Midlands Business Journal

EMS, Inc. acts as cyber customer service center
By Wendy S. Clark

Omaha's business community is no stranger to the call center or customer service center concept. Companies are accustomed to the idea of businesses with large volumes of customer service calls outsourcing them to call centers.

What some Omaha companies may not be familiar with is a cyber customer service center, but the city has one in EMS, Inc.

The firm, which was founded 1998, offers Inbound and Outbound Teleservices, e-mail and Live Chat support. The company provides services for Telecommunications, Consumer Products, Financial, Utilities and Insurance companies.

Mitchell D. Johnson, president and chief executive officer, said he founded EMS after realizing there was a real opportunity to build customer support on the Internet.

"We did a study of 125 e-commerce sites, and 46 percent had a failure rate," he said. "They either didn't respond to an e-mail within five days or there was no area for asking questions. Imagine that you are about ready to buy a product online, but there is no one to answer questions. We provide the people to do that.

"Human touch has not gone away. There are lots of different systems for automation, but they don't answer people's questions."

Johnson said EMS is similar to call centers in some aspects, mostly in the way employees are trained, but it is different in other ways.

"We like to differentiate ourselves from call centers," he said. "What we do is different in the people it takes to respond and how we analyze and track e-mail messages. Because it is nonverbal, it has to be right on target."

Of the firm's staff, most are customer service representatives or what Johnson calls Service Consultants. They work for dedicated clients so they know the company just about as well as an in-house CSR does, he said.

Online customers don't know they are contacting a person outside of the client site. Most of EMS' competition comes from in-house operations.

"If an SC doesn't know the answer, there are procedures in place for finding it," Johnson said. "There is a supervisor who is even more trained on the client than the SC. We also have a single point of contact at the company if we don't have the answer. We have a database in which we put the answer so we can see it again."

Some clients want only certain kinds of customer service questions answered, such as investor relations questions. The client's CSRs might answer sales questions, so the database separates e-mails that come from the same Web site, Johnson said.

EMS handles other kinds of projects as well, such as Inbound Teleservices or distributing electronic newsletters to a mailing list of users who have requested them.

"We send newsletters to a quarter of a million people," Johnson said. "They include newsletters about stocks and investing. We also can send product, service, marketing, sales and promotion updates via e-mail to people who have asked for the information."

The firm operates 24 hours a day seven days a week at 121st and Emmet streets in northwest Omaha.

"The number of people on the night shift depends on traffic," Johnson said. "Usually we have one or two people. As we get more clients, I can see the night shift getting larger. When people are on a Web site, they want real- time answers."

Although Johnson, the sole owner of EMS, Inc., does not release sales figures, he said growth has been improving.

"It was flat but now we are seeing straight up growth," he said. "It's amazing to see the interest in just Internet space. We were the new kids on the block, but now we feel like the old kids."

EMS, Inc. started in a temporary site before it settled into its 3,300-square-foot facility. Johnson said he has an option on a 5,000- square-foot building that may be used after he hires more marketing staff and ISCs.

He wants the firm to hire another 30 people by the end of January.

The company has been handling 5,000 to 10,000 inbound messages each day and about a quarter of a million outbound messages a month, Johnson said.

Online shopping makes the holiday season a busy time for the company, and he said statistics from the second week in December showed that inbound and outbound messages were up 75 percent over the same time last year.

Johnson has some major goals for EMS over the next couple of years.

"I want to have three sites around the country and be fully integrated in the next 18 to 24 months," he said. "The locations are still up in the air, but with the Internet, we can get as big as we want."

Johnson, a native of Red Oak, Iowa, has a bachelor's degree in marketing from UNL. He worked for First Data Corp. for four years managing a sales group and for Teleport Communications Group in Omaha for five years running its sales organization.

He also worked for U S West for five years in sales and marketing and as a product manager. Johnson and his wife, Colleen, have three children age 7, 5 and 2.

WSC

EMS, Inc.; interview with Mitchell D. Johnson, president and CEO, 12111 Emmet St., Omaha, 68164, 402-496-2223
www.emscrm.com, 800-233-8811

Reprinted with permission of the Midlands Business Journal 1999.

Contact:  
S. Wheeler
Public Relations
EMS, Inc.
(402) 496-2223 – telephone
(402) 496-2224 – fax
partners@emscrm.com