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To: ztect who wrote (126)	5/17/2000 7:18:00 AM
From: ztect	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 177

(art/sa) News on Another Teleservices Company bizjournals.com "Vote still out on RMH Teleservices' moves" Peter Key Staff Writer BRYN MAWR -- RMH Teleservices Inc. has made three distinct moves to respond to the changes in its industry unleashed by the Internet, but two weren't particularly dramatic. That, coupled with the fact that the company hasn't tried to brand its Internet customer-service offerings, has analysts divided on how well RMH is prepared to face the teleservices industry's future. "They've been a little behind the curve," said Stephen DeLucia of the New York firm of Sidoti & Co. "As far as I know, they're still working on what they will be offering." Adam Holt, who follows the company for Chase H&Q in San Francisco, has a different view. RMH has equipped 500 of the 3,450 work stations in its call centers so that the employees who staff them can interact with callers and Web surfers. That, he said, "represents a significant opportunity and one that is under-appreciated." Among other things, RMH's technology -- like its competitors' -- allows it to manage e-mail in ways such as generating automatic responses when appropriate and routing messages to the workers best-equipped to handle them. And its employees can have real-time, text chats with Web surfers and simultaneously view Web pages with them, which allows the employees to conduct virtual guided tours of Web sites. John Fellows, the company's chief executive officer, isn't particularly impressed by the technology, however. "While it sounds neat, it's something that basically you could do with your home PC," he said. RMH has made another move that Holt does thinks will help it in an increasingly wired world. Over the past two years, it has opened five call centers -- as well as a center to monitor the service quality of its 20 call centers -- in Canada. The Canadian centers, Holt said, "attract very highly qualified labor, generally college graduates, at a reasonable cost." That's important because providing customer service over the Internet as well as the phone requires more skills than simply providing it over the phone. As a result, Fellows said, the workers who do it tend to be younger and more educated than their phone-only counterparts. RMH's biggest nod to the 'Net, however, is in the form of a joint venture that seemingly is only tangentially related to its main business. Last November, it and Advanta Partners LP formed 365biz.com to provide a variety of Internet services to small and midsize businesses. Aimed at companies that don't have the wherewithal to develop a sophisticated Web presence on their own, 365biz.com develops and hosts e-commerce Web sites for as little as $24.95 a month. It also provides customers with e-mail accounts and news customized according to their industry and makes sure their Web sites show up on search engines. Fellows, RMH's chief executive officer, said 365biz.com has attracted several hundred customers in the few weeks it has had its service up and running. "It's growing very rapidly," he said. RMH's relationship with Advanta Partners goes back to 1996. That year, the venture arm of Advanta Corp., the Spring House-based financial-services company, took a stake in RMH, and helped the company's husband-and-wife founders, Raymond Hansell and MarySue Lucci, take it public. Advanta LP sold all its interest in RMH and Hansell and Lucci sold most of theirs at the end of March, when R-T Investors LLC of Hurst, Texas, bought 49 percent of RMH's stock in private transactions. RMH didn't reveal how much R-T paid for the stock, but said the price per share "was consistent with the market price during the time the transaction was negotiated." RMH shares traded as high as $13.25 in early March, but were hovering around $9 at the end of the month. They've since traded as low as $6, but recently have been back around $9. Fellows also bought RMH stock in private transactions around the end of March, just about doubling his holdings to 203,815 shares.