February 2004

With the Customer Inter@ction Solutions' 2003 Quality Awards, we celebrate eleven years of the continual refinement of the methods, the technologies and the human quest for smarter, more efficient business services and communications that now come to define the contact center. These contact centers exist to get the job done while respecting the wishes and serving the needs of both the business world and the consumer world, providing both the technical and the human sides of CRM.

This year's Quality Award winners exemplify the search for excellence. Through extensive essays, they have demonstrated to the editors of Customer Inter@ction Solutions' their ability to build a feeling of community within their companies, while providing the best they can give to their clients. They have accomplished this through analytical thinking about business tools and processes and the building of partnerships, not only within the company but also with clients and the communities they serve. The ceaseless efforts of many thousands of individuals are represented by the winning companies, showing a true commitment to high ethical standards, stringent policies and challenging goals in pursuit of a stronger economic future for all.

The following brief extracts from the extensive award-winning applications are included to provide readers with a glimpse of what the companies provided as their standards for quality. We invite you to examine each company more closely if you are looking for a guide or partner for better teleservices and CRM.
All 2003 MVP Quality Award applicants were rigorously judged on 15 areas. Each area was given a score from 0 to 5. Entrants described a specific teleservices program and its results, and explained its overall policies and procedures, including human resources, technologies, customer services, ergonomics and public image that are used to establish, sustain and measure the program's quality. 
Judging the applicants was an arduous task, and scores were not given lightly. Judges were required to not only assign a numerical value to each evaluation point, but also cite a reason and evidence from the application for the score.

To all of the winners, we extend our congratulations.

Access Direct
Outbound, B-C, Telephone ' Gold
www.accdir.com
Q: Explain how quality has evolved in your call center, how it is sustained and how it is measured.
A: Autonomy ' All QA supervisors report directly to the director of training & quality assurance who reports directly to the VP of operations. This reporting structure allows for unbiased reporting of the quality of the call center.
Objectivity ' Each monitor form is comprised of 27 different sales skills grouped in 5 basic areas of call quality. Online monitoring database ' Our Web-based reporting tool has been deployed across all centers and all campaigns so that management and operations personnel can now view campaign performance metrics on production and quality after each shift, detailed by program, campaign or by TSR. Reporting tools ' Developed to focus on key points of business: daily reporting, posted TSR stats, sales skill improvement, summary of sales skills.
Quality Assurance Honor Roll ' On a daily basis, TSRs can be awarded 100 percent Monitor Award certificates for receiving a perfect monitor form. It is not uncommon to see nearly 40 percent of our current TSR staff listed on the company's QA Honor Roll.

Aegis Communications Group, Inc.
Inbound, B-C, Telephone ' Gold
www.aegiscomgroup.com
Q: Specifically state your policies on quality and your company's philosophy/motto on quality.
A: Our guiding quality motto is: Delivering all around excellence in customer service by exceeding Aegis and client standards. We've reinforced this commitment to quality through our strategic initiative called the Aegis Guarantee. Since Aegis guarantees added value in every engagement, we've got to focus on quality. That's why Aegis invests in a comprehensive quality assurance program. We work with our clients to clearly define their performance goals and requirements. Our QA team continually monitors our associates using Witness technology. We continually strive to identify new profit opportunities or ways to reduce costs ' all to deliver extra value. Finally, we provide constant feedback to our clients and our associates so we can make the necessary changes to meet and exceed the goals of our clients.

APAC Customer Services, Inc.
Inbound & Outbound, B-C, Telephone ' Gold
1-800-OUTSOURCE
Q: How do you measure customer satisfaction?
A: Customer satisfaction survey ' At the end of each call, customers are routed to a Customer Satisfaction Survey conducted within a confidential IVR designed, developed and implemented by APAC. The IVR asks customers to score our representatives in five categories (friendliness, willingness to help, product knowledge, overall comparison to other service agents they have encountered and the call hold time).
Quarterly satisfaction survey ' APAC supplies quarterly satisfaction surveys reviewing our performance to clients. The results are communicated to the entire team and areas of improvement are expanded upon into formal action plans.
Customer escalations ' Are tracked and issue identification is tracked and analyzed to identify representative/staff member frequency, issue frequency, supervisors and/or Lead Gate staff frequency, demographics, etc.
Frequent communications/assessments ' Our systems require call disposition of data, which we have customized to include dissatisfaction topics. These calls and call types are tracked and modeled to analyze trends in call or customer satisfaction.

