Compaq Computer Corp is aiming to capture new sectors of the market with the opening of sales-focused call centers. The company, which claims pole position in the personal computer market and has stated its aim to be the number two global computer company by the Year 2000, this week formally launched a call center in Glasgow, Scotland. The center has been open for business for some months now (CI No 3,155) and is now ready to begin ramping up to the 1 million or so calls a year that Compaq expects to go through it. The company insists that the main remit of the call center is to support its existing channel and open up access to Compaq, particularly to the small and medium business market, to whom Compaq admits it has been seen as distant and inaccessible in the past. With the new call center approach, Compaq is styling itself the company that want to talk to you. The call center aims to have some 250 staff by the end of the year, and these are divided primarily into those that handle incoming calls, and those making proactive, outbound calls to prospective customers. The idea is for Compaq to offer a single point of focus for customers, who will dial one number to speak to Compaq, be taken through their requirements by a call center operator, and ultimately be directed to the nearest Compaq reseller that can handle their specific needs. According to Compaq, users fall into several categories, which include people it will not even pursue, and others to whom it will be appropriate to sell direct. It will not pursue what it calls the ‘unsophisticated’ price sensitive home or small business users who are not interested in paying more to have a known brand of machine. The company will sell direct to the second time buyer, who wants to buy a machine straight off the page, and who needs a standalone PC with pre-bundled software at a ‘one-off’ price. Compaq is, not surprisingly, coy about this venture into direct selling, since it has always defended its channel strategy against the direct sales model adopted highly successfully by the likes of Dell Computer Corp and Gateway 2000 Inc. However, it is clearly hoping to extend its reach to the small (0-99 employees) and micro (one to two employees ) company, which most of its channel partners would not have the infrastructure to deal with. There are some 185,000 small businesses in the UK alone, says Compaq, and whereas in 1989, the sector employing the largest number of people was the large corporate sector, by the year 2000 the single biggest employment sector will be the small and micro company. Also in the call center is an account management team for large corporate accounts, (companies with 500+ employees). Although this is typically where Compaq believes it is particularly strong, in the UK it currently has only 400-500 out of a total of some 4,000 large corporate accounts. The call center team will proactively seek to gain new accounts and ad-hoc sales. There is a similar team for medium businesses and an incoming calls team to take calls responding to sales promotions. The company will use a web-based system called Compaq Connect, to open up its call center information to its channel partners in order to provide a ‘seamless’ interface for customers. The call center runs Siebel Systems Inc’s Enterprise Applications call center management system, and a web interface enables data to be transferred to and from Compaq’s resellers. In addition to the Glasgow center, Compaq has opened similar call centers in Atlanta, Georgia, one in France and it is about to open one in Germany.
