Gallimaufry

By Erik Lounsbury
Editor, CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions

Perhaps too often, like children ripping open the box of complicated new toys and setting them up without first reading the instructions, we get caught up in the promise of new technologies and expect immediate return on investment without proper follow-through on their implementation and how they affect the business plan.

One company that has spent time reading the instructions is BellSouth Corporation, which has not only made its commitment to customer service its number-one priority, but also made sure it has the technology and training in place to back up its efforts. Looking at CRM as a focused, enterprise-wide strategy, BellSouth has integrated technologies and databases across all customer channels, looked at how agents and customers interact with them, and worked on developing new services for its clients. One example of these services is providing bill presentation and payment over the Internet through its "Pay By Mouse, Not By Mail" program, which has more than 100,000 users throughout BellSouth's area of service of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

According to Jai Menon at BellSouth, implementing a CRM policy meant changing from a product focus to a customer focus and creating a common view of the customer for all agents. To achieve this, BellSouth is using an Oracle 11i CRM package, has implemented sales force automation and marketing automation, is equipping fleet technicians with GPS and other technology to make them more efficient and responsive, and is using data analytics to better understand its customers. It has an electronic interface for middleware to its databases, is developing electronic customer information delivery and scaling to include click-to-chat and VoIP services for its customers. "Pulling together the systems through middleware has proven a great payback," said Menon.

"CRM is an ongoing process that revolves around the customer," he continued, "and we collect feedback from both customers and CSRs." To understand what it is like on the front lines, IT people spend time with the CSRs, which helps them when they are designing new applications. "CRM forms the foundation for moving forward," said Menon, and BellSouth strives to make sure the experience is seamless to both the customer and the CSR. And their efforts are paying off, as earlier this year they were ranked number one for the eighth straight year in the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index for the delivery of local telephone service and have won the JD Power Award for Residential Local Telephone Service Satisfaction four out of five years.

Workforce Optimization At Borders
The past few years have seen the installation of many ERP, CRM and e-commerce packages yet, by all accounts, customer satisfaction is still far from ideal. Focusing on technology is one way to increase productivity; another is to focus on the human element. Blue Pumpkin Software's Enterprise software is designed to do just that through workforce optimization, which involves aligning the workforce with business plans. Enterprise is designed to look at the skills of the agents in the contact center and help schedule across time zones, products and languages. Identifying the skills that are needed for agents can also help companies hire the right people as well as reduce training time and costs.

Borders Group is a leading global provider of books, music and movies, and through its affiliates operates more than 340 Borders Books and Music stores in the U.S., as well as 17 international Borders stores, approximately 860 Waldenbooks locations and 32 U.K.-based Book etc. stores. It depends heavily on the holiday season for revenue, obtaining 40 to 50 percent of its revenue and receiving a more than 30 percent surge in call volume during this time. Borders Group installed Blue Pumpkins' Enterprise software and last holiday season saw the benefits. Enterprise provides the employees with input into their schedule, which has increased employee satisfaction and, as we know, a contented employee is a more productive employee.

By concentrating on the two most required skills instead of cross-training agents on multiple skills, Borders Group was able to have seasonal staff on the phones 33 percent faster, which meant they were productive in one week instead of three. Borders Group has reported an 88 percent increase in service levels, a 53 percent increase in productivity, a 33 percent decrease in staff expenses, and its average answer time went from 30 to 40 seconds down to 10 seconds.

Service From The Philippines
Founded in 1999 by co-presidents Derek Holley and Jim Franke, who were previously at McKinsey & Co., eTelecare International is striving to become the leading company providing high-quality outsourced voice services offshore. Holley and Franke looked for the best place to provide a good telecommunications infrastructure and a large pool of English speakers, and decided on the Philippines.

According to Holley, eTelecare will hire only college graduates. The hiring process begins with phone screening, and progresses through skills testing, resume interviews, activity-based interviews, background checks and, finally, a tour of the facility and job activities. eTelecare maintains 15 recruiters. With such rigorous standards, only two percent of all applicants get offers.

In the Philippines, the position of CSR is an attractive job, and eTelecare strives to have its employees say it is a challenging job and that they grew in the job. Once hired, agents receive four weeks of foundation training, which includes training on American culture and geography. After the foundation training, agents are given client-specific training.

For system security, eTelecare has fiber and ISDN backup and UPS systems to maintain 100 percent end-to-end uptime. eTelecare has also passed four separate security audits, three by clients and one by an external group.

To maintain the quality of performance of the agents, it maintains a voice and data recording system from Witness Systems, and has a ratio of one supervisor per every eight associates (CSRs). eTelecare spends a goodly amount of time on developing employee performance, giving agents monthly scorecards and weekly coaching sessions, making sure each session ends with a goal for the next session. eTelecare maintains a quality management group that evaluates a minimum of 20 calls per agent per week. Clients can monitor real-time at any time, and also access voice and data recordings. eTelecare also has developed a performance management system to identify key performance indicators with clients.

eTelecare takes phone calls, e-mail, and Web-chat sessions for its clients. Calls to eTelecare's clients' customers come from across the U.S. to the eTelecare office in Los Angeles, from where they are routed over eTelecare's private network to the eTelecare contact center in the Philippines. "We are better suited for doing complex activities for Fortune 500 companies," said Holley, "and the more complex, the greater the cost saving for the client." At present, eTelecare has one contact center, is opening a second next month, and plans to establish a third by June 2002.

And From The Subcontinent
Providing outsourced customer service to Fortune 500 clients, Daksh was started in New Delhi, India in January 2000. Central to its business model is co-sourcing, with Daksh providing dedicated management and agent teams, training and systems to mimic in India what the client has in the U.S., allowing the client to have control of a program. Daksh CEO Sanjeev Aggarwal said this model has allowed Daksh to be profitable in its first financial year, and he reported they hope to do $15 million in sales this year. Daksh has been awarded the Frost & Sullivan Market Engineering Award for Customer Service Leadership 2001 in the Indian Outsourced Call Center Market.

Aggarwal said Daksh provides its employees an outstanding work culture and provides free transportation and meals to its employees and that more than 60 percent have stock options. Rejecting 90 percent of all people who apply for jobs, new hires must have at least three years of college, related industry experience, and strong computer, written and spoken skills. New hires receive two to four weeks of introductory training and also six to eight weeks of product training before beginning on a specific program. Every employee also receives two weeks of soft-skills training every year. All of this training, both online and classroom, takes place at "Daksh University," where Daksh has more than 30 trainers on staff. Daksh measures employee satisfaction every month, which has helped reduced turnover to less than 20 percent.

Daksh's online transaction capture system was developed in-house, and it has built a telecom infrastructure that includes a captive satellite earth station with 15 megabits dedicated bandwidth between its U.S. office and New Delhi. Daksh maintains robust and redundant connectivity, network security and high availability, robust computing and support infrastructure, and a thorough disaster recovery plan.

Daksh specializes in pre- and post-sales queries, billing inquiries and customer service, providing cross-sell and upsell as well. Daksh provides blended contact center services online, with two thirds of its business coming from e-mail and online text chat and one third coming from phone services. With 1,500 seats currently in place, Aggarwal has big plans for the future, looking to add 1,000 new employees every year and he expects Daksh to have revenues of around $35 to 40 million in 2002.

The author may be contacted at elounsbury@tmcnet.com.