Your customer service and sales departments are key players in winning and keeping profits and market share for your company. They're the ones that go head to head with the competition in the field, be it on the sales floor, at trade shows, in meetings, through e-mail, on the phone or over the Internet. a Service bureau outsourcers are becoming key members of these teams. Once relegated as specialty players - like designated baseball hitters and soccer goal keepers - handling peripheral functions such as outbound telemarketing and campaign-specific inbound response, many companies are putting bureaus into the game alongside their regulars, or in some cases in place of them. a Service bureaus have been training agents and fitting out their call centers to perform just as competently, if not more so, than your own call center's agents. Bureaus have also been picking the fields and setting up quickly where they can obtain the best players at the least cost. a New firms often cannot afford to spend scarce capital to set up their own call center and hire, train and supervise agents, especially when they do not have a precise idea what the actual demand for their products and services will be.

Service bureaus have delivered the results in short order for new firms. This has been the experience of Mirror Image , a B2B Web content distributor that launched its services in August, working with Cerida (formerly TeleSales; Andover, MA), a high-tech outsourcer. Cerida qualified and fed Mirror Image a lead that resulted in a large undisclosed sale about one month after the contract went live, on December 4. Cerida also forwarded 26 qualified leads over that time period.

Mirror Image uses a unique distributed content delivery system, receiving, storing and transmitting material to clients. Clients typically sign up for 12-month contracts.

Cerida's agents make outbound and take inbound lead qualification contacts by phone, e-mail and on-line. Agents then forward potential sales leads to Mirror Image's field sales reps. Cerida dedicates five agents who work weekdays from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm Eastern time and one agent who works from 10:30 am to 8:30 pm Eastern time to handle West Coast customers. Prospects who visit Mirror Image's Web site can use Cerida's Web callback service to reach live agents during normal business hours. Cerida and Mirror Image use Siebel's CRM platform.

Mirror Image is so pleased with Cerida that the firm is interested in having Cerida's agents handle contract renewals and close some deals, passing the larger prospective deals to Mirror Image's field sales reps.

"Cerida's agents were way ahead of the curve on our account," says Dalton Menhall, Mirror Image's director of inside sales and operations. "We thought it would take three months for them to generate their first winning lead, as it [usually] takes from 30 to 90 days from lead to deal. It is a credit to their skill and professionalism."

The location flexibility of service bureaus paid off for other companies in surprising ways. VIPdesk , founded in 1997, provides live Web-based coordination of personal and convenience services to companies seeking to increase customer loyalty and employee retention. VIPdesk's national network of concierges, proprietary technology and innovative offerings serve 5.3 million users from companies like Diners Club, MasterCard and AOL's Digital City.

Customers use VIPdesk's services through a co-branded Web site provided by VIPdesk's clients. Users enter the site and choose a city and category. All requests are segregated by city so a concierge agent with local knowledge in a particular city handles the request.

VIPdesk relies on a network of part-time remote agent concierges to take e-mail and live chat requests from 11 am to 11 pm local time in the city where the concierge is available. For those VIPdesk clients who have chosen to offer phone service to users, the concierge service contracts with iSKY (Laurel, MD) to fulfill some of the requests.

VIPdesk began working with iSKY in March 2000 and recently transferred its call center operations from Columbia, MD, to Bend, OR.

On first glance, Bend, a small city located in rural central Oregon, does not appear to be a recruiting ground for concierges who would try to get hot Broadway tickets, reservations at fashionable restaurants, or book a flight to Paris at the last minute. Yet according to VIPdesk, the iSKY agents in Bend are friendly and customer service-oriented, which are vital attributes for the program. The client trains the iSKY employees to service its requests and has a quality assurance program in place, using its own manuals and training regimen.

"The customer service orientation is critical to our program," explains David Weaver, VIPdesk's senior vice president of client services. "Not only is Bend a more central location that provides better access for our client visits, but it is easier to recruit and train here. iSKY's reputation also assured us that it had the infrastructure in place to fulfill our needs as well as keep up with our explosive growth. The iSKY team has the same high standards for customer service, and that is the key to success in the service industry and at VIPdesk."

Minacs And Star Choice Take To The Ice

One of the key benefits of having an outsourcer as a fully committed member of your team is that an experienced player, rather than a reserve member, is called into the game only when you need the player.

A great example of such committed teamwork is seen in Star Choice Communications, a digital direct-to-home satellite carrier serving the Canadian market, and Minacs Worldwide (Markham, ON). Star Choice, which began in 1997, now has 600,000 customers.

A team of 240 agents utilizing 125 seats at Minacs' Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, call center, service and sell to Star Choice customers virtually alongside 200 agents in Star Choice's in-house call center, located in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. The in-house center also handles e-mails and contacts from dealers. Star Choice has been temporarily using a second unnamed outsourcer to handle French-speaking and overflow English-speaking calls until the carrier opens a new call center, in Montreal, Quebec, in fall 2001.

Minacs picks up calls from 10 am to midnight Atlantic time, while the Fredericton center is open 24x7. The bureau takes 38% of the calls on average, Fredericton handles 44% of the calls and the unnamed bureau catches the balance. During the busy season - August to December - Minacs' percentage rises to 40% or higher.

The agents take every question about satellite services, from activation to billing and basic technical questions, such as "I pressed a couple buttons on my remote control and now my screen's blue" to aligning the dish properly to the satellite. Star Choice uses the Wizard billing software published by another competing outsourcer, Convergys.

