Lines of Fire

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Call centers are "really more like contact centers," states Carter Lusher, vice-president of the Gartner Group, an information-technology and research firm, "accommodating customers accessing companies via phone, fax, the Web, E-mail, even interactive video kiosk." The idea is to make customers' interactions with companies seamless and uniform, no matter which method of communication they choose. For example, while the integration of Famous's Web site and call center is still in its infancy, when a customer calls the 800 number listed on the site, the call is routed by the ACD to a separate queue with agents (or their voice-mail boxes, if it's after hours) who are not just cigar savvy but Web savvy as well. Orders made on-line are automatically logged and are processed by Famous's mail-order software, Mathen Group's MailBasics, in the same way that phone orders are processed. (For the record, more sophisticated Internet-integrated call centers enable a customer to do everything from contacting an agent with the click of a mouse to downloading Web documents by voice--but this technology is still several years away from being widely implemented. For a look at what lies ahead, see "Ringing in the Net," below.)

For the time being, a call center is an umbrella term embracing a variety of environments regardless of transaction: reservation centers, help desks, information lines, customer-service centers, even 911 numbers. And that's just inbound call centers, such as those you'd encounter when calling American Airlines or Dell's help line. There are also outbound call centers--those operations disparagingly referred to as "phone farms," whose armies of operators invariably call during dinnertime peddling yet another unwanted newspaper subscription or credit-card-protection service.

To be fair, not every outbound call center harbors a telemarketing scheme. And what's becoming increasingly true is that, thanks to falling prices of equipment and the expanded capabilities of today's systems, call centers are no longer the sole province of large enterprises or even those that bring in a lot of revenues by phone, such as banks and insurance companies. Indeed, today businesses are as likely to use a call center to decrease costs or mine information as they are to use one to increase revenues. "One of the big trends we see is that a lot of industries that didn't have call centers in the past are now putting them in," notes Lusher. The list of current call-center users includes cable-TV stations, florists, travel agencies, a fire-fighting-equipment retailer, a rodeo-reservation company, and even a cricket farm. Cleveland estimates that nationwide there are 60,000 to 100,000 call centers, which employ around 3 million call-center representatives, and that the number of centers is growing at approximately 30% annually. According to the Gartner Group, companies spent an estimated $1.4 billion on call-center technology last year, and that amount will balloon to $8.9 billion by 2002.

Because their technology can be leveraged to accomplish a variety of tasks, call centers are a "major strategic factor for any type of business," says Cleveland. "The power that call centers have in capturing marketplace feedback, identifying customer expectations, and enabling companies to build products and services around those needs is astounding." Adds Lusher, "Each contact with a prospective customer is a piece of the puzzle. The more pieces you have, the bigger the picture."

The executives and employees of Jacobs' Golf Group, in Scottsdale, Ariz., have been benefiting from just such a big picture since the company installed a call center, in January 1997. The inbound call center, which, like Famous's, is an ACD, facilitates reservation taking and analyzes phone traffic for 27-year-old Jacobs' Golf, which specializes in golf instruction, golf vacation packages, golf clubs, and golf-course management. Every week, president Gordon Petrie gets a summary report of call-center statistics that shows him the number of calls received, the number of reservations made, callers' average time on hold, and the average daily hang-up rate, among other things. He pays particular attention to the first two statistics because, he says, given that customers typically book several months ahead of time, "they're almost like leading indicators, and they help us know what our business will look like four or five months out." Petrie credits the call center with giving him a much better idea of volume and trends and says that for the first time in its history, Jacobs' Golf can track its conversion factor (number of calls taken to number of reservations booked). "I wish we'd installed this thing sooner," he says.

Pat Smoot, human-resources director at Jacobs' Golf, harbors the same wish. Smoot, who's been with the company since its early days, when it operated out of the garage of founder and tour player Shelby Futch, remembers all too well what life was like before her employer installed the call center and automated its reservation system. "Phones would ring constantly on everybody's desks," she says, "and after taking down a customer's information, we'd have to run over to the general booking ledger and rewrite it in there so we all knew how many students were going to which schools and when." As the business grew, with school locations swelling from an initial 4 to more than 55 worldwide today, the stack of ledger sheets mounted higher and higher. "They were cumbersome and heavy to lift," Smoot recalls, adding, "we definitely got more exercise then."

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