OnBrand24 and the Southwest Indian Foundation: Doing Well by Doing Good

For six years, OnBrand24 has played a key role in support of the Southwest Indian Foundation’s dual mission: providing work opportunities for native peoples and raising funds for Native American charities and community organizations.

Located near the Four Corners of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, SWIF’s mission is to lessen poverty among 350,000 members of the Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, Laguna, Acoma, and Apache tribes. Last year, SWIF raised $14 million.

OnBrand24 handles inbound calls from SWIF supporters who wish to make donations as well as customers of SWIF’s Indian Craft Catalog, an outlet for jewelry, blankets, clothing and gifts made by 4,000 native peoples who live in the Four Corners area.

Catalog sales revenue is used to pay the Native American artisans who made the items and to help fund SWIF philanthropic projects. These include school grants and individual tuition assistance, homes for battered women and children, home repair and wood stove installation, Christmas food baskets for needy families, alcohol counseling, and emergency assistance in the areas of food, clothing, heating fuel, and temporary shelter.

When SWIF, which employs 70 full-time Native American staff people, closes its in-house customer service center for the day and weekend – or when customer call volume peaks during the holiday period – OnBrand24 takes after-hours and overflow calls. The outsourced call center handles approximately 250,000 calls and transactions per year.

The way those calls are handled is unusual.

“We’re not just peddling products,” said William B. McCarthy, Executive Director, SWIF. “We regard our customers not as buyers but as donors, as people who want to not only purchase catalog items but also help native peoples. So we worked with OnBrand24 on a program that treats each caller with respect and patience. For us, time is not of the essence. We want each caller to realize how much SWIF appreciates their support.”

So to support SWIF customer relationship strategy, OnBrand24 violates some basic call center performance metrics. Rather than processing the largest sales order in the shortest amount of time, the goal is to make each caller feels like a valued friend of native peoples.

If the caller wants to peruse a range of catalog items, the OnBrand24 agent has been trained to patiently discuss alternative items while the caller comes to a decision.

If the customer wants to chat about previous catalog orders, previous SWIF donations or visits he or she has made to Native American reservations in the Four Corners area, that’s fine too.

“OnBrand24 has been very adept at understanding our culture and our approach to customer and donor relations,” said McCarthy. “They have exceptional people skills, and they consistently provide a warm and welcoming customer service experience. OnBrand24 is the first line of communication for our supporters, so they are in a critically important role.”

Customizing an inbound customer service program that reflects the client’s brand and market strategy is a key reason OnBrand24 clients stay with the call center company on average for more than five years.

“We strive to become a direct extension of our client’s internal sales team, and we’ve done that with SWIF,” said Mark Fichera, CEO of OnBrand24. “The unique approach we take for SWIF calls best supports their fundraising objectives. We are proud of our contribution to SWIF’s support of native peoples.”

Another OnBrand24 advantage: scalability.

SWIF call volume varies greatly depending on the time of year. Roughly half of Indian Craft Catalog sales happen between October 15 and Christmas, and OnBrand24 scales up SWIF program staffing resources accordingly.

In addition, OnBrand24 maximizes SWIF’s ROI with its “time-on-task” billing structure, in which SWIF only pays for the time agents are on the phone with SWIF customers. There is no charge for idle time or unused resources.

McCarthy explained that “the only thing we ask OnBrand24 to do fast is answer phone calls within three rings and keep hold times to a minimum. They do this very well. I can’t imagine running our donor and catalog operation without them.”

Like Virgin: OnBrand24 Brings Out Its Inner Entrepreneur for Virgin HealthMiles

In the world of business, Sir Richard Branson means Virgin and Virgin means an enthusiastic embrace of the entrepreneurial spirit. Branson’s Virgin Group is a leading branded venture capital organization and is one of the world's most recognized and respected brands.

Virgin HealthMiles, one of the Group’s companies, provides technology-based employee health programs that align wellness incentives with healthy behaviors. The company serves more than 120 companies representing over 700,000 employees across the U.S., and relies on OnBrand24 customer service agents to be as creative, decisive – as entrepreneurial – as the company itself. In so doing, Virgin HealthMiles calls on capabilities rarely asked of an outsourced customer service call center.

