April 2002 

To provide you with a better picture on what to look for in a teleservices agency as well as what is going on in the industry, Customer Inter@ction Solutions' posed critical questions to executives at several leading teleservices outsourcers. Here, in their own words, are their responses about trends in the teleservices industry and some of the services they offer.

CIS: What are the guidelines for judicious selection of inbound teleservices?

Clark Sisson, APAC Customer Services, Inc.
When selecting an inbound vendor, companies should scrutinize potential vendors:

• Capabilities (Expertise, IT capabilities)
• Flexibility
• Price (not only the amount but how the pricing will be attributed to invoice, such as on a rep hourly rate, per call, per talk minute, or Pay for Performance)
• Center location (due to the wide variations of labor costs available today)
• Financial stability/longevity of company
• Ability to meet implementation timeframes
• Experience in supporting like applications
• Customer satisfaction rates - and experience in driving improvements
• Training and quality practices
• Type of technology - is it compatible with yours - and is it flexible enough to allow you to grow with your customers' changing demands

Rob Apel, Vice President of Sales, Advanced Data-Comm, Inc.
Is there a fit? Does the vendor have the capability to do what I need for a fair price? Also, is this a value-based partnership where both companies' corporate cultures match in terms of integrity, candor and outstanding service? Is there a good feeling about this vendor? Does this vendor have the size and technology to provide quality solutions that meet our needs?

William McKinney, Executive Director of Marketing, TeleTech, Inc.
Three basic questions should frame a well-designed outsourced selection process. First, firms should decide which activities should be outsourced and which should be kept in-house. For example, interactions that require a proprietary skill set or certification and advanced technical support are sometimes more cost-efficiently kept within the company. Second, firms should choose an outsourcing model. For some, engaging an outsourced provider to provide facilities management services at an existing site will be the most appropriate model. Others may wish to leverage offshore and near-shore opportunities by allowing that provider to choose the best solution for the client. Third, firms should decide whether they want to contract with a number of providers for different services or to pursue a partnership with a single firm able to meet a variety of needs. The latter strategy generally yields better returns, since economies of scale and common learning-curve completion allow a single provider to implement process, infrastructure and services much more rapidly.

Bill Rieke, Director, Industry Solutions, Convergys Corporation
When evaluating teleservices outsourcers, it is important to find a provider that:

• Understands the needs of the client and the specific needs of the inbound program
• Has the capability to craft solutions to those needs
• Has the on-going people and process to effectively manage the day-to-day operations
• Has vision that can be used by the client to help the client be more effective in their marketplace
• Has the financial strength to deliver results.

Paula Kruger, CRM General Manager, EDS

• This is a process that requires discipline and diligence, so you must do your homework.
• Define your outsourcing objectives.
• Develop a strategy for comparing potential providers and selection criteria.
• Understand where your business is going to be delivered geographically and analyze the demographic attractiveness of the area. Attrition rates will cost you in quality and ultimately in total spend.
• Identify providers who deliver best-in-class against your criteria.
• Solicit proposals.
• Revise selection criteria to account for creative proposals that pique your interest - providers that offer creative solutions you have not considered have potential to be valuable partners.
• Visit the providers that appear to best meet your revised selection criteria.
• Focus your time with the one or two vendors that meet your selection criteria and align with your corporate service culture - look for partner, not just a vendor.

Your criteria for a partner should take into consideration the following:

• The organization's ability to handle the volume of calls during peaks and valleys.
• The ability to bring the right technical solution to the client.
• A track record in industry-leading metric attainment for your particular line of business.
• A track record of delivering on commitments.
• Designated executive sponsorship and leaders responsible for ongoing communication with the client company.

John Bartholomew, Executive Vice President, LiveBridge
As in any relationship, the client and Agency need to share passion, commitment, flexibility, a common view of the future and willingness to be connected at dozens of points.

Dominic Dato, President and CEO of Teleperformance USA, representing the SR. Teleperformance Group and its Contact Center division, Teleperformance
Beyond technical requirements, one of the most important considerations that a company should give to selecting an outsource partner is the organization's culture and business philosophy for managing teleservices. A partner with similar core values will be a better fit in the long run.

A decision to outsource implies a decision to having your most valuable asset - your customers -- experience your brand through the resources mobilized by this partner. As such, companies should seek an experienced partner committed to proactively mobilize the resources necessary to deliver an excellent brand experience as well as to directly or indirectly increase customer value at every key customer facing moment.

