CIS: What is your company's specialty and mission
statement?
Meade: StarTek, Inc. is a global provider of business process outsourcing
services which encompass the entire customer lifecycle. We work closely with
our clients to develop and implement cost-effective outsourcing solutions
that link our company in a transparent fashion with our clients and their
customers. Our outsourcing services include:
' Inbound technical support and customer care teleservices,
' Business process management, and
' Supply chain management services.
StarTek has 17 facilities, including six in Colorado, four in Canada and
one each in Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. International
services are performed from two facilities in the United Kingdom, and we
expect to launch international service platforms in Chile and the
Philippines this year.
StarTek's clients are in the software, telecommunications, consumer
products, cable, Internet, e-commerce, financial services, healthcare and
technology industries.
Our mission is to challenge existing business processes and develop
value-added services that drive client profitability and customer loyalty
and create an environment for our employees that offers career growth and a
family-friendly culture. This strategy encompasses two critical components
of the services value chain: the delivery of services excellence to our
clients and the creation of a supportive, stimulating environment for our
associates in which to meet and exceed client expectations.
If we can build relationships by serving clients with excellence, not
just selling to them, we can establish customer franchises and structural
relationships in which StarTek becomes a strategic partner and an integral
part of the client's management process. This is a consultative approach
which is anticipatory and preemptive and focuses attention not just on the
present, but the future needs of our clients' businesses. In this way,
StarTek adds incremental value beyond that of a typical business outsourcer.
CIS: What makes your services unique and how can users
benefit by using them?
Meade: There are two factors which differentiate StarTek from its
competition:
' Dedicated client management team,
' Operational excellence.
While most of our competition claims to provide both, we really do it.
Dedicated client management team. StarTek is different because of its
passionate commitment to client success. We are customer-centric and
unusually flexible in responding to client market opportunities. We
continuously seek to understand the marketplace and the voices of our
clients and their customers by focusing on meeting their expectations and by
being easy to do business with. In a highly customized approach to account
management, the company's resources and operational expertise are matched to
client needs by providing long-term, cost-effective solutions.
We earn the trust of clients. Each account has a dedicated team of
experienced business professionals with many years of relationship
management training and industry knowledge in the verticals in which they
are involved. Client service executives act as client advocates and are
committed to active listening to make certain that client communications are
open, constructive and ongoing. Our client feedback systems include frequent
performance and business reviews and constitute easy-to-use communications
platforms to measure goal achievement. Together, clients and StarTek define
the precise criteria for the delivery of performance excellence. Continual
monitoring of performance against a quantified standard is without
guesswork.
Operational excellence. Every company claims it provides operational
excellence, but just as with dedicated client team management, StarTek
actually does it. For example, following is our track record for managing
volumes:
' Wireline: 840,000 business orders annually,
' Wireless: 3 million consumer activations annually,
' Receivables management: over $400 million collected annually, and
' Customer center contacts: 80 million annually.
In the past two years, we have opened four facilities and have
demonstrated our ability to quickly ramp up large projects. These have
included:
' Kingston, Ontario: over 900 employees in 90 days,
' Cornwall, Ontario: over 400 employees in 90 days,
' Decatur, Illinois: over 200 employees in 90 days, and
' Regina, Saskatchewan: over 650 employees in 90 days.
Our bottom line is, StarTek gets the job done faster, better and at a
competitive price.
CIS: What is your vision of the future of the
CRM/contact center/teleservices industry?
Meade: The future for the teleservices industry is robust. We believe that
the secular trend toward outsourcing teleservices will strengthen. Demand
for outsourcing services has been driven by several factors including the
need to focus on core competencies, reallocate internal resources, reduce or
stabilize costs and improve operating efficiencies.
CIS: What, in your opinion, is the most pressing issue
facing our industry today?
Meade: Client service is the most important issue facing our industry.
The pressure to rationalize cost structures globally and improve service
quality will increase. Services providers, such as StarTek, will need to
find solutions to alleviate client pain points in such a way as to remain
transparent to the customer and yet enhance existing service quality.
We need to be more innovative and focused on achieving long-term results
and superior customer satisfaction metrics. While price is always the
presenting issue, what clients are really saying is that they want services
excellence at the most competitive price and with the least amount of
transactional risk.
In the final analysis, customer satisfaction is paramount. Without it,
customer churn increases and the net present value of customers decreases.
The object is to be able to hold on to customers for a long time, cross-sell
and upsell, and turn a transactional customer into a committed, long-term,
loyal account.
When everything is said and done, it is all about customer service and
retention.
CIS: What are your recommendations to alleviate such
problems?
Meade: StarTek provides a blended services offering which encompasses the
entire customer lifecycle. We ask the question, 'How can StarTek help you,
the client, meet your customers' needs based on where they are in the
customer lifecycle?' Our strategy is to approach the clients' needs as our
own. This forces us to align ourselves with clients and understand their
challenges from their perspectives.
A blended services offering positions our outsourcing services along the
six stages of the lifecycle continuum (awareness, acquisition, service,
support, retention and loyalty) and allows StarTek to meet many coincident
and pressing client needs. This is a distinctly different approach from a
menu of service offerings which may or may not speak to customer needs and
which certainly does not address the ultimate goal, which is client
retention and loyalty. Customer loyalty is only achieved when the service
provider meets and exceeds perceived and articulated needs.
CIS: What is your vision for future trends for the
contact center/CRM/teleservices outsourcing market regarding profitability
and international competition?
Meade: The teleservices industry is marching inexorably to a global service
delivery platform. Profitability will be increasingly difficult to attain
unless value-added services are provided. The challenge is to meet client
requirements and not cannibalize existing relationships with a sub-standard
or riskier service.
In the attempt to meet customer price requirements, the industry must
differentiate offshore services from onshore and mitigate the perceived
operational and security risks of these solutions. In addition, cultural
expectations must be met without compromising client satisfaction. We
believe that these challenges can be overcome and offshore solutions
tailored to meet specific client requirements. In the long-term, this is a
positive trend since it opens world markets to creative solutions.
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