“You need brains, personality and finesse to work for Virgin HealthMiles, and OnBrand24 delivers those qualities in abundance,” said Ken Ryan, Director of Member Services, Virgin HealthMiles. “We are fast-paced and innovative, and OnBrand24 fits in very well with our culture. I doubt many other inbound call centers could handle the challenges we’ve given OnBrand24. They have been a key factor in our success.”

Operational in the U.S. since late 2005, Virgin HealthMiles helps companies build a culture of prevention that delivers healthy shifts in behavior among employees and measurable business value for companies.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, lifestyle-related chronic conditions drive 75 percent of the nation’s nearly $2 trillion healthcare costs. And a recent survey by the National Business Group on Health found that two out of three workers whose employers offer financial incentives say it's motivated them to try healthier lifestyles.

The Virgin HealthMiles Pay-for-Prevention™ approach addresses these trends by rewarding personal responsibility for adopting the right behaviors while aligning participating companies’ interests with those of their employees to drive down lifestyle-related health care and productivity costs.

With Virgin HealthMiles, employees get the motivation and tools they need to get and stay physically active. Participating employees earn “HealthMiles” for increasing their daily activity and reaching key milestones that trigger financial rewards, such as gift cards to major retailers, cash to spend as they choose, health insurance premium discounts, HSA credits or other incentives their employers choose to offer.

For participating companies, the benefits of Virgin HealthMiles are far-reaching. The HealthMiles program helps employees make sustainable behavior changes, such as increased physical activity levels, which can help to prevent the onset of costly chronic conditions that drive the majority of healthcare costs today. With HealthMiles, employers get the tools and data they need to measure and manage their healthcare cost-savings strategies.

Evidence-based science supporting physical activity and its positive effect on health is the cornerstone of the HealthMiles program. The program is designed to guide members to the right amount and frequency of physical activity, and allows them to focus on the activities they enjoy with the assurance that they’re getting the right amount to be healthy. Activity milestones built into the program are aligned with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Service’s recommended daily activity minimums, which are defined as approximately 7,000 steps or 30 minutes of moderate activity, 5 days a week. The tools of the program capture and track activity, and members know at a glance if it’s enough to meet these health recommendations.

With its high number of members, the extensive detail involved in the program and members’ use of technology, Virgin HealthMiles places a premium on quality customer service. Members frequently have questions about milestones and rewards, and how close they are to achieving an incentive. They also ask for assistance uploading activity data from their pedometers into their online Virgin HealthMiles account.

This is where OnBrand24 comes in. The call center’s customer service agents are educated in all details of the program, and they are trained to deal with members in a positive manner that motivates them to remain engaged with the program. OnBrand24 agents understand that they not only represent Virgin HealthMiles, but they must also be highly regarded by the company’s members and clients. And they need to make sound, fast decisions when helping members.

“When you work for Virgin HealthMiles, don’t look for a script or a rulebook,” said Mark Fichera, CEO, OnBrand24. “It’s a non-bureaucratic culture, you have to handle customers with humor, creativity and enthusiasm, and you have to make smart, knowledgeable decisions on your feet. This is an elite customer service program, so we recruited and trained a team that best represents the Virgin HealthMiles brand and reflects its culture.”

OnBrand24 handles about 12,000 calls and emails per month. The call center’s agents draw on their detailed knowledge of the program and its technology, along with their intuition. For example, members sometimes ask for HealthMiles to be credited to their accounts for exercise that their pedometers don’t pick up, such as swimming.

“Swimming is good physical activity, and we want to reward members for doing the right thing,” said Jamie Sharp, Member Services Manager, OnBrand24. “Because a pedometer isn’t the best activity device to use in capturing swimming data, we’ll credit members’ accounts with a best estimate for the HealthMiles they deserve if they’re not able to use another program compatible activity tracking device, such as a Polar™ heart rate monitor.”

