This columnist has written about some companies that have successfully dared to be different. Now, I’d like to leave you with some final thoughts about the new power of “daring” and how you can increase the likelihood of your own success in putting to use what you have discovered.

Let’s start off with a fascinating little exercise: fold your hands together, interlacing the fingers, and look at them. Note which thumb, the right or the left, is on top. Now do it again. But this time make the other thumb come out on top.

If your hands feel uncomfortable, you are doing it correctly. You are experiencing the discomfort of breaking a familiar pattern.

An ad veteran and mentor once told this columnist, it illustrates the paradox that once you create a pattern of behavior, each time you duplicate that exact pattern, you increase the discomfort level should you decide to change it later. Familiarity breeds hardening of the creative arteries.

What is also evident, as we observe the downsizing and job elimination running rampant in business today, is that staying with the status quo no longer holds the promise of security it once did. At a time of discontinuous change, the business that dares to take big risks in the interest of pleasing its customers is the one actually following the safest course for itself and its employees. The business that “plays it safe” is likely to see market share and job security melt away.

With today’s escalating tempo of competition, just getting customers is hardly enough. The trick is to “get ’em and keep ’em.” 

Recently, this columnist learned of a company that is not only award-winning, involvement marketing, existential marketing (the “get real” thing), extra-value marketing and the other keys to business success. Recently, this columnist learned of Sitel Philippines, which shows once again what a genuine commitment to a visionary strategy encompassing this approach can do.

Sitel is a global business-process outsourcing (BPO) leader. The company meets clients’ customer care and transaction-processing needs through 67,000 associates in 27 countries. Sitel provides world-class solutions from on-shore, near-shore and offshore locations across 155-plus facilities throughout North America, South America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.

Powership is not viewed by this columnist as another nice little promotion or just another add-on to these multifaceted marketing activities. Over the last three years, president Dan Reyes has made this company one of the most dynamic BPO companies in the country. Sitel experienced 72-percent organic growth brought about by last year’s merger.

“Despite of the merger of the two companies—ClientLogic and Sitel—we basically almost doubled our capacity in the Philippines and then grew by 70 percent more,” explains Reyes in an interview. Adding to that, “what went for us is really our global operating system—set of standards, procedures, organization—the way we do things and for lack of a better term, it’s like McDonald’s—you go from one location to another, yet you’ll get the same look and feel, the same quality of service.”

Has Sitel paid off? You bet it has. The company has been awarded the highest accolade as last year’s BPO Company of the Year, besting eight other large international BPO companies. The award was given in recognition of Sitel’s diversified range of BPO services, its remarkable growth in 2007 and its various distinctions bestowed upon the company by other award-giving bodies.

Sitel was, likewise, conferred two other recognitions as finalist to the international Information and Communications Technology Awards’ Fastest Growing and the Company of the Year. Reyes was a finalist in the ICT Individual Contributor of the Year award for his accomplishments and contributions that launched the company as a BPO benchmark while championing the Philippines in the international market as the ideal BPO location through his service as BPA/P president.

The company also bagged several prestigious global awards in 2007, including the Frost and Sullivan Global Excellence Award in Customer Care Outsourcing and the Black Book of Outsourcing’s Most Trusted Contact Center Outsourcing Firm.

“There has been an outpouring of customer loyalty,” stresses Reyes, “and we have seen increased volume because of the system. We are constantly building on our success and we are always looking for innovative ways to delight or make our clients value us even more.”

Sitel, as a brand, becomes fundamentally talk-worthy as it reaches inside the company and changes the mindset about business and its relationship with the clients.

“Globally, there was an opportunity. They were in a space wherein we were not in the same space [although we were both outsourcing call-center companies]. They were big in certain verticals, say, financial services, while we were very strong in technology. [The merger] has really expanded our horizons as far as geographical areas [we service]. Because then we enlarge our global footprint. We were able to get into vertical markets [that we were not strong as before] and we were also able [at least in the Philippines] to service other geographic areas,” says Reyes.

Sitel provides fully integrated customer care and back-office processing services that focus on delivering a return on customer investment to clients by reducing service costs, improving customer relations and increasing revenue per customer.

The company’s ability to serve customers and track customer information across multiple channels enable them to consistently provide positive, intelligent service on behalf of their clients.

Customer care includes repeat purchases, up-sell/cross-sell, billing information, issue resolution, account change, reservations, loyalty clubs, investor inquiries and warranty calls.

When asked how all these efforts are paying off, Reyes tells this columnist: “The outsource industry per se is still growing. The market will still continue to grow. We’re looking at the global market ranging from about $130 billion to $140 billion by 2010. In the Philippines we’re trying to capture 10 percent [of that], which translates to $13 billion to $14 billion.”

This gives the impression that not only the company is reaching its marketing goals, but more important, that customer confidence is improving.

“It’s not the issue of demand but the issue of supply—of getting qualified people to work for our company in order for us to satisfy demand,” he adds. Reyes and his team have shown what can be done when a “deteriorating” situation is tackled head-on with a daring global approach. They have boldly pursued a company vision that recognizes how much the world has changed.

This columnist guess is that this is just the beginning of the kind of explosive growth in the BPO industry.

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This columnist has written about some companies that have successfully dared to be different. Now, I’d like to leave you with some final thoughts about the new power of “daring” and how you can increase the likelihood of your own success in putting to use what you have discovered.

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