WebConverse: Distributed Environment Provides Advantage

Software Magazine, April, 2001

The ability for clients and employees to interact in the same environment is "one wonderful thing about an ASP solution," says Peter Newell, CEO of WebConverse, a customer service outsourcing company in San Mateo, Calif., with support centers in India, Pakistan, and California. "We have first-level support coming to our agents, then if necessary, it's escalated to the second level at the client site. The representatives are all in the same environment. All the information is captured in the same system and followed through to resolution. We don't waste time migrating data, or figuring out how to get the escalation to an expert."

That environment is White Pajama, an integrated package that includes phone, chat, and e-mail channels; CRM applications; and contact center management applications delivered via an ASP model from White Pajama, Hayward, Calif.

When WebConverse was putting its business together, the company was also searching for technologies that would "support us at a global level," says Newell. "So our first goal in searching for a technology provider was making sure it was an ASP. We needed to bring in our offshore facilities to the same environment. We also looked for someone who can support all the different channels-e-mail, chat, telephone, etc."

At the time, WebConverse was using an e-mail management system with chat technology from eGain Communications Sunnyvale, Calif. "We were using eGain in an ASP environment, primarily for the benefit of not having to build out the infrastructure ourselves. We didn't want to get into the IT business."

However, the eGain technology didn't have a telephony aspect, so "customer interaction happened in two systems," says Newell.

White Pajama fit both of Newell's requirements: It integrated telephony with traditional CRM, and it allowed his employees as well as customers to work in a truly distributed environment, which he sees as a competitive advantage. "Our clients have valid concerns about performance levels, and the security and monitoring of their call center interactions. White Pajama allows us to give supervisors at our client sites access to the same environment our agents are working in. In real time they can see how many calls are coming in, what the service levels are, response times, etc."

WebConverse has had White Pajama in production for over three months now, with seven agents worldwide using the system; Newell expects that to scale to 40 users by year-end. There was no setup fee, and his company has a one-year contract, with a monthly subscription fee of $800 per user per month. The White Pajama software runs on Unix-based servers housed with Exodus Communications.

Newell says the subscription model enables him to accurately forecast his budget, and in turn build in a flat fee into his own pricing model.

For other companies evaluating ASPs, Newell suggests "making sure the features and functionality fit your business today, and where you're going in the future. You may not have the ability to add features at will."