John Duffy Campbell, President, ICT Sales, ICT Group, Inc. 
ICT recommends clients consider the following criteria when judiciously selecting their inbound customer care provider:

• Implementation and process expertise
• Average service performance levels (for similar programs)
• Referenceable accounts (i.e., proven track record of success)
• Industry-leading CRM technologies and/or IT support capabilities
• Expertise implementing the same or similar core requirements/program specifications
• Strategic solutions partner with strong financial performance
• Cost

CIS: What are the Do's and Don'ts of effective inbound outsourcing?

Paula Kruger, EDS
Do's

• Seek a partner - a company that acts as an extension of your organization.
• Outsource work that takes away from your ability to focus on core competencies.
• Look for opportunities to outsource multiple related functions so a provider can maximize productivity, yet provide resources dedicated to your business.
• Establish a baseline of metrics up front so you and the provider can agree on the baseline and the provider will be able to establish clear measures of improvement.
• Ensure there is constant communication between you and the provider.
• Ensure that process and insight are captured. For example, there may be key information or analytics that must occur or be looped back into the client's operating environment.
• Push the provider to continually provide innovative and cost-effective solutions.
• Get the provider involved in strategic discussions around the call center.
• Perform your roles relative to business strategy and operation oversight; let the provider perform its roles relative to people, process, technology, and facility. This will maximize the benefits of outsourcing.
• Ask the provider these questions.
  • How do you retain good employees?
  • What is your attrition level?
  • What is your succession/career development plan?
  • What is your technology footprint?
  • How do you track customer data?
  • How do you connect your business drivers (people, customer, business/financial) with performance against client contracts?
  • What types of risk-reward contracts do you enter into?

There are many other considerations, but these will give you a good sense of whether there is a good culture alignment between your company and the provider.

Don'ts

• Don't select a vendor on the basis of price alone.
• Don't jump into a relationship without having gone through the process and completed your homework.
• Don't enter into a contract that doesn't align you goals with the goals of the provider.

Dominic Dato, Teleperformance
Do's:

• Create an environment of shared information and planning. Experienced outsourcers can be most effective when they truly understand and share in the responsibility to reach your company's business objectives. This implies a high degree of confidence that must exist between the companies and the individuals representing the companies, but the benefit is significant to reaching objectives quickly and efficiently.
• Apply a customer value management approach. Organizing all stages of customer interfacing to deliver value - to the customer and to the company - allowing the company to compete on something other than price. At Teleperformance, we believe that leveraging customer acquisition skill sets in the customer service and help desk environments is an effective approach to ensuring that the customer brand experience is excellent and the incremental value that can be generated from each customer is fully optimized (profit center approach to customer service units).
• Ensure that the outsourcer has a strong inventory of technology & system solutions.
• Ensure that the outsourcer has experienced functional support teams that will be available to serve your unit's objectives (i.e., recruitment & training; application development; reporting & data processing; client services; quality assurance, etc.).
• Implement Best-in-Class techniques. A few examples include:
  • managing to key indicators - measurement, analysis, action
  • linking individual goals to overall unit goals
  • using technology to respond efficiently to customer needs (i.e., knowledge and FAQ databases, etc.)
  • using self-servicing tools when appropriate (IVR, Web-based self-servicing channels, etc.)
  • formalizing unit knowledge and making it transferable through knowledge databases, well-documented processes, training and information product 'libraries'.

Don'ts:

• Don't expect outsourcing to cure all of your problems or issues. If your current group is encountering problems with procedures, barriers and customer concerns, changing the people that are fielding the calls isn't a quick fix solution.
• Don't follow a lowest price philosophy. In order to maximize the potential lifetime value of each customer, you may need to spend a bit more money in the early stages of the lifecycle on training, quality of reps or technology.

