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Unlike Morfogen's graveyard-shift employees, workers at RMR are merely on call at night. Glenda Stone and five others in Sparks, Nev., are all fair game for customers' calls round the clock. But there isn't a soul among the 40 employees who hasn't helped a customer long past quitting time, says Carbonell. Even he and his top executives invite customers -- mainly relocation managers at large corporations such as EMC and Merrill Lynch -- to call their cell phones at any hour. Carbonell, who drove a moving truck and hoisted boxes in the 1970s, says he was heavily influenced by the service ethic he saw at EMC, which is on call 24 hours a day for its customers. His feeling was "How could I offer anything less?"

Today Carbonell has a full-time customer-service staff on board at his call center year-round. From Memorial Day to Labor Day (the most popular moving time) his staff must put in long hours during the day, plus they are on call evenings and weekends. Of course, Carbonell could hire temporary or part-time workers as customer-service staff for the busy season. Instead, he allows his workers to recover from the rigors of the summer by working eight-hour days the rest of the year and taking a few extra days off.

Each RMR customer-service rep -- a "move counselor" in the company's jargon -- is responsible for just a few corporate accounts and stays with them indefinitely. Transferees, like the jittery man whose apartment didn't have a door, can call RMR's 800 number for help at any time. Troubleshooter Stone, who will personally oversee about 550 moves this year, doesn't mind the unpredictable hours, she says, because of the satisfaction she feels in helping people through a stressful time. "That's the reward," she says. "It makes you feel really good."

Path Two: The Human Touch
At ScriptSave no one has to answer to customers after regular business hours. But if one of ScriptSave's customers dials the company's 800 number during the day, a funny thing happens. The caller doesn't get the typical automated menu of choices. An actual human being answers.

Strictly speaking, ScriptSave's customers aren't the people who call its 800 number. Its customers are health-insurance companies, such as BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, that provide prescription-drug benefits to their members. The insurance companies hire ScriptSave to explain members' prescription-drug benefits to them.

Company CEO Charlie Horn says that when he describes his business to other entrepreneurs, their first question usually is, Why don't you just automate your phone system? To answer that query, Horn has to go back to the company's founding, in 1995, when he first began wrestling with the issue of how to handle customer service. A former marketing manager and sales agent at several insurance companies, Horn had 25 years of experience in the industry. He wanted a system at ScriptSave that would allow the company to make explaining prescription-drug programs to members as squeak-free as possible. Horn knew that the majority of ScriptSave's calls would come from cardholders who were 65 or older and that those customers would require the kind of individual attention that a machine couldn't provide.

Horn made a false start, outsourcing customer service to a call center, which left him "in the dark" about whether his customers were being well served, he says. By 1997 he had moved customer service in-house and was determined to maximize personal contact with the people who turned to ScriptSave for help. "We realized if we were going to do it really well, we had to do it ourselves," Horn says. Since its rebirth, four years ago, the company has grown from 3 employees to 105. Sales soared to $13 million in 2000, up from $6.3 million the year before. The company is profitable and carries no debt. All the growth has been financed internally.

Today even something as simple as a customer's call to activate a new prescription-drug card is, quite deliberately, handled "live." Why go to the extra trouble? It's simple. Horn is looking for any excuse to chat with customers -- or rather, his customers' customers.

So that the chat is effective, ScriptSave has to train its people well. Horn insists that all new hires get three weeks of training before they take their first call. The 35 customer-service assistants spend another 60 hours a year in the classroom. The new hires learn the basics of phone etiquette and then move on to the demographics and other characteristics of the ScriptSave customer. For example, new workers attend a "senior sensitivity workshop" to help them deal with callers who might be hard of hearing or unable to read prescription labels.

Horn says that his company's caring sensibility contrasts sharply with the stereotype of how call centers usually operate: with brisk efficiency above all else. It's a point of pride, according to Horn, that ScriptSave has no limit on how long a conversation with a customer can last. He recounts a recent story about an elderly woman who had to interrupt a call to ScriptSave because her husband had suddenly taken a fall. The phone rep called back later to see how the couple were faring. Later the woman E-mailed her thanks to the company for the extra service. "We don't do it for publicity. That's the way we want to be," says Horn, although, of course, keeping customers satisfied is in his company's best interest.

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