CCC Interactive Corporation
Inbound, B-C, Telephone ' Silver
www.cccinteractive.com
Q: What do you do for customers that gives them the impression of quality and high ethical standards?
A: Our quality process is the foundation for each of our clients. We work closely with our clients to refine this process based on their internal customer focus and business needs. Our evaluation forms and basis for agent feedback are constantly refined to 'raise the bar' on the level of focus placed with each customer interaction. Our quality system is state-of-the-art, allowing all monitoring and evaluations to take place in an electronic environment. In addition, we allow our clients 24/7 access to monitoring agent call and viewing performance. Our trending analysis and reporting is state-of-the-art in the customer care industry. In addition, we provide agents with ethics training during their tenure with CCC Interactive. We ensure the proper process and checks and balances are in place to ensure the highest level of ethics are attained with each customer contact.

Colwell & Salmon Communications, Inc.
Outbound, B-B, Telephone ' Gold
www.colwell-salmon.com
Q: Describe all efforts made to make your work environment more stress-free and ergonomically correct.
A: We have available for our employees wrist pads, hands-free phone sets and computer screen filters. We also provide a pleasant and nicely decorated, non-smoking environment with natural lighting, sky lights, art work, numerous plants and larger-than-average workstations with sound barrier partitions that have a nice plan layout, not just rows. In addition, a lounge area is located in the rest rooms and picnic tables are located outside the office building. Over the past couple of years, Colwell & Salmon has upgraded and invested in larger workstations, providing more filing space and increased desk area space as well as more comfortable and ergonomically correct seating for our account representatives, creating a more pleasant, comfortable and efficient workspace. This past year, Colwell & Salmon acquired additional space, adding a new lunchroom for our employees. This space is painted in a brighter, warmer color to create a different setting than the office and includes round and oblong tables, all kitchen amenities, multiple vending machines and a television.

The Connection
Inbound, B-C, Telephone ' Silver
www.the-connection.com
Q: What is special or unique about your staff that contributes to quality?
A: We strongly believe in the service values and employee-focused cultures that can often be found in rural communities. We've found that the benefits of locating our call centers in these rural communities is that we can attract top-notch employees with strong work ethics in whose skill development we invest. Our five call centers are located in rural communities throughout Nebraska and New Mexico. Our agents view their role with The Connection as more than just a job. They see it as a long-term career. Through increased investment in training and staff development, call center management teams help improve the skills of their staffs. Our employees develop a strong loyalty to The Connection and often work to promote a positive image of our company within their communities. We are often the first or second largest employer in the communities in which our call centers are located. Each of The Connection's call centers works like a tight-knit community. Many of our employees consider their coworkers to be their second family. They support one another and create a very positive energy in the office.

Convergys Corporation
Inbound & Outbound, B-B & B-C, Integrated ' Gold
www.convergys.com
Q: Describe all efforts to promote the quality image of teleservices to the public.
A: An excellent example of Convergys' promotion of positive teleservices programs for the public was our volunteer service in the 'Tribute To Heroes' telethon (9-21-01) to benefit the United Way and New York Trust's September 11th fund. With only three days' preparation, 16 Convergys contact centers and over 4,000 employees voluntarily handled 125,000 calls to raise $10 million for that worthwhile cause.
Another example of Convergys' promotion of positive teleservices programs for the public is Vote411.net, a speech-enabled Web site using Convergys' Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR) technology. The application is designed to allow the capture and monitoring of Election Day voter turnout and voting irregularities. Vote411 is a sophisticated Internet-based application driven by Convergys' capabilities to collect nationwide poll monitoring activities by telephone. Voice information about election-related issues or problems is recorded via a toll-free telephone number and posted to the Vote411.net Web site, allowing real-time access to the data from any location. Finally, we are a member of a number of organizations dedicated to the teleservices/direct marketing industry. This enables Convergys to be more involved in the decision making on important issues that affect the image and operation of teleservices companies.