John Duffy Campbell, ICT Group

Do's:

• In order for an outsourced customer care relationship to be successful, clients must clearly establish their objectives and critical requirements and articulate what they expect to get from the outsourced partnership.
• Clients should understand the outsourced provider's hiring, training and quality development processes.
• Clients should negotiate a comprehensive contract, detailing acceptable service levels and other measures on which to fairly judge the outsourcer's performance. The contract must protect and reward both parties and act as the foundation for a long-term partnership.
• Evaluate the outsourcer's people - from its senior management staff to its customer sales and service representatives. The outsourced provider and client must have mutual trust and respect for each other. Regardless of the latest advances in CRM technology, the success of a contact center still lies in the quality of its people.
• Evaluate each critical area of an outsourced provider's support infrastructure, from its technology and IT platform to its quality assurance and training procedures. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Don'ts:

• Don't forget that flexibility is key. Without it, the outsourced relationship will flounder.
• Don't ignore the need for ongoing communication, which is critical to the longevity and success of any outsourced program. Without it, there are no guarantees the relationship will survive.
• Don't ignore the need to monitor program performance and jointly develop and implement continuous development/process improvement techniques to refine and enhance the value of an outsourced relationship.

William McKinney, TeleTech, Inc.
Requests for proposals are commonly used tools in the outsourcing industry, but all too often, customer care firms are not given a true request for proposal, but rather a request for price. This is unfortunate, since there is a good deal of fiscal 'distance' between the basic unit price for services and the effective price; factors like poor process design and skills utilization, lost revenue opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling, and incorrect channel selection add up to substantial figures rather quickly. Allowing an inbound outsourcer the opportunity to create a true proposal, an analysis of the existing customer interaction system with recommendations for streamlining and optimizing that system, is a much more effective way to outsource inbound customer care.

John Bartholomew, LiveBridge
Do's: Clear shared objectives, common technology visions, matching cultures and expectations.

Don'ts: Non-matching expectations, little planning, managing to the wrong things.

Rob Apel, Advanced Data-Comm, Inc.
The Do's of effective inbound outsourcing encompass a good scope of work as well as a solid expectation of what the vendor is expected to do. Don't make decisions without visiting the call center. Don't walk away after the project is up and running. Do keep the vendor informed of changes or promotions within your company. Do monitor project performance: fast, good, cheap (pick two!). Also, make sure you know where you stand in the customer's client mix (e.g., are you the largest, smallest client). Do they have similar customers (big and small)? Are they technologically challenged?

Clark Sisson, APAC Customer Services
Do's: Check references; get a detailed action plan on how the service provider will support your operation and implementation; specify clear an consistent expectations and consequences; provide outsourcer with as much information as possible to allow your vendor to create a comprehensive solution to meet the business needs of your customer; stay involved (outsourcing doesn't mean walking away from the business.); establish consistent communication with the service provider including daily reports, daily or weekly performance update calls, quality calibration sessions, and formal monthly performance review sessions.

Don'ts: Don't outsource on price alone. Lower costs can attribute lower quality service, lower representative efficiency and/or lower technical ingenuity - often costing costs companies more during the course of a contract than if they were to sign with a higher priced service provider.

Don't assume the service provider understands your expectations. Ask for a documented plan! Don't let the service provider dictate to you. It is your business and your money. Set expectations and demand that the service provider adhere to them.

Bill Rieke, Convergys Corporation
Do's

• The purpose of the inbound program should be supported by a clear business model.
• All the execution elements should be planned and complete, including advertising, fulfillment, etc.
• Share and partner with an outsourcer forecasted call volumes and other key program elements.
• Plan together with outsourcer all key changes in program design, fulfillment, advertising, etc., in order to achieve maximum results.
• Look for an outsourcing partner who can implement and effectively manage even last minute changes.

CIS: What new services are you offering?

Alicia Miyares, vice president of marketing, Precision Response Corporation
In addition to our traditional inbound and outbound consumer care services, PRC has added eLearning and more robust Marketing Services to our list of offerings. In 2001, PRC acquired Avaltus, Inc., an eLearning and Learning Content Management system provider. PRC Database Management group was renamed to "PRC Marketing Services" after adding more robust data warehousing and outbound email campaign management capabilities. In addition to these additions, PRC remains on the cutting-edge of web service technologies with continued enhancements to its suite of eCommerce customer care offerings including more robust VoIP capabilities and more robust chat services.

Dominic Dato, Teleperformance
One of the most exciting offerings that clients are taking advantage of is Teleperformance's ability to provide a domestic and offshore mix - including a range of offshore country options.

Companies who delocalize customer contact activities via an outsourcer should expect the same outsourcing benefits as for local-based operations described previously, plus an expertise in managing in international markets.

