.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I am also a veteran so I’m not exactly neutral when it comes to veterans’ issues. My hope is that smaller companies that don’t think they have enough resources to make a difference will be inspired by Bright Pattern’s story. Beyond that, maybe the larger companies with their extraordinary resources will leave the counting house long enough to think about their social responsibilities and the debt we owe to all American veterans.

Veteran Unemployment and the Contact Center: An American Story

Paul Stockford is Chief Analyst at Saddletree Research, which specializes in contact centers & customer service.

pstockford@saddletreeresearch.com(480) 922-5949

Veterans2Work was honored at the White House as a Champion of Change

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Veteran Unemployment and the Contact Center: An American Story

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