Creative Marketing Strategies, Inc.
Outbound, B-B, Telephone ' Bronze
www.cmsgrp.com
Q: Explain how quality has evolved in your contact center, how it is sustained and how it is measured.
A: Our company values an environment that encourages employee integrity, creativity and a spirit of excitement and teamwork, which provides an opportunity for personal challenge and growth. While it may seem clich' to describe ourselves as a 'family' business, we are a close-knit organization that has built trust and respect within our company. All account managers from the Client Service group began as TSRs and have been promoted from within. This experience allows them to implement the goals of the program with the skills of the floor. Also:
Systems are centralized ' Support Center, Quality Assurance and Programming. In doing this, we achieve a unified standard across all centers.
Programming ' Our IT department must approve all campaign programming. The QA procedure ensures the front-end scripting and back-end processing meet the client's standards.
Support Center ' The support center was created to provide a single point of contact for centers. The role of the center is to oversee all inbound and outbound campaigns and to provide first level of support for all computer- and telephony-related issues.

Cross Country Automotive Services
Inbound, B-B & B-C, Telephone ' Silver
www.crosscountry-auto.com
Q: What do you do for customers that gives them the impression of quality and high ethical standards?
A: Every customer who calls upon Cross Country Automotive Services quickly finds out that we will never turn a caller away in their time of need. First and foremost, we verify their safety and dispatch emergency services if necessary. We also train our associates that customer service is our number-one priority. Although many organizations preach the same, we actually invest in our front-line supervisors and associates to ensure they have mastery of the latest techniques to provide customer delight.
We developed a monitoring process that measures our customers' five basic needs: The need to feel welcome; The need to feel important; The need to be understood; The need for comfort; The need to conduct business. By meeting these needs, we are assured that our customers are provided the level of service they deserve and expect from their preferred Roadside Assistance provider. Also, our agents ask each caller if we have completely satisfied their request. If we have not, we will take the necessary action.

ePerformax Centers
Outbound, B-B, Telephone ' Gold
www.eperformax.com
Q: What is special or unique about your staff that contributes to quality?
A: Our staff's unique attribute is their Filipino culture. The culture totally supports our focus on quality by first being a culture that has service orientation and a commitment to complete customer satisfaction. Filipinos have been deeply scripted to believe that patience in adversity and unflagging self-sacrifice are the principal attributes that will lead them to eventual success.
Filipinos' underemployment rate is in excess of 15 percent. As a result, Filipinos seek long-term careers with stable companies. While not all contact centers provide stability, ePerformax offers a commitment to career development through its highly effective training programs, which can then provide the building blocks for continuous learning development. As a result, our turnover is less than 1 percent a month (compared to a rising turnover rate of up to 10 percent already in the Philippines).

eTelecare International
Inbound, B-B & B-C, Telephone ' Gold
www.etelecare.com
Q: How do you handle complaints from your clients' customers?
A: Thanks to our dedicated, motivated and highly educated customer service agents, eTelecare generally resolves customer issues on the first call and rarely has to deal with complaints. When an eTelecare CSA cannot resolve an issue to the customer's satisfaction, or if the caller makes two requests to speak with the agent's supervisor, the call is escalated to the CSA's team leader. Team leaders are highly experienced in customer service and most are promoted from the ranks of CSAs. As a result, less than 1 call in 2,000 needs to be escalated beyond the team leader to the operations manager who oversees the program and almost no calls are escalated back to the client. Overall, eTelecare escalates far fewer calls than its clients do in their own internal call centers. Part of the credit goes to our rigorous training programs and part goes to our CSAs. eTelecare recruits from the top ranks of Manila's leading universities and we screen applicants for customer service aptitude and problem-solving ability. Consequently, they are much more likely to resolve caller issues on their own than standard customer service agents.

