New Straits Times
By Izwan Ismail
WHEN Frenchman Laurent Junique came to the region a decade ago, he brought with him a business concept which was alien to the businesses community here - telecommerce or better known as telemarketing services. It is a concept where a company becomes the extension of another company's sales and marketing unit to bring in more profits.
Confident that the concept would take off, Junique established Teledirect Telecommerce in Singapore in 1995 and started to find his first client. "It wasn't easy as the concept was still new and many businesses felt more comfortable doing their sales and marketing activities themselves. People just don't yet to see the benefits of outsourcing at that time," he said.
Prior to setting up Teledirect, Junique had been working in the telemarketing industry since 1986 when he was still in France. "The situation was the same; the French also didn't like the idea of selling things through the phones, but over time this concept becomes a norm."
Knowing that getting the first customer was crucial, Junique, as the company's founder and chief executive officer, knew he had to make everything right and convince the potential client the benefits of telecommerce.
"So one day in 1995, I picked up the phone and called one of the largest credit companies in the world for an appointment. I told the manager that I have an excellent machine that can help his company make profit faster, hence the manager agreed to meet me," he recalled.
"When I met the manager, he asked me to show the special machine I was talking about over the phone, and I said: `Well, you're looking at it (him)!'," he reminisced.
After managing to convince the manager of Teledirect business model and a 50 per cent discount, he managed to secure his first client. "And it's no ordinary client, it's American Express," said Junique.
Since then, Teledirect business has been growing at an average of 20 to 30 per cent per year as the industry began to see and understand the benefits of outsourcing in general.
After 10 years of operation, Teledirect has become a household name in the telecommerce outsourcing business in the Asia-Pacific region. The company today has a network of seven call centres in the region with over 900 seats in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India with associate companies in China and Japan.
An interesting point to highlight is that, despite India and China being favoured as business processing outsourcing (BPO) destinations, Teledirect has made Malaysia its hub for the region with over 400 out of 900 seats that the company operates now.
"This is due to the fact that Malaysia comprises people from different races such as Malay, Indian, and Chinese who can speak more languages than other countries. The multi-lingual capability is the right ingredient for the telecommerce business, and with this, Teledirect is able to cater to many businesses' requirements," Junique explained.
"To date, we've secured some 50 clients in the region, mostly from the financial, information technology, and telecommunications industries," he said, adding that 15 of them are from Malaysia.
"Our next target is to grow our business regionally from Malaysia, as the country will become the centre to serve new territories as well," he added.
Teledirect's business focus is simple, that is "sales acceleration". "This is our niche which we've been focusing on since the company's inception. We don't want to be the Jack of all trades, but rather want to stay specialised," he said.
In terms of customers' sales, Junique claimed that Teledirect is capable of closing up to 70,000 business sales for its customers in the region, with 40,000 of them from the Malaysian hub. In total, the company has acquired over two million sales since 1995.
"We can guarantee our customers that every dollar they invest in us, we will be able to bring back 50 dollars in terms of sales," promised Junique.
He also claimed that the company has been delivering 100 per cent or more sales target set by its clients. "There is a service level agreement we sign with our customers of the services with promises to deliver, and we've been fulfilling it all the time," he said.
"Every transaction and performance is tracked by our clients every day, and reports will be sent to them on the progress of the sales activities we carried out on behalf of them," he added.
Junique said besides its employees as the single most valuable asset to the company, it also develops its own customer relationship management system called Telesmart CRM for handling its daily business activities.
Junique is a person who subscribes to the virtues of integrity, initiative, creativity and teamwork, and these values have become the hallmark of Teledirect's corporate philosophy and operations. "These values are important in becoming the best in telecommerce business."
Looking ahead, he foresees Teledirect expanding in the industry through acquisition as it spreads its wings into more territories. "We plan to tap into the US and European markets soon from our Asean hub, and this will mean increasing the number of staff," he said.
Teledirect is expected to increase its headcount in Malaysia to 600 by next year.
Recently, the company bagged 11 awards at the Call Centre Association of Malaysia Annual Awards, the most won by a single company so far. "Ten of the awards came from the individual category which proved the level of professionalism and service shown by the employees in this industry," Junique said.
The company was recently awarded with the MSC status. |