April 1999

Customer Relationship Management In Action

BY RICH TEHRANI,
GROUP PUBLISHER, TMC

The call center is at the heart of building strong customer relationships. Many of our readers and trade show attendees tell me how they have leveraged their call centers to keep their customers happy, before, during and after a sale. Sometimes I am lucky enough to communicate with readers of C@LL CENTER Solutions and learn how they are implementing call center products in concert with intelligent business ideas to achieve tremendous success. Recently, I was fortunate enough to enjoy a long lunch with two of the most pioneering and savvy entrepreneurs I know, Allen and Ken Alovis, founders of Lens Direct. Lens Direct (800-772-LENS) is a call center-based company that sells contact lenses and its founders are long-time readers of C@LL CENTER Solutions magazine. Coincidentally, I am a Lens Direct customer and have been for more than eight years. I have witnessed this company grow from a few people to more than 90 agents.

About seven years ago, I met Allen and Ken Alovis, two high-energy brothers who are brimming with new business ideas, when they were attending one of TMC's TCCS (Technology for Call Center Solutions) trade shows, which later became CTI EXPO. What is really refreshing about these brothers is that they don't just come up with ideas, they implement them -- and quickly. They seem to be doing very well -- establishing new businesses all the time.

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to speak with them as they purchased various pieces of hardware and software for their call center. These guys really did their homework and have put together a state-of-the-art center. I have also had the opportunity to watch them develop new business ideas -- all taking advantage of the strong call center foundation of Lens Direct. The first new company they spun off is Sunglass America -- a logical extension of the contact lens business. The Alovis brothers later formed Product Launch USA, a company responsible for launching a host of new companies such as a Telelinx, a call center service agency and more recently, elens.com, a company dedicated to selling contact lenses through e-commerce.

I jumped at the opportunity to once again meet with these entrepreneurs who are building business after business, all based on a very strong call center core. It was fascinating to learn during our recent lunch that Lens Direct started out with a single telephone and computer. Over time, they upgraded their single phone to a Panasonic DBS. Once they outgrew the Panasonic, they purchased a Fujitsu F9600 -- an ideal product to support the needs of the growing call center business. The Fujitsu switch is fully loaded with IntelliCenter, providing full CTI and screen pop functionality and includes a whisper function which provides the agent with information about the incoming call. The system is augmented with a Sundial predictive dialer. In addition, they rely on Mail Order Wizard, Haven Corporation's order entry program, for processing orders.

When you speak with both brothers, it is easy to understand why they have done so well. They believe that a strong customer support back-end is critical, as is a seamless blending of the customer relationship, regardless of medium. Most companies I e-mail, regardless of size, answer my e-mail in two days; these businessmen strive to have e-mail answered half an hour!

Ken Alovis summed up the perfect customer relationship by referring to the quality service IBM provides for his Aptiva computer. Ken smiled and got very enthusiastic when he told me that whenever he calls IBM's tech support center, they answer his questions quickly and correctly. Ken will be an Aptiva customer for life -- a pretty strong testimonial in a product category now considered a commodity business. This concept hasn't been lost on either brother in terms of their own business -- e.g., I can already order lenses on Saturday and will soon be able to do so on Sunday as well. Can your call center do that?

Beyond using the call center to build customer relationships, it is used to leverage one business unit's strengths and parlay them into another. When customers call to order contact lenses, they are scheduled to receive a subsequent outbound call from Sunglass America. Contact lens wearers are perfect candidates for sunglasses, as contacts make your eyes especially sensitive to light. Through the years I have lost as many pairs of sunglasses as anyone, but as luck would have it, the sunglasses I purchase are sold only through authorized retail establishments. If this were not the case, I would be first in line to buy my sunglasses through Sunglass America as I have always had great experiences dealing with Lens Direct and, indeed, I often recommend them to others.

Ken and Allen feel very strongly that "A customer will order from you only one time if you can't back up every sale with adequate service." This service must be in the form of live agents who are readily available to answer customer questions quickly and accurately. These representatives must also be able to quickly solve problems.

The call center is the central cog that supports the customer relationship -- it also nurtures this relationship. As e-commerce continues to grow in popularity, a strong call center is necessary to field back-end service and support. In fact, this is where Product Launch USA is headed. The Alovises have already secured a slew of catchy URLs: elens.com, eshades.com, sportsspot.com and pcstore.com. These new businesses will have the central support of the existing call center, which, of course, must evolve to manage e-mail and chat.

The e-commerce race is on and the opportunities will be greater than ever. Of course, e-commerce is more evolution than revolution. Commerce used to be conducted by traders who bartered for goods and services and was limited to other traders. Traders evolved to storefronts -- limited to local residents. Storefronts evolved to direct mailers and catalogers -- limited to whomever was on their mailing list (typically within the same country) -- and word of mouth. The first call centers spun off of the back-end of direct mail and then evolved to a strong outbound arm as well -- also limited to the same country. The latest evolution in this cycle is e-commerce and there are no natural limits. The rules, however, remain the same…keep your customers happy by maintaining strong relationships with them, and your business will always prosper.

Sincerely,

Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher
rtehrani@tmcnet.com

Call center technology is evolving at Internet speeds (an Internet year is defined as 45 days) and the Internet's effect on call centers will be fast and furious. In the last two years, almost every company I have heard of has developed a Web site. No other technology has ever forced so many to move so quickly. Some companies acted out of fear of being left behind, while others saw tremendous opportunity in implementing a Web site where the whole world could have access to their products and services.