Centralization of processes and a common technology platform in the local market ensure that clients reach their business objectives and service standards with the cost-benefit of offshore prices quickly

The best activities to delocalize are well-defined and have benchmarked experience. There are enough challenges in migrating a well-developed activity offshore, the additional challenges of migrating an evolving activity offshore could significantly slow the company down in achieving its objectives, ultimately costing significantly more in terms of direct costs, indirect costs and competitive edge.

Bill Rieke, Convergys Corporation
Convergys is currently offering a new service called Interactive Alerts.

Convergys Interactive Alerts are a means for our clients to quickly, cost-effectively and pro-actively interact with large numbers of customers on a personalized basis. Using the customer's own preferences and personal information, our clients can reach out via multiple voice and electronic delivery channels with communications that can be tailored according to business needs. CIA then forms a closed loop CRM system by providing the customers with the ability to take immediate action via customized, interactive response options - including the ability to speak to a contact center agent or interact directly with automated customer service systems. CIA also allows clients to immediately interact with fulfillment and payment processing applications

Also, in an expansion to our offshore operations in target regions around the world, Convergys' newest contact center facility in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi, India, took its first live call on Thursday, October 18, 2001. At capacity, our Gurgaon site will be the largest outsourced call center in India. Convergys India Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of Convergys, which sets us apart from our domestic competitors as the only 100% owned outsourcer in India, and gives us complete control of our own end-to- end operations process, just as we do in the U.S. and Canada.

John Bartholomew, LiveBridge
The recent services which have been introduced are an IVR/Live Blending program, a knowledge base search engine called "Ask the Bridge", a Blended Licensed Insurance Component, a joint venture arm, and "LiveBridge" on your desktop "a remote realtime enterprise view of client activity.

John Duffy Campbell, ICT Group
ICT continues to offer value-added, strategic marketing services as part of its fully integrated suite of outsourced CRM solutions. In addition to our outsourced customer care, telesales, cross-selling/upselling, technical support/help desk, e-mail management, collaborative Web browsing and contact center management services, we also offer value-added market research and database marketing services.

Our latest value-added marketing service, targeted specifically for the pharmaceutical industry, is Direct Response Medical Detailing (DrMDSM) - an innovative data modeling and multi-channel detailing program designed to optimize pharmaceutical sales programs and increase physician-prescribing activity. This is just one example of how ICT has continued to add value to its CRM solutions, by combining its basic sales and service expertise with sophisticated, value-added tools such as database marketing/modeling. The result is more targeted, strategic CRM solutions designed to improve customer satisfaction and increase clients' bottom line.

ICT also continues to expand its operations globally, in order to grow with our clients and support their multi-lingual and geographic expansion initiatives. Today, we operate 44+ outsourced contact centers spanning the U.S., Canada, Europe (EMEA), Asia, the Caribbean and Australia, making us uniquely qualified to provide clients with alternative, cost-effective solutions, regardless of geographic boundaries.

In addition to fully outsourced solutions, clients can also access ICT's world-class CRM technologies on a hosted basis, for use by their own in-house staff. Or, they are available on a flexible co-sourced basis, which uses the shared resources and technologies of ICT and its clients.

William McKinney, TeleTech, Inc.
TeleTech continues to lead the marketplace in developing new, integrated service offerings. Particular focus areas for 2002 include adding tailored solutions for emerging vertical markets, broadening the spectrum of customer lifecycle stages that are serviced through TeleTech's customer care offerings, and leveraging innovative offshore and near-shore outsourcing opportunities.

Paula Kruger, EDS
EDS provides a complete range of Customer Interaction Solutions to our clients. These include strategic consulting, implementation, integration, ROI analysis, and outsourcing to our clients. Specific services include:

• Strategic Consulting - Tying the strategic requirements of the organization to the requirements in the call center.
• Assessments - Assessing the people, processes, and technology of the client's environment to aid in such things as technology evaluations, operational assessments, and call center consolidations.
• Integration and implementation of customer interaction technologies.
• Outsourcing - Full multichannel outsourcing of the client's customer interaction environment at the client's site or in a dedicated facility. Services provided include Customer Relations, Technical Product Support, Lead Generation to Sales, and Roadside and Emergency Services.

