William J. "Duffy" Mich Jr. believes a fundamental aspect of CRM — respect the customer — must  not be ignored.

 "When we speak with customers about improving their customer care delivery, we always stress "When we speak with customers about improving their customer care delivery, we always stress that the mechanics and the dynamics of the call center are not solely for the benefit of the call center staff."  that the mechanics and the dynamics of the call center are  not  solely for the benefit of the call center staff," said Mich,  who  is the chairman, CEO, co-founder and majority owner of  Aperio CI. "You base your conversations on the needs of customers, who should always be treated with the utmost respect.

"Many of these new systems are driven by the premise that every customer contact is a sales opportunity and you must have the three next things to sell them on the screen so the rep can sell, sell, sell. I don’t think that's treating customers with respect and I've seen such systems backfire. The designers of those systems need to sit in call centers and … plug in and listen as the reps "The designers of those systems need to sit in call centers and … plug in and listen as the reps deal with real customers. It will probably be a catharsis that will force them to look at the way customers are handled a little differently." deal with real customers. It will probably be a catharsis that will force them to look at the way customers are handled a little differently."

A New Name

Mich's 15-year-old firm has undergone a rebranding exercise, having recently changed its name from Intelecom Systems Inc. When asked about the new name, he said Aperio is a Latin word meaning to discover, uncover or reveal. The “CI, ” he explains, stands for a number of core values that symbolize the company’s efforts, such as “client imperatives,” “customer information,” and “competitive intelligence.” Mich said the firm chose the name Aperio CI because it felt its previous name was too closely associated with the telecommunications industry, and would impede its entrance into new markets, such as banking, insurance, and utilities.

The organization's value proposition is being able to provide proprietary, data-driven customer acquisition and retention solutions to clients engaged in highly complex and competitive consumer-facing enterprises throughout North America and Europe.

"We study the data that's inherent in those industries. We study consumer behavior: What do they buy? When do they buy? Where do they call? Who do they call? When do they call? When do they use text? When do they use the Internet?"

When asked to elaborate, he cited his firm's experience in the telecom sector.

"We’ve studied the dynamics of disconnecting customers versus those customers who stay put with a carrier for a long time. We learn that customers who pay 35 percent or more above best price in the marketplace are seven times more likely to disconnect than those customers paying within 10 percent of best price in the marketplace. It's held true in fixed-line and in wireless in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia.

"We use that kind of rigorous thinking applied in hundreds of ways across thousands of data elements to help us design these data-driven marketing solutions. We use some of them to drive much more effective call center contact with customers…to derive Web-based systems for acquisition of customers [and] to design overall branding and marketing schemes for phone companies primarily, although we're branching into other industries more recently."

Empowering Consumer-Facing Providers

He defined his target market as including industries that are "consumer-facing" and sell across mass markets. The targeted sectors offer "multiple pricing plans and arrangements for different customers" where customer confusion regarding pricing is a hallmark of those industries, which include phone, banking, credit cards, insurance, auto, health, and retail.

The firm's clients include O2, a wireless carrier with about 15 million customers in the UK and approximately 5 million in Germany.

The company has also worked for MCI along with AT&T. The company has several delivery systems, and can manage its solutions on the customer site, at one of their data warehouses, or license the technology if customers choose to operate and maintain the systems themselves.

"Our solutions have a relatively low price of admission. Customers do not have to invest significant sums of money in hardware, software, licenses, internal training, management [and] project teams. Very often, we’ll work with companies who are transitioning their CRM operations and need a short-term solution that will enable them to remain competitive, so we’re comfortable working with clients both in short-and long-term situations.”

Addressing Client Challenges

When asked to describe his customer’s most pressing challenges, he included acquiring more customers—at a lower cost per acquisition—as well as retaining more customers, also for lower CRM costs. He also said that stimulating and expanding usage of services is a driver for many of Aperio CI’s customers.

"We tend to focus on what we can do that’s tangible and immediate and fully consistent with our customer’s strategic goals … rather than the big bang theory that says, 'Let's build the biggest data warehouse we can possibly build and somehow we'll get value out of it.' We're much more results-focused and driven by a sense of urgency in markets that change dramatically every six months to a year."

He also discussed his company's greatest challenge from a positioning perspective.

"[We must] overcome the prevailing beliefs that enormous CRM platforms offer a complete answer in conducting business. We face that resistance time and again because of the enormous investments businesses have made in their embedded legacy systems. We understand that, and we are very good at integrating our technology with these large systems. But we bring something else to the table: an easier, more cost-efficient means for gathering, reporting and analyzing this customer behavior. We are not in business to supplant these core systems. Our business helps add value to these systems by making them more relevant and more efficient to the customer.”

Pattern Of Behavior

Mich said his firm has identified a customer behavior pattern that allows for predicting churn in the telecom sector.

"We know that a given subset of customers that we can identify on a daily basis, that if we take no action, 85 percent of them will disconnect, and that's true whether it's fixed-line or wireless. We know that customers at the end of contract, or who are out of contract who call a competitor, will be gone in 14 days, most of them, if we don't take action. Armed with that knowledge … companies can begin making a difference from a CRM perspective in 30 days or 45 days.

"The data tells us that when customers call the competition, they leave us, unless we call them or write to them and make them an offer and do something proactive to save them."

When asked to comment on what the industry needs most, Mich said less of almost everything. This includes less networking and marketing capacity, fewer propositions and fewer people working on marketing propositions.

Understand The Customer

And what does it need? The answer: more understanding of customers.

"The industry needs less time in the office, and have every person who dreams up … billing systems, or CRM platforms, or branding or anything else to spend one day a month meeting real customers in retail stores or on the phone in telemarketing centers. That would eliminate about 90 percent of what we currently dream up in this industry."

He also commented on a factor driving down profitability: the turnover rate among call center staff members.

"The turnover rate among such staff is quite high, so there [are] new people who aren’t trained and experienced yet always being added to the call center staff. That turnover rate … is brutal on the profits of such companies."

He then returned to the importance of respect.

"If you make the call center conversations more professional, more respectful, and more satisfying for the agents, it reduces the stress level on the staff. They stay longer, which reduces training expense, which improves profitability overall."
"If you make the call center conversations more professional, more respectful, and more satisfying for the agents, it reduces the stress level on the staff."

Profits With No Debt

The privately held company, which is profitable with no debt, provides risk management in the VoIP space.

"VoIP is predominantly offered in an unlimited environment [and suffers] from scams since VoIP is often portable. We offer risk management, identifying customers misusing the service so action can be taken to mitigate the misuse of the service. We provide the analytics daily to help unlimited providers mitigate that risk."

When asked about the company's core competency, he said, "We listen to our clients, we listen to the data [and] we listen to the marketplace. "We listen to our clients, we listen to the data [and] we listen to the marketplace."

"We differentiate ourselves because we provide both products and services, outsourced and licensed, driven around the premise that 20 percent of the data available drives 95 percent of the value of marketing propositions. And we have the discipline, the strength and the experience to get to the value realized for our clients better, faster and more cost-effectively. Period. No exceptions."