ECE
Inbound, B-C, Web-Integrated ' Silver
www.ece.com
Q: Specifically state your policies on quality and your company's philosophy/motto on quality.
A: ECE is dedicated to providing an exceptional customer experience at every contact ' whether the customer is a client or a client's end user. The company achieves this through rigorous adherence to quality at the agent, supervisor, departmental and organizational levels. ECE's commitment to excellence is embodied in the company's vision statement: grow to be the most admired company in the industry, strive to be the place people want to work and work to deliver an exceptional customer service experience.
ECE believes its quality initiatives directly impact client and customer satisfaction. The company's focus on quality is unwavering and remains a highlight of the company's internal and external quarterly performance reviews. ECE's commitment to creating an exceptional customer experience, its open communication with clients and its adherence to procedures and processes that create definable, repeatable results solidify the company's reputation for quality and high ethical standards. ECE delivers flexible and creative solutions, with established quality systems at their core, that keep support operations running smoothly. The company's diverse offerings and process management expertise make it easy to do business at any scale.

GC Services Limited Partnership
Internal Program ' Silver
www.gcserv.com
Q: Specifically state your policies on quality and your company's philosophy/motto on quality.
A: GC Services' Quality First program is a way of life in each of our centers. We designed it as an independent process to establish the highest level of quality service. We set higher-than-average goals for quality scores. One of our core philosophies dictates that it is imperative we meet or exceed client, customer and employee expectations for quality ' all three must be present before we will designate a project successful. We attain these goals because at GC Services, quality is so much more than a process; it is our culture. For example, the application of Quality First has improved our employees' quality of life in the centers where they work. We develop, promote and reinforce a culture that supports the highest level of quality for all customers. Our culture defines 'customer' as any person receiving service, be it internal or external. We live this vision in our daily operations. The quality of culture and environment provided to our employees mirrors our values for a committed, positive customer experience for any one of our customers as defined above. We work under a continuous process improvement mandate, in all areas of customer contact, supported by constant evaluation of our own resources and results.

Hancock Information Group
B-B Integrated ' Gold
www.hancockinfo.com
Q: Explain how quality has evolved in your contact center, how it is sustained and how it is measured.
A: Hancock's quality standards have evolved along with the tremendous growth of the company. In 1985, Hancock Information Group was a company of five employees. Today, Hancock employs over 500 people and provides teleprospecting services to Global 2000 companies. We believe the primary reasons for our sustained growth are our exceptional ability to gather quality information for our clients and our reputation for top-notch performance. Through over 19 years of experience, we have learned what works and what does not work. With this knowledge, we have developed process maps for every internal function including: employee training and development, project training, project ramp-up and execution, project tracking, quality monitoring, reporting, and billing. These processes are in place to ensure that quality is consistent throughout all functions of the company, and they are consistently updated and improved upon.

Help Desk NOW
Inbound & Outbound, B-C, Telephone ' Silver
www.helpdesknow.com
Q: How do you ensure a consistent message of quality across various contact channels?
A: Our company has created an in-house Intranet bulletin board, which helps to personalize our company's objectives to all employees. Our Intranet bulletin board consists of news and memos, surveys, feedback, schedules, compliments, careers and our monthly newsletter. The feedback segment provides the agents with an outlet to express any questions concerning the company. Also included on the Intranet site is a suggestion box where employees can voice their opinions and make suggestions. Our monthly newsletter, 'In The Queue,' is distributed throughout the company through our Intranet site. All our centers are equipped with multiple message boards. They help promote a variety of contests, acknowledge a particular individual for their outstanding work, or even congratulate the agents on a job well done. When call volumes permit, supervisors have regularly scheduled 10-minute huddles with employees at the beginning of their shifts. The supervisors review with them daily updates, hot topics of the day and answer any of their questions. These short huddles enable the supervisors to ensure that our employees are up-to-date on recent changes.