Rob Apel, Advanced Data-Comm, Inc.
Some of the new services we are offering include the ability to take and receive e-mail, voice data and chat.

Clark Sisson, APAC Customer Services
APAC has expanded its capabilities in specialized markets, including

• adding licensed pharmaceutical offering to our industry leading licensed insurance agent solutions
• adding a Third Party Administration tool to e.PAC to help our clients reduce human errors and cycle time of administration functions such as claims processing, repair scheduling and dispatch, etc.
• improving our customer retention solution to help our clients retain critical consumers and businesses
• added a new sales modeling tool to help clients analyze their consumer profiles and generate a higher profit on each customer contact
• In addition, we have expanded the integration of our proprietary approach to turn simple customer service interactions into sales opportunities, helping our clients identify and maximize alternate revenue streams.

CIS: To what extent are you involved in CRM and are you currently offering CRM services?

Rob Apel, Advanced Data-Comm, Inc.
Advanced Data-Comm provides customer relationship management (CRM) applications to assist clients in building lasting customer relationships and to turn customer satisfaction into customer loyalty. We provide high-end customer service with effective tracking mechanisms. We are handling smaller programs (10-20 agents) using a number of CRM applications (phone, fax or e-mail) for clients in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer environment.

Bill Rieke, Convergys Corporation
Yes we offer CRM services, however we define customer relationship management solutions within the context of a newly defined area called "Knowledge Management." We believe that from the perspective of outsourcing, our focus relative to enhancing customer relationship for our clients is to increase customer satisfaction, optimize customer lifetime value and increase customer loyalty while decreasing cost of operations. This is offered through advanced marketing sciences, intelligent lifecycle applications and products and supported by highly specialized professionals, focused on the contact center business. Convergys Knowledge Management solutions are measured by performance-based results that demonstrate a positive impact on the client's bottom line.

John Duffy Campbell, ICT Group
ICT is a leading global provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions serving clients in the financial, insurance, telecommunications, health care, information technology, media and energy services industries. For the year ended 2001, the Company reported revenue of $239.3 million.

ICT's fully integrated suite of CRM solutions is designed to help clients identify, acquire, retain, service, measure and maximize the lifetime value of their customer relationships. Our solutions include: outsourced customer care and sales, cross-selling and upselling, technical support/help desk, e-mail management and collaborative Web browsing as well as contact center consulting, overflow support and disaster recovery. ICT also offers value-added market research and database marketing services (e.g., DrMD for the pharmaceutical market) as well as hosted CRM technologies, including Siebel Sales Force Automation, and flexible co-sourced solutions.

Alicia Miyares, Precision Response Corp.
PRC is an experienced provider of CRM services. Approximately 2 years ago, PRC developed proprietary CRM technology that has been deployed for many of the clients that it services today. This proprietary solution is a cost and time effective alternative for clients who are interested in using CRM as a tool to better support its consumer base. On the back-end, PRC has robust data and marketing services capabilities, in-house, to fuel the front-line agents with the customer intelligence they need to better serve and support them.

William McKinney, Executive Director of Marketing, TeleTech, Inc.
TeleTech has always been a CRM firm, in the strict sense of the word, although the CRM industry is in the midst of transitioning from its recent software focus back to a more value-oriented, integrated, service-centric approach. That approach has been TeleTech's vision for the past twenty years, and it remains the central organizing concept that informs our service delivery model.

Paula Kruger, EDS
EDS offers the true integration of Business Intelligence into the call center "touchpoint." There is an enormous amount of data that comes into and out of a call center. EDS has developed tools and processes - and has the human resources - to integrate a client's data strategy, customer strategy and "touchpoint" strategy.

Clark Sisson, APAC Customer Services
Our core business is developing customized solutions to our clients' customer relationship management issues, and we have 28 years of success with some of the largest and most respected firms in the US. Technologically speaking, APAC's e.PAC product includes a complete CRM knowledge base - and integrates multiple contact channels into a single solution for interaction centers. e.PAC is also available as an ASP model product. e.PAC, is scalable, allowing a client to add channels as needed, and then grow to meet their customers needs.

