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Anyone who is not familiar with the way that the telemarketing

industry has evolved in recent years should start by recognising that

the term telemarketing itself is ancient history.

Customer management is where it’s at or, in more modish terminology,

customer relationship management, known in the US as CRM - a term which

has, over the past two or three years, established itself in the

vocabulary of direct marketing industry executives in the UK.

New techniques in CRM have been made possible thanks to technological

advances in which the US so often leads the way. Sophisticated computers

mean companies can collect vast amounts of information on their

customers.

But CRM specialists in the US will be the first to tell you; theirs is

not a technology business.

Michael Dellaira of the New York-based CRM company Telathena Systems,

says: ’The way CRM is talked about, one would think it had more to do

with technology than with humans. Sure, it’s exciting that we can

communicate by phone, fax, e-mail and videoconferencing, but none of

these will improve the quality of the communication itself.’

Robert Scott-Moncrieff, the vice-president of the Baltimore-based

international CRM company, Sitel, says: ’We have around 23,000 people at

the end of the phone worldwide. We used to call them telemarketing

agents, now they’re customer service professionals. We think that better

reflects the type of commercial relationships we’re looking for.’

It seems that, for the likes of Sitel, those relationships with clients

are getting stronger. ’Deals are getting bigger and they last longer,’

Scott-Moncrieff says. ’Two years ago we had 750 clients worldwide; now

we have 350 clients but the company is twice as big. Whereas in the old

days we might have worked with contracts lasting three months, now we

talk in terms of ten-year contracts.’

Scott-Moncrieff acknowledges the part that US corporate thinking has

historically played, but says that British and European companies have

caught up, largely because of the rapid expansion of telephone business

in Europe. In the US, 3 per cent of the working population is employed

by a call centre. In Europe, the figure is smaller but growing quickly

and now stands at just under 2 per cent.

’Inevitably, ideas accelerated quicker in America because of the size of

the market. On the whole though, Europe is not far behind and some

European businesses probably have an even better grasp of customer

management than the Americans,’ Scott-Moncrieff says.

Sitel prides itself on its delivery of eCRM (electronic CRM): the

process of allying the power of the internet with internal computer

networks, customer databases and CRM scripting software.

’With our set-up for General Motors, for example,’ Scott-Moncrieff

continues, ’any customer contact, from whatever source, is automatically

cross-checked against 70 databases. The pipe-dream of one-to-one

marketing on a mass scale is close to becoming a reality.’

Although advances in technology have been huge, the full power of the

internet has yet to be realised. And while there are only a few examples

of voiceover internet protocol or internet telephony protocol (ITP) in

operation - one of them being Sitel’s website link for the Belgian

financial services company AEGON MoneyMaxx - it will be the next big

thing.

Kevin Farrell, a Californian who heads the London-based publishing

company ClienTel, says ITP is only starting to catch on in

business-to-business marketing. ’Part of the problem is that although

the technology exists, it’s hard to get your hands on it. The majority

of businesses still don’t have the ability to access internet protocols

and telephony protocols down the same line,’ Farrell says.

’In the future you may see more things such as dual browsing, where the

customer calls the agent and their computers are linked so both see the

same screen. The mouse control is temporarily handed over so the

customer can be led through to the relevant information.’

As with most commerce done on the internet, expect the

business-to-business sector to lead the way.

Anyone involved in consumer telephone marketing is riding the wave of

technological advances made more than a decade ago. Tom Lathrop, the

head of operations at Agtel in Freemont, Nebraska, says: ’The most

important advance in our business is the advent of automated dialling

more than ten years ago. Agents no longer had to make calls by hand and

track each call on paper. The systems have become more refined and

integrated with other aspects of the business, but the basic technology

is the same.’

Modern computers have allowed automated-dialling systems to develop

rapidly.

As well as basic dialling and routing functions, the systems can be

sophisticatedly progammed.

’It’s about making contact with the customer in the best possible way,’

Lathrop says. ’Each call is tracked and recorded by result, time and

date.

If the customer says he will be ready to talk to you again on Tuesday at

8pm, the system will not call again until that time.

’Different time-zones are programmed in so we don’t end up calling

someone across the country at four in the morning. Even things like

weather reports and sporting events get put into the system.

’If they’ve got hurricane warnings in Virginia, the area is blanked off

from our lists. We figure they’ve got more important things to worry

about than renewing a magazine subscription. When there’s a big football

game on TV, you just know that some folks won’t want to be interrupted

to discuss upgrading their credit cards. These things are essential to

our philosophy of CRM.’

Perhaps it’s inevitable that technological advances take time to be

fully exploited and mistakes are made along the way. A recent report

from Fletcher Research bemoans the opportunities lost by companies which

fail to integrate call-centre operations with websites. Its UK survey

showed only one-fifth of companies had any form of human contact via the

website, while only 14 per cent of call-centre operators had internet

access. But while the service providers race to stay in front of the

technological revolution, it’s the clients who have the biggest say in

the quality of CRM.

Interactive voice response technology (IVR), where a call is handled

automatically in response to buttons pressed by the customer,

illustrates this well. The Henley Centre’s associate director, Marcus

Hickman, says: ’I think we are already seeing the beginning of a

backlash against IVR.

The ideal system is to have what we call an IVR tree, where the customer

should have no more than three or four choices. Too many companies have

ended up with IVR forests where customers get lost.’

Companies using IVR or any of the new technologies revolutionising CRM

may be drawn by the prospect of cutting costs. But, Hickman says, while

cost savings are possible, the future of telephone business and CRM in

Europe and the US belongs firmly in human hands - and voices.