Sight360 powered by OutPLEX, is the name given to this unique partnership. Today’s agreement will increase the capacity of Lighthouse Works’ call center operation and in turn create more jobs for individuals who are visually impaired including those who are blind.
“Individuals who are visually impaired make up a group that has traditionally experienced one of the highest rates of unemployment and underemployment among other disability groups,” said Lee Nasehi, President & CEO of Lighthouse Central Florida. “At Lighthouse, our mission is to help individuals, at any stage in their lives, chart a course for living, learning and earning with vision loss. The 4Sight360 partnership exemplifies an exciting opportunity for our workers, who are visually impaired, to earn in meaningful employment.”
Lighthouse Works, first established in 2011, is the revenue generating arm of Lighthouse Central Florida, Central Florida’s only private, nonprofit agency offering a complete range of services to people in our community living with sight impairment.
Lighthouse Works utilizes small business lines to fund and move forward the Lighthouse mission. As a subsidiary of Lighthouse, Lighthouse Works seeks to position itself as the region’s premiere provider of call center, sourcing solution and fulfillment services for commercial companies and publicly funded agencies.
Call center agents employed by Lighthouse Works currently provide support services to the healthcare, hospitality, financial investment and environmental services industries. This support includes: appointment setting, customer service and support, quality assurance and call monitoring. Additionally, the company’s sourcing solutions and fulfillment division has been awarded several million dollars in government funded contracts.
The agreement with OutPLEX offers a distributed, scalable solution on OutPLEX’s innovative technology platform. 4Sight360 agents, both sighted and visually impaired, will be able to enhance the experience of their clients’ customers by offering a seamless omni-channel approach that includes inbound call handling, live chat, email and social media management—all essential customer service tools in a digital age.
Special assistive and adaptive technology, like screen readers and text magnification software, has been integrated onto the 4Sight360 platform to better accommodate customer care agents who are visually impaired.
“Social responsibility has always been a corporate mandate at OutPLEX and 4Sight360 is a wonderful opportunity to simplify the process of onboarding a socially responsible BPO model,” said Jim Ryan, CEO of OutPLEX. “The 4Sight360 platform delivers superior customer interactions utilizing both visually impaired and sighted agents to service customers. ‘Powered by OutPLEX’ means we hire, train and operationalize contact center deployments. I’m so excited about this partnership, because it merges the core competencies of our two organizations to service clients with a reliable BPO channel, it fulfills a socially responsible mandate and empowers individuals who are visually impaired,” added Ryan.
ABOUT LIGHTHOUSE WORKS!
Lighthouse Works! is a social enterprise non-profit, which means its businesses exist to forward and fund our mission of living, learning and earning with vision loss. Through our wide range of businesses, we are able to provide job training, employment and career opportunities for the advancement of people who are visually impaired. Lighthouse Works! operates as a subsidiary of Lighthouse Central Florida—Central Florida’s only private, non-profit agency offering a comprehensive range of services to people living with sight impairment in Orange, Osceola, and Seminole Counties. Established in 1976, Lighthouse has served generations with comprehensive vision rehabilitation and employment services. Lighthouse Works! is affiliated with the National Industries for the Blind (NIB)—the nation’s largest employment resource for people who are blind. Additionally, Lighthouse Works! operates in partnership with the AbilityOne Program to secure quality product services to the federal government at fair market prices. To learn more, please visit: www.lighthouseworks.org.
ABOUT OUTPLEX
Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, OutPLEX is a leading call center and contact management services provider with multiple US operations and an international footprint with near shore facilities in the Dominican Republic. In 2005, OutPLEX launched a program for work at home representatives and became a pioneer in the contact center industry with a highly skilled distributed network of @home agents. For over 15 years, OutPLEX has serviced multiple government agencies and private industries in verticals such as Healthcare, Financial, Retail, Energy, Insurance, Technology, Travel, Telecommunications and more. OutPLEX is industry recognized as a top 50 PCI certified agency. All OutPLEX representatives are background checked, tested and screened. OutPLEX has over 25,000 certified representatives with over 2,000 candidates applying monthly. To learn more, please visit: www.outplex.com.