Q&A With AppleTree Answers Founder/CEO John Ratliff
March 31, 2009
Answering services a.k.a. telemessaging are the first teleservices: answering calls and taking messages for clients. Companies began to be formed to offer these services in the 1920s with the rapid rise in telephone users and networks.
Today’s answering services/telemessaging continues to thrive and grow. These firms have expanded into contact center customer service and support, order entry, and telesales. Many now offer e-mail and chat.
AppleTree Answers is one of the industry’s leading providers. The privately-owned firm recently celebrated its 14th year in business. It has 342 employees and 14 locations spanning the United States including a new office in Boston to tap into growth opportunities in the New England market.
Over 7,000 customers in a variety of industries including property management firms, electricians, plumbing and heating companies, and medical service providers generate $17 million in revenues for AppleTree Answers. The firm expects that this figure will grow to $50 million in 36 months.
ContactCenterSolutions caught up with John Ratliff, founder and CEO of Appletree Answers. He has kindly answered several questions that we had posed to him:
ContactCenterSolutions: Describe today's answering service/telemessaging business. What role does answering/telemessaging play amongst voicemail, e-mail/SMS, cell phones, IVR, and unified messaging? What can firms like yours do that automated solutions, and direct-to-contacted party interactions cannot?
Today's answering service industry, as a whole, has evolved well beyond the traditional ‘messaging’ business into a true extension of their customers’ business. As public disdain continues to grow with automated solutions, a very well defined niche has evolved for the answering service industry. Small firms are able to highly customize solutions on a micro scale to serve small-to-medium sized customers, while developing broader solutions for large enterprise level customers, all from the same call center.
Large call centers have historically overlooked the high touch, low volume category of accounts. This has opened the doors for boutique telemessaging firms.
ContactCenterSolutions: What are the prospects for answering/telemessaging in today's economy amidst technology advances, like hosted automated speech recognition? Is this a mature or a growing field and why?
There is definitely a paradigm shift, in the eyes of customers, from automated/voice recognition systemsto speaking with a live human being. Amazingly, it has created a competitive advantage to do something as simple as have a ‘real person’ answer the phone. It ishard to believe that the ‘live voice experience’ would create an advantage, but it definitely has. Telemessaging/Answering Service companies are one of the easiest ways for companies to leverage this advantage. I see growth in our future based on this fact. We are poised to do deliver a big business approach, with a small business feel. Based on the advancement of technology, which makes it easier and more cost effective to replicate and flawlessly execute business processes, such as links to internal database records, back office systems support, etc.
ContactCenterSolutions: How have answering services/telemessaging firms evolved and responded to developments such as the near-universality of voicemail and what appears to be the phasing out of paging/dispatching?
Voicemail, once labeled as the death nail of the telemessaging firm, has obviously taken its place in today's overall communication infrastructure. But it is simply one facet. Imagine calling an airline to book a plane ticket and leaving the information on voicemail. Or calling your apartment complex management company when your ceiling is leaking furiously in the middle of the night, and leaving a message on voicemail. While it certainly has its place, it is not the be-all-and-end-all of communication.
The skeptics point to the ability of voicemail to ‘dispatch’ calls automatically but there are two fundamental issues with that strategy. The first is trust, if you have an emergency do you really trust the voicemail to dispatch and the second is decision making. Most companies do not want their callers to determine how calls should be handled and routed; they want a person to make the decision. That is where the telemessaging firms can leverage the human element, even in conjunction with voicemail.
ContactCenterSolutions: Many answering service firms now offer inbound and outbound teleservices. Describe. What do companies like yours bring to the table as compared with 'pure play' teleservices outsourcers? Where are firms like yours at technology/operations/trainingwise versus the traditional customer care/telemarketing companies? How successful has this expansion/evolution been vis-a-vis established players, offshore/nearshore and self-service options, and home-based agents?
We can be VERY high touch and low volume. Large outsource companies are looking for volume. Firms like Appletree Answers are looking for selective customers that understand high value service and what that means to their business and their customers. It is not a numbers game for us. Based on that value proposition I would say our investments in technology, training and management, as a percentage, is significantly higher than the volume outsourcers. I also think the service we provide to most customers has a very high level of cultural interaction, somewhat sheltering us from the offshore threat. The offshore world is changing rapidly as well, with political, economic and human resource issues becoming ever more prolific.
ContactCenterSolutions: Answering services/telemessaging companies have sometimes had a poor public image with facilities that have been less-than-satisfactory appearances compared with other contact centers. Please comment, including what if any steps firms and the industry is taking to polish up its presence?
I think as our industry has evolved away from ‘mom and pop’ style companies into more professional and diversely managed companies, our facilities have done so as well. I know at Appletree the facility is one of the central components of our strategy. We have moved several of our locations in the last few years, one as recently as last week. We always select Class A facilities to move into, and make the agent experience the central theme of the office. Agent cubicles are always afforded the best views, most natural light, etc. In fact, we start our facility design around the agents and work out from there. Many, if not most of the firms that I visit in the industry have taken the facility issue very seriously, and have worked hard to create a better agent experience.
I have visited several large contact centers housed in converted grocery stores and warehouses where conditions are awful, so I really do not think it is a ‘big versus little issue’, but rather a senior management mentality issue. At Appletree, our people come first, therefore it is part of our culture and core values, which makes facility design decisions fairly easy to make.
ContactCenterSolutions: Where is Appletree Answering Services going in this market? What is your unique value proposition? What is your goal and strategy? What new services and features have you added and are in the pipeline?
Fortunately, Appletree has held its own in this market. While some of our customers have struggled, many others have flourished and the lead flow of potential new customers is at an all time high! I really think that companies that obsess about value and delivering value in down markets have the best opportunities for success. Appletree’s Value Proposition is very simple, we will be bottom line positive to every single customer, by driving more revenue, capturing calls and handling them well, cutting costs, or helping our customer have better retention.
With regard to new features, one which holds tremendous promise is Web Chat. Web Chat helps increase lead click through rates and sales conversions. We are seeing increased demand in this area and expect significant growth over the next few years.
One of the initiatives in the pipeline is to assist our struggling customers with their sales and marketing efforts. We are in the process of finalizing a strategic partnership with a web design and programming firm to offer bundled marketing and design services to our customers.
Brendan B. Read is ContactCenterSolutions’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Jessica Kostek
