Positions where you can occupy a key strong point are important in every endeavor. There are only few leaders in each industry; everyone else marches in their shadow. We “own” a position because of a perceived strength—the perception is indeed the reality. People accept only that which is consistent with what they already know as they add to their perceptions about the position of a product or service.

In business, the most secure positions are owned by those who achieved a base of loyal customers. Premier positions are earned by organizations that have systems for really listening to their customers. They then focus resources on meeting or exceeding needs in a manner that delights customers.

The high ground in business today is owned by names with brand strength like ePerformax Centers in the Philippines and in the US. ePerformax provides solutions for Fortune 500 companies in information solutions, telecommunications, transportation, technology, travel, hospitality and retail.

With more than 22 years of experience in sales, marketing and contact-center operations, Teresa Hartsaw had developed the company’s proprietary Performance Maximization Model that enables the company to deliver high-performing customer contact and BPO services in a wide variety of industries.

Companies that derive their success from operational excellence live or die by process improvement, governed generally by the principles of total quality management. ePerformax is no different. It constantly polishes its standard operating procedures to cut hassle for its customers. Inside the company, that approach diffused negative emotional reactions. Instead, the company took the position of saying, “You’ve done something wrong in the spirit of continuous improvement—how can we do this better the next time?”

One of the things Hartsaw did was create an environment that forced everyone in the company to be closer in touch with customers. She has introduced her pioneering Performance Maximization method, which uses a proprietary Six Sigma-based approach to maximizing performance quality and extensive training for agents and management alike.

“If the agents are brilliant at what they do, they can improve sales. If they’re not brilliant, they can destroy you. So we’re teaching [them] to be great marketers even if they are in customer service because they are the brand image to the customer,” she tells this columnist.

According to her, the results of the high-performance method enables ePerformax a steady track growth with the highest levels of quality and customer satisfaction for its base of Fortune 500 clients. It was awarded its fifth-consecutive MVP Quality award from the editors of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine for its Philippine operations.

ePerformax, in managing people, builds a degree of organizational strength that most competitors find unassailable. Training helps people perform; performance boosts self-worth; a sense of worth builds employees’ loyalty to the team and customer. The benefits of this self-reinforcing approach to management ship up in both happy employees and a robust set of profit figures.

“This approach follows the Six Sigma DMAIS [Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control] Improvement Methodology. We’ve translated the concepts of Six Sigma to everyday practices and our focus on the highest-quality customer-service performance,” Hartsaw says.

As a performance guru, she believes anything she approaches is possible if one has three qualities in mind: creativity, passion and commitment.

She notes that the lean Six Sigma is typically a project that is driven by management to attack the lowest-performing, highest-impact processes. “We’ve taken a similar approach and translated the concepts of Six Sigma to everyday practices to support our business-process outsourcing programs and deliver the highest-quality and highest-efficiency performance.”

ePerformax’s plan for an IPO that is expected to raise up to P3.3 billion to finance its expansion plans, which involve acquisition or development of business, capital expenditure and increased working capital needs, has been recently approved. BDO Capital & Investment Corp. has been tapped as issue manager and lead underwriter.

“We will double our growth this year, 50 percent to 70 percent on revenues, and increase employment on the number of people,” Hartsaw says. Following five years of unprecedented growth, ePerformax set up operations in Cebu to conduct inbound customer service for two of its major clients.

All in all, the bright glow cast by ePerformax is generated by a canny weave of strategies, superior personnel with unparalleled knowledge, application of the finest techniques to the customer’s vital processes and an extended network of service capabilities. That glow signals one thing: solution. Like strategy and reengineering, solution is a concept that is often referred to but infrequently practiced. But in ePerformax, solution is the foundation of an aggressive and highly successful company.

AdMix: Living in a consumer culture

Once upon a time, in the days before mass media, heightened superficiality and consumerism, life was easy. Our social roles were handed down to us from previous generations in the shape of norms and respected institutions. We each had a clear predetermined identity and role in society that shaped how we lived.

ePerformax attains strategic superiority

Bubuwit squeaks that the stories we get to read in our national dailies each day are classified into only four main categories: government and politics, business, disasters, and sex and violence.