The Internet's effect on the call center extends beyond the Web and e-commerce to the very infrastructure of the call center. By infrastructure, I mean the actual phone lines used to access your customer service agents. Telephone systems are typically bound by proprietary digital lines and the associated proprietary equipment that works on these lines. Voice/data switches are the next generation of PBX or ACD: these switches allow agents to be connected to open, nonproprietary digital connections such as ATM or Internet protocol (IP). (Click here for CTI magazine's February 1999 roundup of 14 voice/data switches.) Although we are not there yet, IP will become the new digital telephony standard and we will soon be able to buy telephony equipment from multiple manufacturers that works with the open voice/data switch.

Eventually, we will all have to implement a Web call button that connects Web surfers directly to our call centers. This will happen sooner than you think -- when it does, we will need to deal with IP telephony calls in our call centers. There are currently gateway products from companies like NetSpeak (www.netspeak.com) that bridge IP telephony calls to analog calls and back, but these are short-term fixes. Why convert IP calls to analog so they can be switched by your extremely expensive and proprietary call center hardware? Doesn't it make more sense to use software to switch calls in software where possible? Of course it does, and in fact, one company, PakNetX (www.paknetx.com), sells a software-only ACD based on IP telephony. PakNetX has a wonderful interactive demo of this technology on its Web site. Software is much cheaper than hardware and more efficient as well. Many voice/data switches can seamlessly handle IP telephony traffic and those with well-thought-out architectures can handle an incredible amount of IP calls at a very inexpensive price -- orders of magnitude less expensive than traditional ACD prices!

CTI EXPO is the only place you can go to explore a learning center filled with six vendors who will objectively educate you on the inner workings of the voice/data switch and how this incredible new product category will affect the way you manage your call center technology and products.

Three of the largest vendors in the voice/data switch category are Cisco (www.cisco.com -- their Selsius division, in particular), Nortel Networks (www.nortelnetworks.com) and Lucent (www.lucent.com -- their IP Exchange product line). For the first time ever, all three of these companies will be at CTI EXPO showcasing how the PBX and ACD will evolve. At least 10 other voice/data switch vendors will be represented at CTI EXPO as well. You simply must come see what all the excitement is about and compare the advanced features of these new products and see how they can make short work of many of the tedious call center problems you are now faced with.

Voice/data switches are incredible. They can easily and inexpensively connect remote agents and distributed call centers. They are infinitely programmable and more customizable than any previous telephony equipment we have ever witnessed. The voice/data switch demos I have seen are bewildering. I can't wait to get one here at TMC. If only the TMC Labs guys weren't so busy taking products apart all the time, we might have had one here already.

So the Internet keeps growing and its technology permeates everything we do and purchase. The latest benefactors are the PBX and ACD -- believe me, you must come to CTI EXPO and see these products for yourself. My words alone cannot do justice to the new technologies that will be on display at CTI EXPO. Come in person to kick the tires and look under the hoods to see the incredible innovations that will make our call centers more productive and allow you to finally take advantage of the advancements Internet technology has brought to the call center telephony world.

BY RICH TEHRANI, GROUP PUBLISHER, TMC

Many of you already know the history of TMC Labs. You'll recall that as a Computer Engineering student, I used to read each and every computer publication I could find. I would devour these magazines from cover to cover, paying special attention to the products they reviewed in their testing facilities. Upon graduation, I became the director of MIS at Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC). I would scour computer magazine test drives before purchasing any product. I was obsessed, sometimes reading hundreds of pages of reviews before making a purchasing decision.

Over the years, I realized that some of the magazines really devoted time and energy to developing a laboratory that tested products objectively and based their opinions purely on technological merit, while other magazines chose to cater their reviews to their advertisers. These magazines would simply write glowing reviews about any product submitted by a vendor who happened to advertise in the magazine! At the same time, I was spending hard earned company money and believe me, every penny was precious. The purchasing decisions I made could have broken the company if they were wrong.

Having grown up in this environment, I felt it was imperative to establish the telecom industry's first objective and in-depth telecom testing lab, and when I became Group Publisher of TMC's magazines, that's exactly what I did. TMC Labs serves the needs of our readers, not our advertisers. Many industry vendors use our Labs as the benchmark of success. Many products we start out to review don't even make it into our publications because, frankly, they don't meet our standards or yours.

Lately, we have received complaints from a few vendors that our reviews of their products are too harsh or that we don't give them enough credit for this feature or for that one. Most recently, we received a complaint from a large and reputable computer company. I always take customer complaints very seriously. Let me add that this product was reviewed by a leading PC magazine around the same time as TMC Labs reviewed it.

I reread the TMC Labs review in question and that of the PC publication and I couldn't believe how much more realistic the TMC Labs review was compared to the one from the other magazine. Can you believe the other review found no flaws with the product: no installation snafus; no room for improvement; no suggestions at all? In their eyes, the product was perfect.

I assume that as a reader of this magazine you actually use a computer and as such, you know that nothing ever works perfectly - EVER - under any circumstance. Let's face it. Every product has room for improvement and doesn't always install correctly.

In the last few years, many publishing companies have become publicly traded or have been acquired by publicly traded companies and this has had a major effect on their editorial quality. As a public company, your first loyalty must be to your public shareholders and not your readers. If your review states that an advertiser's product is inadequate and that advertiser decides to pull their advertising from your publication, you miss your earnings estimates and Wall Street hammers your stock - it's that simple.

At TMC Labs we have no such fear. We are a privately held publishing company and we depend on our reputation of providing you with the most objective, in-depth editorial coverage. We take our time with each and every review and we report on every nuance of the testing procedure. If the product fails during the installation process, we report that to you. If there's a problem, we report it. If the documentation seems to have been improperly translated from Martian, we tell you.

Our first and only loyalty is to our readers. We know that the reason for the success of TMC publications is due to readers like yourself who depend on objective and in-depth reviews you can trust to make product purchase decisions.