(We originally posted this in 2020. You can read more of our original ideas in our archive.)
Problem: Call centers today suck: they have extremely long wait times, it’s hard to communicate your information to the representative, occasionally they feel like you are revealing too much information, and by the time you get on the phone with an agent you have to repeat and reenter everything that you just said and entered before you talked to a live agent.
Solution: This business would focus on innovating the call center market by increasing the number of available representatives available for hire. They would find and train call-center experts to get you connected to an agent in 5 minutes or less (the same way Uber strove to get you a car in 5 minutes or less). Scrolling through Twitter, I saw Brandon Bryant’s tweet (an investor at Harlem Capital) and had been gnawing in my head how to potentially solve this issue.
Surprisingly, there are many businesses tackling this industry: in fact the New York Times even wrote an article about gig-economy call center market in 2017. However, there hasn’t been much traction or growth in the industry.
“What Uber is to cars, Liveops is to call centers.
The agents are part of a tectonic shift in how jobs are structured. More companies are pushing work onto freelancers, temps, contractors and franchisees in the quest for an ever more nimble profit-making machine. It is one reason a job category seemingly headed offshore forever — customer service representatives — has been thriving in call centers and home offices across the United States, supporting roughly three million workers.”
Of course, this has also led to worlds of criticism. The top comment on the New York Times article summarizes this" “The top performers making $20 an hour, before taxes, as an independent contractor (that means you're going to net about $12)? That's ridiculous. Paying more than $10 a month for $25,000 in term life insurance? If you're over 50 and/or have a serious medical condition maybe that's not bad, but otherwise it's a ripoff. And any insurance company selling a $2,000 life policy is a boiler room operation anyway.”
Nonetheless, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the call center gig-economy has seen a bit of a resurgence, especially since more and more people are comfortable working from home and have the technology set-ups to do so. Broadly, it’s benefits seem quite clear for both employers and employees. As described by LiveXchange, a call center gig-economy platform, the valueproposition of their business is “(1) Flexibility in Staffing for Seasonal Industries… (2) Finding Diverse, Global Talent… (3) Cost-Efficiency… (4) Improved Customer Service… [and] (5) LiveXchange’s technology allows you to easily plug-in remote agents from home, working in harmony to expand or augment your current workforce.”
This has led to more usage of call center solutions like
AirCall (a completely cloud based customer support system) which has been growing rapidly since its founding. In 2016, the company successfully closed an $8 million Series A funding round from Balderton Capital, FJLabs, and existing investors.
TechSee which raised $7.5 million in a Series A financing round in June 2017, which is being used to leverage its strong momentum, further develop the technology, and provide a leading AI-powered visual engagement platform to its clients.
Pypestream, founded in 2015, which allows recurring customer service interactions to be automated over chat via their text messaging app for businesses to communicate with customers and in February 2017, the company raised $15 million in a Series A funding round.
Luckily, the market is large enough to support a number of different substitutes. According to Statista, “The global contact center market size amounted to $339.4 billion U.S. in 2020. This industry is expected to grow steadily in the next years and reach a value of $496 billion U.S. by 2027.” Others like IbisWorld peg the market measured in revenue at a more conservative $24.2bn in 2021 or GrandView Reasearch’s $90.6 billion by 2029.
Monetization: Percentage of sales contracts that are eventually paid to call center representatives.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)