Dominic Dato, Teleperformance
While Teleperformance has been delivering CRM solutions to its clients, our solution has evolved to a slightly different model: customer value management (CVM). The CVM approach allows for the measurement and the optimization of incremental customer value generated via customer programs throughout the entire lifecycle (acquisition, retention, technical assistance, billing & debt collection, loyalty programs, cross- & up-selling). Further, our data-mining and marketing research capabilities allow for better customer knowledge and assist in better targeting the mix offer/action/media to each customer profile and his specific needs.

John Bartholomew, LiveBridge
LiveBridge has been in CRM for over 2 years, offering the software and functionality to handle all types of customer touch points via the Internet.

CIS: To what extent is your call center Web-enabled?

Dominic Dato, Teleperformance
Teleperformance has a complete Web offering that complements traditional phone channels. We view our facilities as customer contact centers, with contacts being defined as voice, fax, e-mail, chat and page push technologies. In this day and age it is imperative to be able to communicate with customers and prospects via the communication channel they indicate preference towards.

Rob Apel, Advanced Data-Comm, Inc.
Our workstations are fully equipped with high performance, Internet-enabled PCs via a T-1 connection. In addition, we can provide VPN (Virtual Private Network) technology to those vendors who require it. Our multiple call center sites share Internet access with each other via our WAN, and all call center employees have access to e-mail, FTP, and Web-browsing. Advanced Data-Comm is constantly evaluating new technologies for future planning and potential implementation to keep up-to-date with the newest technological advances.

John Bartholomew, Executive Vice President, LiveBridge
All of our call centers are Web-enabled with full Internet access.

Alicia Miyares, Vice President of Marketing, Precision Response Corp.
PRC's domestic and international centers have been completely Web-enabled for nearly four years. In fact, PRC was the first company in its space to create a wholly owned subsidiary dedicated to Web customer service. Today, PRC continues to lead the industry with proactive Web customer care - PRC Netpro, simple to complex chat and VoIP capabilities, and even a web self-service offering.

In addition, all of PRC's agent-facing applications are Web-enabled.

Paula Kruger, EDS
All of our leveraged Customer Interaction Centers are Web-enabled. EDS also provides e-mail, chat, knowledge base, and Web collaboration services to our clients. EDS will create an appropriate Web solution depending on the client's needs.

William McKinney, TeleTech, Inc.
Every TeleTech workstation has Web service capabilities, although the degree to which those capabilities are used is subject to the services being provided for the program that workstation is assigned to.

Clark Sisson, Senior Vice President of Business Relationships, APAC Customer Services
All of our 47 centers are Web enabled - and because our flexible, channel integration platform, e.PAC, can be quickly implemented - we can expand on current service delivery in any of our centers to meet even the quickest implementation deadlines.

Bill Rieke, Convergys Corporation
Convergys contact centers are equipped with secure, high capacity pipelines to the Internet that are used in a variety of ways depending on the client being serviced. At the desktop level, agents can send and receive email, engage in text chat and participate in a collaboration session with a client's customers when required by business needs.

John Duffy Campbell, ICT Group
ICT's global network of 44+ contact centers uses the latest in CRM technologies produced by such industry leaders as Siebel, Aspect, Oracle, Cisco, Avaya and Syntellect to name a few. Our outsourced contact centers are Web-enabled, providing clients with the opportunity to provide live agent Internet support services for their e-business sales and service applications. We offer such eCRM capabilities as collaborative Web browsing (allowing for 2-way communication via text chat, call back to a second phone line or VoIP) and automated e-mail management and processing services. We also offer alert notification services and Internet self-help solutions as part of our eCRM, Web-enabled customer care.

CIS: Do you offer e-mail management services?

Bill Rieke, Convergys Corporation
Yes. We offer high-volume inbound response services using a variety of sophisticated e-mail response management platforms and specially trained agents. We also offer outbound e-mail services for clients that want us to handle proactive customer care programs such as specific marketing campaigns or event-triggered alerts.

Clark Sisson, Senior, APAC Customer Services
Absolutely. In fact, APAC has been delivering e-mail management solutions for clients for nearly 10 years, now. Of course, the addition of our e.PAC product has greatly enhanced these services with real-time reporting capabilities, automated responses, instant messaging, chat, and automated management, service prioritization level assignments, self-service links for greater customer control over information, and a set of powerful knowledge base capabilities to drive enterprise e-mail management.

William McKinney, TeleTech, Inc.
TeleTech uses both its own platform and a variety of third-party packages for electronic mail management. E-mail is an important element of TeleTech's global service provisioning strategy, since site managers can level the peaks and valleys of demand by diverting e-mail responses to periods of low telephone activity.

