_Sharon Oatway has been at the forefront of the development and introduction of numerous direct marketing channels and customer relationship management initiatives for over 20 years. In 2002, after spending 2 years as the President of Y&R’s North American Relationship Management Center, Sharon started “VereQuest”:http://www.verequest.com/ and launched their state-of-the-art call centre technology and proprietary techniques for validating product messaging. Then in 2003, at the request of Expedia Canada, VereQuest built a virtual organization and site to manage outsourced call and email quality monitoring. Today VereQuest monitors the quality of customer calls and email for some of North America’s leading organizations._
*One Degree: VereQuest provides an inbound e-mail quality assurance service. How does this work?*
As more and more companies are turning to the web as a primary communications channel, email volume has grown exponentially and (unfortunately) the quality of that communication has declined. Given that this communication may be one of only a few interactions companies may have with their clients, the way in which this channel is managed is growing in importance.
VereQuest works with clients to establish quantitative measures of quality which cover areas such as Business Language, Product Knowledge, Selling, Advice, etc. Each standard is weighted and specific shortfalls identified. This ensures consistent and detailed feedback can be captured and reported. Our trained Quality Assurance specialists, working remotely, dip into the email queue of these companies and randomly select emails for QA. They are scored and results are made available in real-time. Importantly, the entire process is totally transparent so all interested parties can see results, gaps, trends and opportunities for improvement. VereQuest also provides consultative support to help close gaps and raise the bar.
*One Degree: What is the most common mistake companies make when dealing with e-mail from customers?*
Category: Five Questions
*A One Degree Exclusive!*
Upstart digital marketing agency “Indusblue”:http://www.indusblue.com just won the work for the official “CBC”:http://www.cbc.ca site covering the “2006 Winter Olympics in Torino”:http://www.torino2006.org/index.php?lang=en. In this exclusive interview, we asked co-founder Darren Pereira about winning the CBC business, the future of Indusblue, and much more.
_Darren Pereira is Director, New Business Development and one of the founders of “Indusblue”:http://www.indusblue.com. Along with brother Dayton, he is positioning Indusblue as a team of creative directors, producers and production talent who deliver online experiences that employ technology along with strategic thinking and stunning creative. His five year goal is to make Indusblue synonymous with the best creative shop in Toronto._
*One Degree: Congratulations on the big CBC Olympic win! What’s the story behind this story?*
Thanks! It’s huge for us as we spent a lot of time and hard work thinking through every detail in our proposed solution.
After we received the RFP, it was a matter of detailed research, thorough proposal writing and providing concrete examples of our skill set. The CBC team was so impressed with the intelligence and creativity of our proposed solutions, that they short listed us and invited us to present our proposal. We also provided references to our existing clients, who love our work. After additional rounds to clarify details, we won the contract.
*One Degree: You went up against some big shops to win this work. Do you think your size worked for or against you?*
_Tim Shore is the publisher of “blogTO”:http://www.blogto.com, a city blog focused on Toronto culture, recently named by Forbes Magazine as “Best of the Web”:http://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/category.jhtml?id=323. In his day job, he works for the interactive arm of a Toronto-based ad agency. (Tim is front right along with blogTO Managing Editor Tanja-Tiziana Burdi (left) and contributors Christine Miguel and Paul Fler. Photo by Sabrina Cariati.)_
*One Degree: What inspired you to start blogTO.com?*
I think there was both an opportunity and a need. The opportunity was that there was this great new low-cost publishing platform called a blog (not to mention a great way to experience the Internet). On the need side, there was a lack of good web sites which focused on Toronto culture. There seemed to be general consensus that “toronto.com”:http://www.toronto.com was garbage and that the rest of the media players were treating online as an afterthought.
That combined with my passion for the city and the fact that readership and ad dollars continue to migrate online, it was a no brainer.
*One Degree: Just like One Degree, BlogTO depends on a broad spectrum of contributors. I’m curious about your opinions on whether group blogs should emphasize the individual or the group. How do you balance the personality and talents of the various contributors with the need to present a somewhat consistent and/or authoritative voice to readers – or do you?*