InfoCision Management Corporation
Outbound, B-C, Telephone ' Gold
www.infocision.com
Q: What do you do for your customers that gives them the impression of quality and high ethical standards?
A: At InfoCision, our goal is not necessarily to leave clients with the impression that we have high quality standards, but to prove it with our results. We work only with clients in those industries in which we specialize. Consequently, we design and deliver programs that produce superior results. The InfoCision quality assurance management team meets with clients to define the unique metrics that each client determines are vital to their projects. Our standard quality requirements include a 130-point review on each call monitored. Our stringent quality standards ensure our ability to outperform our competitors. As a result, we encourage our clients to split test us against any of our competitors.
InfoCision has worked closely with the Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC) and currently has two directors responsible for COPC certification. These individuals are certified as internal auditors by COPC and perform audits of our internal structure to ensure we have the operational and performance data that is required to perform consistently well on measurers of service, quality and cost. InfoCision is conducting and auditing base-line assessments in conjunction with top COPC management. We are also pursuing further certification.

NEW Customer Service Companies, Inc.
Inbound, B-C, Telephone ' Silver
www.newcorp.com
Q: Explain how quality has evolved in your contact center, how it is sustained and how it is measured.
A: Over the last few years, NEW has evolved its approach to monitoring and evaluating quality in our customer service centers. Initially, tape recording devices were used to provide call review capabilities that were performed by supervisors for coaching opportunities. NEW recently implemented software that digitally captures a CSR's interaction at both the voice and data levels. This team works with the supervisors on coaching the CSRs then reviews these interactions. Within each of our call centers, NEW has a dedicated quality monitoring team whose purpose is to ensure that CSRs are delivering a high level of customer service that meets our company and clients' standards. This team has a separate reporting structure that does not come up through the communications center.
Our quality monitoring team conducts eight to 10 monitors per CSR per month. CSRs are graded based on how they handled the call, if they followed the correct procedures, their soft skills and if they used the correct resources to handle the call. These quality scores are shared with each individual CSR on a regular basis and many times bonuses and other incentives are based in part on this score. We conduct joint monitoring sessions with our clients to ensure we are meeting the quality standards they expect from us. The added benefit of these sessions is confirmation that NEW and our clients are calibrated in our expectations and critiques of CSR interactions with customers.

Precision Response Corporation
Inbound, B-C, Telephone ' Gold
www.prcnet.com
Q: Describe all efforts to promote the quality image of teleservices to the public.
A: PRC is focused on promoting a quality image both for us and our industry to the public. A large part of PRC's marketing strategy revolves around strong public relations efforts to both industry and non-industry publications. For non-industry publications in particular, we emphasize our quality and consumer-focused approach to customer communication. Recently, during the debate surrounding the do-not-call legislation, PRC was approached by several media outlets for an interview. Our stance on the subject was one of consumer advocacy ' we believe that consumers who do not want to be called should not be called. As a result of various interviews, PRC was profiled on NBC's 'Dateline' 10/19/03 program as an example of a teleservices company with morals and business ethics. The reporter interviewed Tom Cardella as a polar opposite of the rogue telemarketers who were ultimately driving the need for the industry to be legislated. By regularly speaking out publicly, PRC does its share of positive promotion for the teleservices industry.

The Product Line
Internal Program ' Silver
www.tpli.com
Q: How do you measure customer satisfaction?
A: Every day, we have a group of account managers that speaks directly to our customers to understand how well we are servicing them. In addition to this constant communication, we use quarterly business reviews and report cards to measure our ongoing service. We also offer an annual survey (electronically) that quantifies our efforts and highlights the developmental needs.