John Bartholomew, Executive Vice President, LiveBridge
Yes, we offer e-mail management services.

Dominic Dato, Teleperformance
The e-mail management solution Teleperformance provides includes the following features:

• A sophisticated rules-based routing engine examines inbound e-mails and takes appropriate action based on the content of the e-mail;
• Rapid e-mail author which organizes e-mail response text into "blocks" that can be quickly selected, moved, deleted, and inserted; categorization - inbound e-mails are categorized and grouped based on similar content.
• Automated suggestions, personalized salutations and closing "signatures" and file attachments
• Quality assurance monitoring

Alicia Miyares, Precision Response Corp.
PRC offers two types of e-mail management services. PRC SmartMail is the technology that enables PRC's Consumer Care Representatives to quickly and effectively respond to their clients consumer's e-mails. PRC offers this service both domestically and offshore, and presently handles inbound e-mails for clients in the travel, financial services, and consumer goods industries. The other type of email service is Outbound E-mail management. PRC has been offering this type of outbound campaign management for approximately 15 months.

John Duffy Campbell, ICT Group
ICT offers automated e-mail management services, using technology produced by Avaya. The system handles incoming e-mail messages similar to the way voice-based calls are received and tracked through the Aspect ACD switch. ICT's e-mail management solution has advanced skill-based routing and queuing capabilities, helping to ensure that clients' e-mail inquiries are treated quickly and consistently, by a trained group of representatives matching the client's skill set requirements/profile.

Paula Kruger, EDS
Yes.

Rob Apel, Vice President of Sales, Advanced Data-Comm, Inc.
Yes, Advanced Data-Comm has provided a wide variety of e-mail management services for several clients. For example, we have provided agent assisted e-mails in regards to customer service, order taking and complaint escalation.

CIS: What are the hottest industries currently using inbound teleservices?

John Duffy Campbell, ICT Group
Strong demand continues to come from traditional industries including financial services, insurance, telecommunications, health care, information technology and energy services. ICT is noticing an increased trend, however, in outsourced technical support/help desk services as well as continued, strong demand from pharmaceutical clients and Fortune 1000 retail companies across a number of different vertical sectors.

John Bartholomew, LiveBridge
The hottest industries using inbound teleservices are the growth industries within the broad category of telecommunications where superior sales and service is required to garner and maintain market share.

William McKinney, TeleTech, Inc.
Beyond the traditional horizons of industries commonly associated with strong customer care demand - such as telecommunications and financial services - TeleTech sees substantial opportunity in identifying the unique customer care challenges of each industry and designing innovate ways to address those challenges. In the end, the winners in the customer care marketplace will be those organizations that can create demand for creative, tailored service packages.

Dominic Dato, Teleperformance
Momentum has picked up in industries that have traditionally had captive audiences and customer lifecycle issues have not been as prominent in their customer management priorities.

With new and greater choices available as well as the current state of deregulation, the utility industry is one of the newest industries to examine how inbound contact centers fit into their strategy.

Another example would be telecommunications and Internet service providers. With an almost unprecedented proliferation of choices and relatively low barriers for defection, delivering an excellent brand experience through customer-facing opportunities (enquiries, customer service questions or issues) has increased as a strategic differentiator.

Rob Apel, Advanced Data-Comm, Inc.
Traditional outbound marketers are looking to inbound as federal regulations make outbound telemarketing more difficult. Also, industries in the midst of deregulation, specifically energy.

Clark Sisson, APAC Customer Services
There is a lot happening in many industries: a) the wireless capability explosion and state that our expectation is that more inbound programs will be needed to introduce/explain capabilities to consumers; b) since last year, we see a huge increase in mortgage banking and another push in self-service banking interactions, such as debit cards, speed pass, etc.; and c) Loyalty programs are huge right now, especially as retailers grapple for fewer consumer dollars.

Generally though, we find that, overall, more and more clients are looking for higher quality service and programs focused on retaining consumers.

Paula Kruger, EDS

• High technology
• Financial services
• Retail/consumer goods
• Travel and transportation
• Telecommunications

Alicia Miyares, Precision Response Corp.
Two hot industries that we have identified are clearly travel and financial services.

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