Customer Relationship Management
The customer relationship management (CRM) industry, otherwise known as the outsourced call center industry, is a global, multi ten billion dollar outsourced business services industry that is comprised of outbound and inbound call center services designed to help clients generate revenue and maintain customer satisfaction.
Once a cottage industry that provided only telephone answering services, the CRM industry has expanded to include outbound telemarketing, inbound customer service, help desk technology support and direct response services. This service expansion was achieved through the introduction of new call center technologies in the early 1990s, which made it more cost effective for large corporations and financial institutions to outsource their call center needs to smaller, independently owned CRM companies.
This cheaper solution started a massive outsourcing movement that caused the CRM industry to explode between the early to mid 1990s and early 2000s. Near-shore and offshore call center companies emerged in the late 1990s to compete with domestic call center companies for market share, but this was met with mixed results as U.S. customers reacted negatively to thick accents and communication challenges. There was also concern that the emergence of the Internet would destroy the CRM industry, however the opposite was true as online shopping generated an expansion in the Direct Response market.
The CRM industry did experience a negative shock in the mid 2000s, when the federal government enacted the Do Not Call (DNC) legislation. Designed to enable consumers to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls, this legislation became an administrative nightmare for CRM companies and their clients. In some instances, CRM companies shut down their telemarketing business altogether! Still the industry survived and continued to thrive as more resources were put toward new inbound and outbound call center solutions, including work-at-home agent (WAHA), Hispanic focused call centers and remote help desk technology support, among others.
Today, the CRM industry continues to evolve and become more global. It continues to offer new growth opportunities for those who understand how to leverage people, process and technology. Kaulkin Ginsberg has enjoyed a successful history of helping CRM companies to grow and sell, and looks forward to continuing this trend well into the future.
Western Wats Center, Inc. (WWC), the largest independent quantitative market research firm in the US, sale to American Capital Strategies, Ltd. (NASDAQ: ACAS).
- A letter from Western Wats (PDF – 150k)
Teleperformance (Euronext: FR 0000051807), the world’s co-leading provider of outsourced CRM and contact center services, acquired AllianceOne, a leading U.S. Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) company.
- A letter from Teleperformance
(PDF – 252k)
Kaulkin Ginsberg is pleased to announce the sale of O’Currance Teleservices, Inc., a portfolio company of Riverlake Partners. O’Currance is one of the leading providers of direct response marketing telesales services in the U.S. ...
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Events
Webinar: The Future of Collections
May 23rd, 2013
Did you miss Mike Ginsberg's keynote at the TRMA Spring Conference? Here is your chance to see it!
Life of a Debt: Data Integrity in Debt Collection
Washington, DC
June 6th, 2013
The Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will host a joint roundtable on June 6, 2013, to examine the flow of consumer data throughout the debt collection process.
HFMA ANI
Orlando, Florida
June 16th-19th, 2013
Learn about experiments with population health, bundled payments, and managing the operations and financial performance of physician practices.