Protocall Communications
Outbound, B-C, Telephone ' Gold
www.protocall.net
Q: What is special or unique about your staff that contributes to quality?
A: Protocall believes a large measure of our quality, recent growth and success is attributable to the diversity and educational backgrounds of our reps. This is attributable to a rigorous hiring process designed to find and motivate the highest-quality employees the region has to offer. These self-reliant and confident employees are especially suited to, and thrive on, our competitive employee management environment.
Rep Profile:
' Age range: 23-54,
' Education level: 79 % have some college,
' Amount of experience: 8-10 years,
' Type of experience: business, sales, marketing,
' Minimum typing speed: 25 wpm.
Protocall is located in a modern high-rise office building in Laurel, Maryland, minutes from Interstate 95, downtown Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland and the area's air, highway and railroad transportation hubs. This prosperous region offers many advantages, including an expanding and diverse economy, job growth, quality education and highly skilled and experienced employees. We are four miles from the University of Maryland and a brief commute to dozens of colleges and business/technical schools and U. S. military bases.
Our recruiting and advertising reach an abundance of urban, suburban and rural workers, homemakers and part-time employees with neutral speaking voices and business and computer experience. Few regions rival the quality of our workforce. The area's ethnic diversity and equal opportunity policy enables us to recruit and train adept bilingual representatives.

SR. Teleperformance
Outbound, B-B, Telephone ' Silver
www.srteleperformance.com
Due to this company's specific request for confidentiality of all material detailed in their MVP application, we cannot divulge specific information about their practices. We will say that the judges found the information highly honorable and truly worthy of an MVP award.


Unicall International, Inc.
B-B, Integrated ' Gold
www.unicallinc.com
Q: Explain how quality has evolved in your contact center, how it is sustained and how it is measured.
A: From the inception of Unicall International's original engineering of our call center infrastructure, quality was designed into every process, application and work instruction. As with every company, our overall plans did not parallel the execution of these plans as originally engineered. Developing Unicall from the ground up was a significant task that was complicated by the lack of senior management vision for quality. Everyone talked a great game, but no one was able to facilitate the quality initiatives that were required to grow a successful business. We lost more business than we won, which caused cash flow problems, layoffs, management conflicts, morale issues and a negative spiraling affect that almost destroyed the company. There was only one road to move forward on and it required a refocus on quality.
Our refocus initiatives allowed us to break every system we used to conduct our business and rebuild it with practical experience, ISO standards, Six Sigma applications, process ownership, work flow processes, document maps and flow charting. This approach allowed us to evolve from completely dissatisfying our clients to delighting them. We evolved the call center from flying by the seats of our pants to developing a milestone procedure that allows our staff members to custom design our clients' applications and having signoff processes that ensure our clients' complete satisfaction. Having process owners, ISO procedures, goals, objectives, timelines, specific expectations, weekly calibration review sessions, team leaders, scribes and facilitators has allowed us to build a successful organization.

Vision-X, Inc.
Internal Program ' Bronze
www.vxiusa.com
Q: Explain how quality has evolved in your contact center, how it is sustained and how it is measured.
A: The contact center business is a people business. World-class processes are used to put the best people in a position to succeed. Over the past year, VXI has decided to make the investments in our people and processes to match our technology in support of our quality initiatives. This started with hiring a quality director from a prominent Fortune 100 company to head our QA operations. The quality director has reengineered the quality processes, established departmental KPIs and coordinated quality activities across all of VXI's functions and locations. The QA director fashioned a department complete with managers, reporting analysts, monitors and supplemental coaches assigned to each client. QA headcount tripled, with many of the monitoring activities sent to Manila, where coaching forms are created by veteran, degreed call center agents. The function of the domestic QA is to facilitate daily calibration sessions with Manila and our clients, ensure that monitor feedback is applied on the floor, to close the feedback loop with operations and to create and analyze report trends to find common-cause and special-cause issues impacting quality.
While VXI has a consultative approach to quality measurement, quality is measured differently for each program, per client specifications. There are different quality drivers depending on the ultimate goal of the customer contact and the instructions we receive from our clients. Typical high-level metrics we report to our clients include a percentage of calls monitored, number of times a CSR is monitored per day, number of times a CSR is monitored per month, percent of call meeting quality SLA, percent of feedback delivered within eight hours of call. VXI meets 98 percent of our clients' SLAs for quality by day.


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