THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996 TAG: 9605180267
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
In the sea of telephone service centers that have swept into Hampton Roads in the past several years, Bell Atlantic Corp. executives have strived to make their new center in the Norfolk Commerce Park stand out.
Pay was one way. Sales consultants at the center start at $8 an hour and can earn up to $14 with incentives, compared to $6.50 with little prospect for bonuses at many other local telemarketing operations.
Training was another distinguishing factor. Starting employees get up to eight weeks of it before they handle their first customer.
And then there's the ``product'': It's high-tech.
The 70 full-time employees at this Bell Atlantic center on Robin Hood Road sell and provide customer service for a fast-growing telephone computer-data service known as ISDN.
It stands for Integrated Services Digital Network. And because it can move data at 128 kilobits per second - five to 10 times faster than is possible using conventional computer modems - it's quickly becoming the transport vehicle for heavy users of the global Internet computer network.
Since Bell Atlantic's ISDN Infospeed center opened last July, it has quietly become one of Hampton Roads' fastest-growing employment centers. Ed Lamb, the center's sales director, predicted that as many as 150 people will work out of the leased building by the end of this year.
And because Bell Atlantic executives are planning to make the center the sales and service headquarters for the next new waves of residential data- transport services, the work force could burgeon by several hundred more over the next few years.
Curt Koeppen, a Bell Atlantic vice president who oversees the center, said the company is the most aggressive in its industry at developing the consumer market for high-speed data services.
Residential customers are the Norfolk center's specialty. Those who call its toll-free number can order ISDN and purchase a range of special modems required for the service at prices well below what big consumer-electronics dealers charge.
Bell Atlantic installers will even make sure the customers' computers are configured properly.
It's all part of a ``turn-key solution'' necessary to convince consumers to try Bell Atlantic's service, Koeppen said. It's expensive for the company at the start.
``But it's going to save us money over the long run because we're not going to be out at the customer's home over and over again.''
And it's paying off in an increasing number of word-of-mouth referrals, he said, which saves the phone company marketing expenses.
Only about 2,000 of Bell Atlantic's 150,000 ISDN lines are used by residential customers. Businesses and governments use the rest. But Koeppen said the residential total has grown by 1,500 since January and is now swelling by about 125 a week.
The customers signing up for the service are all over Bell Atlantic's territory, from northeast Pennsylvania to the southwest corner of Virginia.
Koeppen expects the growth rate - and employment in Norfolk - to expand even more as Internet and on-line service providers make their networks compatible to ISDN data rates.
Currently, only a handful of providers with local service connections are now set up to do so. They include newcomer Erol's, an Internet access provider based in the Washington area.
Slashing rates will be another stimulus for ISDN, Koeppen said. Bell Atlantic is hoping within the next two months to win state regulators' approval to lower its monthly ISDN charges for residential users by 15 to 86 percent.
Currently in Virginia, Bell Atlantic's ISDN residential customers pay a monthly fee of $30, plus 1 to 4 cents a minute, depending upon the time of day and whether both of the phone line's data channels are used.
That's on top of a one-time connection fee of $163.50 for most customers and the cost of an ISDN modem, which ranges from $275 to $395.
``The only complaints I hear are about pricing,'' said Jamie Sobrato, a sales consultant for the Norfolk center.
She, like most of her associates, who are employed by a Bell Atlantic contractor, had little computer experience before beginning work at the center.
``It was really intimidating at first,'' Sobrato said.
``But once I got over the initial fear of talking to very technically oriented customers, I fell into it rather well.''
Sobrato had worked for ``another'' back-office phone center in Norfolk after moving from California to Hampton Roads last August with her husband, an Army officer. The atmosphere at the other place was completely different, she said: little training, low pay and a bonus that was ``completely unattainable.''
Bell Atlantic's Lamb said he knew upon joining the local center that it would have to set itself apart from the pack in order to recruit the kind of workers needed to deal with highly demanding computer users. He had kept tabs on Hampton Roads' emergence as a major call-center hub from his previous post, manager of a General Electric Co. worldwide phone center in the Richmond area. That center handled lighting products.
That's why wages were established higher than the local industry norm, all initial jobs were set up as full-time and training was heavily emphasized.
He figured that once people got in the door, Bell Atlantic would have a better-than-average chance of retaining its good hires because of the center's growth potential, which should provide some rungs for advancement.
There's one potential threat to all of this: cable companies. They are developing modems that may make data transport dozens, or even hundreds, of times faster than ISDN. But Koeppen said Bell Atlantic's head start is a big advantage.
And he pointed out that his company and telephone companies are working on new technologies of their own that will speed data transfer.
He said the local center has big prospects. ``We envision using the infrastructure we're setting up here well into the future.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Ed Lamb is sales director at Bell Atlantic's service center in
Norfolk where employees provide customer service for a fast-growing
computer-data service known as ISDN.
by CNB