ZCorum offers a full suite of outsourced services—including U.S.-based customer support.

by Jeff Goldman [August 24, 2006]

ZCorum was founded in 1995 as the ISP America.net. According to Rick Yuzzi, ZCorum's vice president of marketing, the ISP soon began working with a nearby telco that wanted to get into the internet business—and that experience persuaded the company to switch its focus from retail to wholesale, offering internet access, 24/7 support, e-mail services, and more.

At that point, Yuzzi says, his company was one of the first to recognize the benefits of a wholesale offering. "We realized that rather than setting these companies up to do internet themselves, it would be better to share the economies of scale and the resources that we had, because we already had mail servers, we already had some support people, and we already had the engineers to the run the servers," he says.

ZCorum P.O. Box 1376 Alpharetta, GA 30009 Voice: (800) 909-9441 mailto: info@ZCorum.com

To accommodate the change of focus, America.net was renamed ISP Alliance—though soon after, the name was changed again to ZCorum to broaden the company's focus beyond just ISPs. "Today, we provide services to independent telephone companies, small cable companies, municipalities that are providing internet services, and MDUs—apartment complexes that provide internet services," Yuzzi says.

A relatively small percentage of ZCorum's clients, Yuzzi says, are "just" ISPs—most of them are companies providing other services that want to add an internet offering. "Our market niche has really been the companies like the small telcos and the small cable companies that wanted to provide a service to their customers that was similar to what they could get from a larger provider," he says.

And Yuzzi says ZCorum's list of available services is constantly expanding. "We're always looking for products and services, like personal security suites, that companies can offer to their customers—either as a sticky application, something that will help them compete, or even something that will allow them to increase their average revenue per user," he says.

Helpdesk expertise
Yuzzi says a good number of ZCorum's clients come to the company specifically for helpdesk services, attracted by its depth of experience in the industry. "Because of the fact that we work with a broad number of companies, we touch lots of different technologies," he says. "We're very experienced with supporting cable modems, DSL modems, wireless, fiber to the home, routers, and home networking."

Outsourcing support on its own, Yuzzi says, often makes a lot of sense. "If a company feels like they've got a handle on the technology of, say, providing e-mail and web, but they don't want to staff 24/7 on support, they'll just have us do the support for them," he says. "Or it could be somebody that wants to do support during the day, but they need someone to do off-hour or weekend support—and we can do that."

ZCorum has two call centers in rural Georgia—one in Gordon and one in Swainsboro. At first, Yuzzi says, the company ran a call center at its offices in metro Atlanta, but found employee turnover to be a challenge. "It was very difficult to keep people," he says. "You'd spend a lot of time training them—and then people would go off to MCI and other companies."

And so ZCorum worked with the State of Georgia, which wanted to help develop rural areas. "They were very helpful in helping us find facilities, and also in helping us train our support people through local colleges and universities," Yuzzi says. "That provided us with a group of people that were very loyal, because we're one of the top employers in the area. It's a good job for them, and they like where they live."

As a result, Yuzzi says, ZCorum has a number of people on its support staff who have been with the company for years. "We do very well with retention," he says. "And it's nice for our affiliates, because when one of their customers calls in, they're not getting transferred over to India."

Responding to customer concerns
All support reps, Yuzzi says, go through a couple of weeks of classroom training, then a week of listening to an experienced representative handle calls over the phone, followed by a week on the phones themselves with a supervisor listening in and helping them through the calls. "It's a very intense training process," he says. "And there's ongoing monitoring of phone calls to find opportunities for additional training."

ZCorum's clients can view all data on customer calls and tickets over the web, and can run reports at any time. In addition, whenever a ticket is closed, a satisfaction survey is automatically forwarded to the customer, asking about everything from the customer service rep's level of knowledge to whether or not the customer would recommend the service to a friend or colleague.

Yuzzi says the company generally gets excellent responses—and if they don't, they respond to the customer's concerns. "As they come in, supervisors go through the surveys, and if we get a negative response on any one of the questions, then we proactively contact that customer to find out the reason they were dissatisfied and to try to see if that supervisor can turn the situation around," he says.

The survey feedback, Yuzzi says, can also help an ISP determine what additional services its customers want. "We try to get feedback on the things that people are looking for, both from our support reps and our ISPs," he says. "A lot of time customers will call in and they'll say, 'Do you guys have video e-mail?' or whatever—and we'll take that feedback and we'll help develop the product from there."

— End

Related articles:
	[Dec. 27, 2002]	We Need Cheap Overnight Tech Support
	[Jan. 22, 2001]	When Your Help Desk is Distant
	[June 2, 2000]	Building an ISP Business Plan Part 4: Operating & Organizational Plans

Online resources:
	Outsourced Customer Support Directory
	Quick Reference Chart