Your customer service and sales departments are key players in winning and keeping profits and market share for your company. They're the ones that go head to head with the competition in the field, be it on the sales floor, at trade shows, in meetings, through e-mail, on the phone or over the Internet. a Service bureau outsourcers are becoming key members of these teams. Once relegated as specialty players - like designated baseball hitters and soccer goal keepers - handling peripheral functions such as outbound telemarketing and campaign-specific inbound response, many companies are putting bureaus into the game alongside their regulars, or in some cases in place of them. a Service bureaus have been training agents and fitting out their call centers to perform just as competently, if not more so, than your own call center's agents. Bureaus have also been picking the fields and setting up quickly where they can obtain the best players at the least cost. a New firms often cannot afford to spend scarce capital to set up their own call center and hire, train and supervise agents, especially when they do not have a precise idea what the actual demand for their products and services will be.

Service bureaus have delivered the results in short order for new firms. This has been the experience of Mirror Image , a B2B Web content distributor that launched its services in August, working with Cerida (formerly TeleSales; Andover, MA), a high-tech outsourcer. Cerida qualified and fed Mirror Image a lead that resulted in a large undisclosed sale about one month after the contract went live, on December 4. Cerida also forwarded 26 qualified leads over that time period.

Mirror Image uses a unique distributed content delivery system, receiving, storing and transmitting material to clients. Clients typically sign up for 12-month contracts.

Cerida's agents make outbound and take inbound lead qualification contacts by phone, e-mail and on-line. Agents then forward potential sales leads to Mirror Image's field sales reps. Cerida dedicates five agents who work weekdays from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm Eastern time and one agent who works from 10:30 am to 8:30 pm Eastern time to handle West Coast customers. Prospects who visit Mirror Image's Web site can use Cerida's Web callback service to reach live agents during normal business hours. Cerida and Mirror Image use Siebel's CRM platform.

Mirror Image is so pleased with Cerida that the firm is interested in having Cerida's agents handle contract renewals and close some deals, passing the larger prospective deals to Mirror Image's field sales reps.

"Cerida's agents were way ahead of the curve on our account," says Dalton Menhall, Mirror Image's director of inside sales and operations. "We thought it would take three months for them to generate their first winning lead, as it usually takes from 30 to 90 days from lead to deal. It is a credit to their skill and professionalism."

The location flexibility of service bureaus paid off for other companies in surprising ways. VIPdesk , founded in 1997, provides live Web-based coordination of personal and convenience services to companies seeking to increase customer loyalty and employee retention. VIPdesk's national network of concierges, proprietary technology and innovative offerings serve 5.3 million users from companies like Diners Club, MasterCard and AOL's Digital City.

Customers use VIPdesk's services through a co-branded Web site provided by VIPdesk's clients. Users enter the site and choose a city and category. All requests are segregated by city so a concierge agent with local knowledge in a particular city handles the request.

VIPdesk relies on a network of part-time remote agent concierges to take e-mail and live chat requests from 11 am to 11 pm local time in the city where the concierge is available. For those VIPdesk clients who have chosen to offer phone service to users, the concierge service contracts with iSKY (Laurel, MD) to fulfill some of the requests.

VIPdesk began working with iSKY in March 2000 and recently transferred its call center operations from Columbia, MD, to Bend, OR.

On first glance, Bend, a small city located in rural central Oregon, does not appear to be a recruiting ground for concierges who would try to get hot Broadway tickets, reservations at fashionable restaurants, or book a flight to Paris at the last minute. Yet according to VIPdesk, the iSKY agents in Bend are friendly and customer service-oriented, which are vital attributes for the program. The client trains the iSKY employees to service its requests and has a quality assurance program in place, using its own manuals and training regimen.

"The customer service orientation is critical to our program," explains David Weaver, VIPdesk's senior vice president of client services. "Not only is Bend a more central location that provides better access for our client visits, but it is easier to recruit and train here. iSKY's reputation also assured us that it had the infrastructure in place to fulfill our needs as well as keep up with our explosive growth. The iSKY team has the same high standards for customer service, and that is the key to success in the service industry and at VIPdesk."

Minacs And Star Choice Take To The Ice

One of the key benefits of having an outsourcer as a fully committed member of your team is that an experienced player, rather than a reserve member, is called into the game only when you need the player.

A great example of such committed teamwork is seen in Star Choice Communications, a digital direct-to-home satellite carrier serving the Canadian market, and Minacs Worldwide (Markham, ON). Star Choice, which began in 1997, now has 600,000 customers.

A team of 240 agents utilizing 125 seats at Minacs' Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, call center, service and sell to Star Choice customers virtually alongside 200 agents in Star Choice's in-house call center, located in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. The in-house center also handles e-mails and contacts from dealers. Star Choice has been temporarily using a second unnamed outsourcer to handle French-speaking and overflow English-speaking calls until the carrier opens a new call center, in Montreal, Quebec, in fall 2001.

Minacs picks up calls from 10 am to midnight Atlantic time, while the Fredericton center is open 24x7. The bureau takes 38% of the calls on average, Fredericton handles 44% of the calls and the unnamed bureau catches the balance. During the busy season - August to December - Minacs' percentage rises to 40% or higher.

The agents take every question about satellite services, from activation to billing and basic technical questions, such as "I pressed a couple buttons on my remote control and now my screen's blue" to aligning the dish properly to the satellite. Star Choice uses the Wizard billing software published by another competing outsourcer, Convergys.