Web-based technology is a cornerstone of the Virgin HealthMiles-OnBrand24 partnership. The two companies share a common computing platform via CITRIX, providing the call center’s agents remote log-in access to Virgin HealthMile’s IT environment.

To improve responsiveness and cut costs, OnBrand24 created and continually expands an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section on the Virgin HealthMiles website. Utilizing Intelliresponse technology, the FAQ program has reduced member phone calls and email inquiries by 20 percent.

In addition, OnBrand24 generates detailed monthly reports that include metrics on call volume data, average call resolution time, email volume and response time, as well as data on the issues and questions raised by Virgin HealthMiles members, information that enables the continual evolution and improvement of the customer service program.

To monitor OnBrand24’s performance, members are regularly surveyed on the customer service they have received. Approximately 100 Virgin HealthMiles members are surveyed daily regarding OnBrand24’s trouble-shooting capabilities, communications effectiveness and overall responsiveness.

The results: OnBrand24 is graded “Good” or “Excellent” by 95 percent of those surveyed.

“Our partnership with OnBrand24 is strong and productive,” said Ryan. “We even invite them to join us on sales presentations. They understand our program and our members. Most of all, they understand our culture. They are a big part of our team.”

Alpha Software Drives Product Launch With OnBrand24 Outbound Sales

So many customers, so little time… That was the challenge Alpha Software, a global leader in database application software, faced earlier this year when it released Version 10 of its Alpha Five flagship product. In the world of database apps, Alpha is nothing short of legendary. Since its inception more than 25 years ago, the company has developed a highly loyal user community that today numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

When Alpha launches a new product version, one of its biggest challenges is contacting its enormous installed base.

So Alpha assigned OnBrand24 the critical assignment of telesales market outreach to existing Alpha Five customers. The project has been hugely successful, exceeding Alpha’s expectations and leading to additional telesales assignments for the call center service provider.

"OnBrand24 has been absolutely great," said Brett Johnston, Sales Manager at Alpha Software. "We’ve been very impressed with their ability to establish a highly capable team that quickly developed a strong technical grasp of our technology and the ability to communicate new product features in a compelling way. We quickly came to regard OnBrand24 as a satellite office for us, a direct extension of our sales and marketing team.

"With four call center agents assigned to the Alpha team, OnBrand24 has averaged 1,500 calls per week, selling large numbers of Version 10 along with significant sales of training DVDs, educational classes and professional services. Alpha reports an impressive 5-1 return on their telemarketing investment – for every dollar spent on the project, the company is realizing $5 in revenues.

"This was a big challenge for us, but we have talented call center agents with the technical background and the smarts to quickly master Alpha’s needs," said Mark Fichera, CEO of OnBrand24. "We are proud to contribute to a highly successful product launch for Alpha Five."

In addition to boosting Alpha revenue, OnBrand24’s outreach program also supports Alpha’s customer relations strategy. As existing users of Alpha Five upgrade from versions 8 and 9 to Version 10, their loyalty to Alpha software is perpetuated.

Alpha has received positive feedback on OnBrand24 customer service. After completing a purchase of Version 10, a customer emailed Alpha that the OnBrand24 call center agent he spoke with "was professional, knowledgeable, polite, engaging and very good at eliciting insights about the product that only come from many years of using it seriously. I can’t remember the last time I had such fun on the phone purchasing software. You would be well advised to count yourself lucky to have her representing the ‘public’ face of Alpha."

Based on the project’s initial success, Alpha has added to OnBrand24’s assignment, including sales of training products, mentoring and professional services, along with a five-day user group and training class in Las Vegas.

"Many of our customers have been with us for a long time – the Alpha user community is very tight," said Johnston. "I was amazed at how quickly OnBrand24 became an integral part of our culture. With OnBrand24, we’re selling more copies of Version 10 and refreshing more customer relationships than we possibly could on our own."

OnBrand24 Masters Many Marketing Tasks for Sappi

“R&R” usually means Rest & Relaxation – but when it comes to the call center services OnBrand24 provides for Sappi Fine Paper, it stands for Responsiveness & Relationships.

OnBrand24 is a full-service call center based in Beverly, MA, that uses a full range of services in support of Sappi, a preeminent North American producer of coated fine paper with production capacity of 1.3 million tons of paper annually. Each year, OnBrand24 transacts hundreds of thousands of communications with Sappi customers all over the U.S. and Canada.

The OnBrand24-Sappi relationship, rare in the call center industry for its longevity, dates back to 1990. OnBrand24 is integrated throughout Sappi’s CRM strategy – from inbound customer service, order processing and mail fulfillment, to outbound marketing awareness, to email outreach and database maintenance, to product warehousing and archiving.

The centerpiece OnBrand24 service is rapid and accurate response to specialized paper sample requests from Sappi customers, who include designers, printers, paper merchants and publishers. Hundreds of complex sample orders are handled every day by OnBrand24 agents, who process the orders and export them to Sappi’s shipping center in New Jersey. This requires thorough knowledge of Sappi’s product line, accurate reporting of the sample order (including brand, weight, color and size) and real-time tracking information.

OnBrand24 is measured on timeliness and accuracy, and the call center consistently measures up well.

“OnBrand24 is very reliable,” said Patti Groh, Director of Marketing Communications, Sappi Fine Paper North America. “We depend on them to seamlessly handle the critical first phase of the sales cycle – the sample request – and also to relate to customers on a personal level that represents Sappi well and reflects our culture.”

Over the years, OnBrand24 staffers have developed strong relationships with Sappi customers.

“Some customers like to take their time, tell us about their weekends or their kids, while others are all business – they just want quick detailed response and rapid feedback,” said Mark Fichera, OnBrand24 CEO and President. “So calls can last anywhere from 1 minute to 15. We know how to treat each customer, how to handle any situation. We get the order details right and we handle the relationship right, too.”

OnBrand24 also works closely with Sappi’s regional sales representatives, processing high volumes of sample orders over the phone, by email, fax or online. Orders can be highly complex, requesting that 25 separate sample items be sent to 15 different customers. All of them are dispatched quickly and with maximum attention to detail.

And because OnBrand24 is in operation 24/7/365, the call center is always available to provide order shipment tracking updates in real-time.

Managing Sappi’s sample order operation is just the start of the paper company’s relationship with OnBrand24. The call center’s outbound services are used to support Sappi industry award programs.

OnBrand24 assists Sappi with two of their industry award programs, Ideas That Matter and Printers of the Year. Ideas That Matter is an annual grant program that helps designers support and transform their creative ideas into a powerful force for social good, such as anti-smoking and environmental conservation. The Printers of the Year award is a highly prestigious industry honor given for excellence in printed communication.

For both, OnBrand24 serves as a “call for entries” generator, calling thousands of contacts and encouraging them to participate in the awards competitions.

In addition, OnBrand24 manages Sappi’s email outreach program, which includes maintaining their email database, updating and editing tens of thousands of customer email records and developing segmented, specialized lists. Those lists are critical to rapidly notifying customers about special promotional offers, price changes, new products and targeted offers for market segments.

“The typical email service firm would put Sappi at the end of a queue and make them wait their turn, but we get their emails out in a matter of one or two hours,” said Cecilia Thompson, OnBrand24, Director of Major Accounts. “Managing their emails is very detail oriented with a lot of real-time edits and alterations. But Sappi is in a highly competitive, fast-paced industry, and that’s the kind of agility and quick turn-around they need. We’ve optimized our operation to meet that need.”

OnBrand24 also handles brochure and literature fulfillment for Sappi promotional programs, with mailings numbering over 10,000 annually.

And the call center serves as archivist of Sappi promotional and advertising campaigns going back more than 10 years. Hardcopy content is kept available for Sappi marketing staff or their ad agency for review of previous creative work.

“OnBrand24 is woven into the Sappi fabric – we think of them as an extension of our own staff,” said Groh. “We have complete confidence in their ability to respond rapidly to our customers and maintain great relationships with them. They know Sappi so well – and they know our customers so well – that they’ve become an important part of our success.”