(art/sa) News on Another Teleservices Company
bizjournals.com
"TeleSpectrum spawns ChannelCare, e-Satisfy"
Peter Key Staff Writer
KING OF PRUSSIA -- A little over a year ago, TeleSpectrum
Worldwide Inc.'s top managers convened to look at how the
Internet was affecting the teleservices industry and what
the company's response should be.
"We asked, `What do we need to do to either catch up
or compete on a level playing field?'" with the rest of
the industry, said Christopher P. Gongol, the company's
executive vice president of marketing and business development.
Today, TeleSpectrum thinks it has the answers:
ChannelCare, a division that uses the Internet
as well as the telephone to handle customer service;
and e-Satisfy, a subsidiary that measures the
satisfaction of an organization's customers,
regardless of how they interact with the organization.
William Sutherland, an analyst with Janney Montgomery
Scott LLC, said the offerings may not put TeleSpectrum
ahead of the pack, but they make sure it's
not behind it, either.
"They're where everyone is," said Sutherland, who has
a buy rating on TeleSpectrum's stock. "They're ready
for it (the Internet), and they're out winning business."
Some big wins may be coming up soon, according to Gongol.
He said seven big brick-and-mortar companies are
considering taking on ChannelCare as a customer-service
provider for their Web operations. Each of the
companies also are considering one other competitor, but
the fact that ChannelCare has made it to the final cut
in all the cases is a good omen.
"Will we get all of them?" he said. "No, but hopefully,
we'll get half."
In addition to being the name of a TeleSpectrum division,
ChannelCare is the name of the service that the division
offers. TeleSpectrum launched the service in a controlled
manner last September, putting it under the aegis of its
inbound calls division, which got renamed when the launch
occurred. After shaking the bugs out, it fully launched
ChannelCare at the start of this month.
ChannelCare uses technology developed by Genesys Labs,
now a part of Alcatel, the French telecommunications
company, and Siebel Systems Inc., a developer of
customer-relationship management software.
Among other things, the Genesys products route e-mails to
the person most qualified to handle them; enable
ChannelCare employees to synchronize the Web
pages they're viewing with the Web pages being viewed
by people with whom they are interacting; interact
with people by Internet chat; and interact with
people by talking to them through their computers.
The Siebel products allow ChannelCare to keep track of
all interactions between the organizations for which
it provides customer service and their customers.
That enables ChannelCare employees to know the history
of each person with whom they are dealing. When enough
data is gathered, it also allows ChannelCare to help
its customers refine their marketing efforts to a point
not possible just a few years ago.
In addition to being a response to technological
progression, Gongol said ChannelCare is a response to
an evolution in the teleservices business.
Initially, he said, teleservices companies were hired
to obtain customers through telemarketing. Then, they
were also used to service customers. In both cases,
the companies provided feedback to their customers that
the customers used to improve their marketing efforts.
With the advent of e-business, teleservices firms are
being asked to do even more. In the past six to 12
months, he said, requests for proposals have come to
ask respondents to create an e-business strategy,
specify what the Web site used to implement the
strategy should contain, and provide the customer care
that the site will require.
"The Web site and the traditional call center have
really merged or converged into one entity," he said.
The evolution of the teleservices industry also played
a role in the development of e-Satisfy.
After it went public in 1996, TeleSpectrum acquired TARP,
a research firm started in 1971 to help the Fortune 500
companies that are TeleSpectrum's clients
measure how well they are taking care of their customers.
When TeleSpectrum's managers convened to decide how
to respond to the Internet, Gongol said, they realized
that the methodology TARP had developed "was going to
be important in measuring customer satisfaction and
the customer experience on a Web site."
Gongol and another TeleSpectrum manager subsequently
learned of a company that measured customer satisfaction
on the Internet called Customer Insites Inc.
TeleSpectrum acquired a majority stake in it for
an undisclosed sum in January and merged it with TARP
to create e-Satisfy, which can measure the
satisfaction of a company's customers no matter how
they interact with the company.
While it will work for TeleSpectrum's customers on behalf
of TeleSpectrum, e-Satisfy will also seek to develop
its own customer base. It remains based in Silver Spring,
Md., where Customer Insites was headquartered, and it's
run by Customer Insites' founder, Maurice X. Boissiere. |
