While SEI serves corporations like McDonald's and Steak n Shake, the company is open to working with clients of all sizes—and in a wide range of industries.

by Jeff Goldman [December 17, 2008]

The call center service provider SEI is about to celebrate its 40th anniversary. The company was founded back in 1969 as a software consulting firm, and has evolved through the years to meet changing customer needs. Headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, SEI now has call center facilities in North Dakota and New Mexico as well as Letchworth, England; Debrecen, Hungary; and Chengdu, China.

SEI Voice: (888) 734-7343 info@seillc.com

SEI is 98 percent owned by Ygomi LLC, which also owns and operates the wireless software provider ArrayComm, the telematics company Connexis, the remote order handling service provider Verety, and the POS software provider VSI.

Company chair Olga Striltschuk says SEI's offering covers a broad range of services, from technical helpdesk services to software asset management. "And we are a single point of contact for many of our customers—by that I mean if they have any issues with any of their technology in their stores, they call us and then we diagnose the problem, we work with all of the other third party suppliers that provide either hardware or software to find a solution, and then we bring that solution back to our customers," she says.

SEI's newest service, Striltschuk says, is remote management. "We can monitor the performance of the equipment in our customers' facilities, and when we see issues, or a pattern that might cause an issue, we are able to go in and remotely repair or find a solution," she says.

Next generation platform
One of SEI's key strengths, Striltschuk says, is its integrated telecommunications and incident management platform, which allows a call to be traced throughout its lifecycle. "We can go back and see, at any point in time, how long that call took to get resolved," she says.

That same information is available to every agent in the process as needed. "When calls are escalated to, say, a Level 2 agent or to a third party supplier, all the information, including the original call, is transferred with it," Striltschuk says. "It's all carried as one package of information, so there's never a need to go back to the customer and re-ask them, 'What did you say?'"

Where the law permits it, Striltschuk says, all calls are automatically recorded. "That allows us to review the calls for quality assurance purposes, but also to send the recorded call along with the case notes," she says. "That's valuable for somebody working further down the process, if it's escalated, to be able to go back and listen to what the customer actually said in their own words."

Reports can be customized to any length, detail, or language that a client might need. "We can splice data by region, by city, by agent, by call type, by time of day—none of that is a hindrance to us, because as part of the requirements for our technology platform, we wanted to be able to provide real time information, in the language that the customer wants to see," Striltschuk says.

Custom tailored service
Striltschuk says the company works hard to encourage employee loyalty. "We offer many incentive programs and continuous education to continue to develop their skills… In Fargo, many of the leadership positions are now held by employees who started out with us many years ago, and it wouldn't be uncommon to find employees that have been with the company for 15 to 20 years," she says.

The company serves a number of large quick-serve companies like McDonald's and Steak n Shake, but Striltschuk says SEI is open to working with customers of all sizes, and using a range of different pricing structures. "I don't think we would rule out anybody," she says. "It depends on the type of services that they would want, and if that would be a good fit."

Still, Striltschuk is quick to stress that SEI doesn't see its offering as a commodity service. "We are more of a custom tailored service," she says. "But when I say that, that doesn't mean that we are generally more expensive, because our customers find value in what we do—and, comparatively, we've been able to continue to grow our business even in difficult economic times."

Ultimately, Striltschuk says, SEI's real strength comes down to that kind of custom tailoring. "For ISPs that are considering finding a new technology support partner, if they're looking for somebody that is more an extension of themselves than just another supplier that has an off-the-shelf solution that they want to sell, then SEI is probably someone that they should talk to," she says.

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