Where Customers Count
Providers look to CRM to remedy DSL struggles
By Evan Blackwell
from the March 19, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
Sometimes Dan Plashkes can't even stomach the news created by his own industry.
As the CEO of an emerging customer relationship management software provider, you'd think Plashkes would enjoy all the headlines espousing customer complaints surrounding the installation of broadband service. After all, it should mean more potential customers for Plashkes. You'd think that prospect would excite him, but you'd be wrong. Plashkes just cringes at the thought of possibly squandering broadband customers.
"Some of this news is just unbelievable," Plashkes says, while pondering the class-action lawsuits recently levied by disgruntled DSL customers. "Right now, the demand exceeds the ability to get things done. The last mile is the problem."
The last mile Plashkes refers to is exactly what his company, San Diego-based eAssist Global Solutions, thinks it can solve. While carriers and ISPs negotiate through the various kinks in back office technology that burden the ability to roll out broadband access, eAssist believes they still aren't paying enough attention to the customer.
"The core focus has been on the delivery problems from the provider's perspective, and all the separate systems used to process the orders," Plashkes says. "There's got to be another separate system to track the customer experience."
Which is where eAssist enters the fray. The company's suite of software solutions comprises its four flagship products designed for customer retention--eCare, eServe, eSuggest and eRetain. The entire product line sits as a layer on top of the back office infrastructure as the customer interface; the company claims it makes service providers more efficient and cost effective, as well as opening up the lines of communication to the customer.
The eCare product lets a broadband customer choose the venue for its contact connection with the provider, whether it is e-mail, online interactive chat, voice over Internet Protocol or traditional phone. The eService software assists online transactions by acting as the customer's personalized gateway, providing access to eAssist's database of the users install history. Rounding out the suite, eSuggest is the marketing engine that answers customer's questions and eRetain studies customer demographics and online tendencies.
If the problems that eAssist's solutions address sound familiar, it's because they're the very same ones often used as source material for the criticisms recently leveled at ILECs like Verizon Communications and SBC Communications.
"For RBOCs especially, this is the new last mile," says eAssist CTO and founder David Borts. "If they can perfect the relationship with their customers, their broadband business can explode."
That's certainly what residential broadband access provider Telocity is hoping for. Just last month, eAssist secured its latest major contract by signing up Telocity for eService and eCare as a complement to the company's existing customer support structure. Upon announcing the new deal, Telocity COO David Finley said that improving his company's customer experience was "our single highest priority."
Michael Cristinziano, a director of technology research with New York investment firm Gerard, Klauer, Mattison & Co., has followed the leaders of the CRM space. He believes allowing customers access to more back office information, which the eAssist product does, will do worlds to improve customer relationships.
"You're going to need to provide more access to service reports and provisioning information," Cristinziano said. "There are a number of providers in the space who are following this trend. If you give users access to other data, this will go a long way."
Before partnering with Telocity, eAssist established a significant presence in the Canadian marketplace. BCE Emergis and cable giant Rogers Communications are counted among eAssist customers, as is British Telecommunications in the United Kingdom.
All the new customer agreements apparently have instilled a high level of investor confidence in eAssist, because the funding continues to accrue. In late January, the company got $31.4 million from a group led by AT&T Canada and Intel Capital and has directed the money toward a European expansion.
"We think we have a creative product and we believe we have a real strong one- to two-year window with this product," Plashkes says. "I don't think Verizon's waking up in the morning and saying, 'Wow, who in the world is this eAssist. We've got to talk to these guys.' But a product like ours could certainly help them."
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