Winnipeg expert aids call centre at prison

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This article was published 25/04/2017 (3418 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg lead-generating company that primarily uses contracted callers who work from home is volunteering its expertise for a novel enterprise — setting up a call centre in a prison.

Carrie Simpson, whose Managed Sales Pros business has become one of the fastest-growing startups in Canada — 600 per cent growth over the past three years — is volunteering with a prison ministry group to set up the small call centre at the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility in Iowa.

Simpson built her successful lead-generating business over time, eventually developing — after trial and error — into a niche service working exclusively with information technology companies. Her clients are software or hardware vendors who want to find managed service providers that will agree to become re-sellers.

Simpson got all sorts of advice and guidance in Winnipeg at The Eureka Project, now North Forge Technology Partners.

A couple of years ago she participated in a program that allowed her to pilot an on-premise call centre in Las Vegas and since then set up an American company there with 15 full-time employees.

In total, her company now has about 35 people on the phones every day.

Last fall, she was approached by a Christian ministry called WTL Industries that has been working with prisoners at the Fort Dodge prison to help them set up a call centre.

“At this point I’m volunteering my time and my team’s time to help them,” Simpson said.

“Then I will support them with training and mentoring.

“Setting up a call centre is not easy. We have made all the mistakes already.”

Larry Lubinus is a volunteer with WTL Industries both inside and outside the prison. He’s a retired process engineer with Dupont and also works as a facilitator for a company called HTG Peer Groups. One of the companies he encountered with HTG suggested he call Simpson to help.

Prisons in Iowa are supportive of having private-sector businesses work in the prisons, Lubinus said.

“The prisoners can make more money, get training and obviously it’s a better activity for the men,” Lubinus said.

“But it’s hard for a manufacturing company, for instance, to try to set up in a prison. But a call centre is different. All they need is a computer and a headset.”

But it’s still not so simple. The inmates cannot access the Internet and there are all sorts of restrictions about calling out.

For instance, they will not be able to set up appointments for the call centre clients, something that Simpson’s business would typically do.

Managed Sales Pros mines data in a specialized way to find the most appropriate leads to pass on to her clients. But at Fort Dodge they will have to find very specialized clients with what she referred to as “one and done” kind of calls.

Simpson said she is happy to have the chance to help out.

“I’m 13 years sober. This means my life now looks a lot different than it did 14 years ago. I’ve never been incarcerated, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have been. I believe in second chances,” she said.

Lubinus said there was great demand among the inmate population for the chance to get trained and work at the call centre. Simpson interviewed the applicants on the phone and selected four for the project. She’ll continue to train them.

One of the participants is a convicted drug dealer.

“He obviously has had some success as a salesperson,” Lubinus said.

A key part of the Fort Dodge project is that when the call centre workers’ prison terms are up, they would be trained and experienced and be able to find call centre work.

Simpson said the number one barrier to further growth for Managed Sales Pros is identifying the right people for her to train and work for her.

“The ideal scenario,” she said, “Is that we would be able to give them a job when they are released.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca