B & T Weekly: Friday September 12, 2003

Unity4 Teleservices does not use massive call centres which hire backpackers, nor does it outsource its operations to the middle of India. Instead it has a database of 300 qualified agents who take calls from home offices. As a result, most of its staff aren't anywhere near the head office – its most remote operator lives 250km north of Tennant Creek.

"We have operators in every State and Territory and this is one of the benefits to our clients", Unity4 Managing Director Daniel Turner said.

Call centres like Unity4 are quite common in the UK and the US, however in Australia there are only a few companies doing remote call centre marketing, according to Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) CEO Rob Edwards.

About 90% of Unity4's call centre business is for B2B operations. However, it is also providing services for Pharmaceutical Companies using qualified Nurses who provide support services for customers. Due to the software system developed by Unity4 for its operations, it is able to incorporate various aspects of the direct marketing mix into its campaigns, including SMS, email, fax and letterbox. Unity4 has worked with agencies such as URSA, Sudler & Hennessy and Publicis. It has also worked for Microsoft, HP, Roche, GlaxoSmithKline and Energy Australia.

"We like to sit in with agencies in the pitch process and we would expect to work with the agency hand-in-hand to design the strategy", Turner said.

"Marketers need call centres in a different way to businesses and we need to be very flexible with what we can provide".

While many people believe call centres simply make cold calls, Unity4 does not; Turner believes companies that do so are giving the industry a bad name.

"Residential cold calling from telemarketers shouldn't happen and I consider it to be like spam [email]", Turner said.

ADMA is currently working with the Government on legislation changes to do with the call centre industry. "The call centre industry has consolidated a lot [over the past couple of years] similar to the dot com industry", Turner said. "It was growing really rapidly and got out of control. Now there's been a decline in the number of companies doing it and the smaller groups have been better quality suppliers. The bigger agencies rely on big processing centres, therefore outsource them to places like the Philippines and India".

Edwards agreed, saying the latest figures from CEASA show the industry has definitely plateaued. He partly attributed this leveling off to marketers using cheaper off shore alternatives. "I think that there was a general sentiment that the market was oversupplied and organisations have consolidated outside Australia", Edwards said.

Turner believes part of the reason for the increased importance of call centres in the marketing mix is the introduction last year of privacy legislation. "It has made [privacy] top of the mind and marketers are now using it because they know it is legislated", Turner said.