Key contact.

The work world is changing, and quickly. The information age, rather than being about buying pet food online, has turned out to be largely about making the internal workings of complex organizations efficient, transparent and fast. Part of the reason is software like that made by Genesys, a U.S. company part of France's Alcatel that creates the links between Web pages, telephone calls, customer data and back-office systems known as customer relationship management (CRM) software. Genesys CEO Wes Hayden, until mid-2004 the company's senior vice president for the Americas, talked with LATIN TRADE Editor-in-Chief Greg Brown about turning information into action.

You came to your job from the Americas operation. What have developing markets taught you about your business?

My experience covering Latin America as part of the Americas is that, while our business is extremely strong at the high end of the market, there's a lot of business out there in the medium-sized business market. The value of our software in medium-sized companies was very apparent. The Latin America market was underserved by everyone in our industry. In Brazil, I felt there was a huge opportunity for us to take market share. My experience has helped immensely as we look at our business in Asia Pacific. The market is very similar. Big developing countries like China do business with us much the same way we are doing business in Latin America. In our case we really are targeted on four areas: Brazil is the primary target in Latin America. Russia, India and China are all emerging markets for us. We are approaching all those in the same way, based on my experience in Latin America, rather than just calling on large companies as you do in the United States.

The call-center business has boomed in Latin America, particularly because of demand to service U.S. Hispanic callers. Will this continue?

We saw really good growth last year, and expect good growth this year. As we look at the flattening of the world, the labor rates in Latin America are always going to be attractive to U.S. companies.... What is happening to our business, with voice over IP technology [telephone calls via the Web], is that we see call-center technology migrating into the rest of the company. Insurance offices, brokerage offices, they're all places we're seeing our customers wanting to see an extension of call-center technology. Being able to see the contact information of the caller has now been enabled with voice over IP.

Are call centers good training grounds for future hires?

A little bit, but I would say roughly 20% of the call-center population is outbound. The vast majority is inbound calls and customer service.... Interestingly enough, and this is a U.S. example, Bloomberg Media starts everybody in the call center. In order to work for Bloomberg, you do a stint in the call center talking to customers.

Consumers in the United States and Europe increasingly are telling companies to leave them alone. Can technology play a role in giving consumers control over who contacts them and how?

To a certain extent. I would really say we look at it from the consumer point of view often. We talk to our clients about customer frustration. The state of customer service today is bad. There are too many menus: press one, press three, press five. From a consumer point of view, we're looking at how we can make the customer experience better. We've been spending the last several weeks thinking about that. We're helping customers design systems that do give consumers choices. We have a technology called virtual hold. If you call in and get a message that says your wait time is three minutes, you can keep your place in the queue and automatically get a call back, or schedule a time for a call back. It saves our customers the line charges of a customer on hold and it saves the customer from having to listening to bad hold music.

The Web is responsible for some fascinating changes, including the distinct possibility of being able to work from anywhere. I imagine huge numbers of employees working from home in flexible shifts, and not driving their cars and using office space. Is that where we're going?

Absolutely, yeah, I think so. I think companies are really looking at that. The innovative companies are jumping into it with both feet, but all companies are looking for ways to provide quality of life for their employees.