Brothers go big

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This article was published 09/11/2018 (2507 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

24-7 Intouch is the largest company in Winnipeg that few people know about.

The global call-centre company, founded by brothers Greg and Jeff Fettes 18 years ago, has 15,000 employees around the world, including about 1,000 in Winnipeg. In the next couple of years, its Winnipeg workforce could double in size.

The Fettes broke their media silence on Wednesday with the official opening of their fourth Winnipeg location in the redeveloped former Target store near Polo Park.

Jeff Fettes, 44, the older of the two brothers who is in charge of technology, credited the company’s Winnipeg roots as one of the reasons it has been able to grow and compete for the largest customers around the world that now include some of the biggest global consumer and technology brand names.

“One of the things that has set us apart, quite honestly, is the fact that we are based in Winnipeg,” he said. “It’s a community with a very highly educated workforce, lots of schools and the access to talent is incredible.”

The brothers have been at the leading edge of innovations in the customer-contact business for many years since they took over their family’s Regina answering-service business in the late ’90s. (24-7 Intouch actually started in Regina in 2000 and opened its first Winnipeg location in 2007.)

It was among the first in the business to start to use live chat functions to assist their clients’ customers, and now operate what they refer to as an “omnichannel approach” that provides outsourcing services to its clients via voice, social media management, live chat and email and will address fraud, user-acceptance testing as well as back-office administration.

Greg Fettes said the company has kept a low profile, at least in part, out of deference to its high-profile clients who outsource work to 24-7 Intouch.

Visitors are not allowed to see inside the workspace where the 500 current employees at the Polo Park location (that will grow to 1,000 over the next couple of years) work, but the common area is a bright, airy place filled with bold graphics, comfortable chairs and a VR station.

“When you think about call centres, you think of rows and rows of cubicles, stained carpets… you don’t think about going into one of the nicest work environments in all of Winnipeg, maybe the nicest,” Greg said.

And while it may now serve as the company’s flagship location, their other locations around the world feature the same kind of inviting workspaces.

“All the centres are very nice. They were just built at different points in our history,” Greg said. “This one is the grandest example of where we are taking the centres globally.”

The company has 15 centres around the world, including a couple in Manila with 2,000 employees — which Jeff says are spectacular — as well as several in the U.S. and other places such as Guatemala City. Another one is scheduled to open shortly in Honduras.

Using digital technology on its clients’ behalf to interact with the customers of its clients are the tools. But the Fettes brothers have built a sprawling global concern by injecting a lot of heart and soul into the efforts.

“We really did not understand the industry that well when we started, and we set out to acquire customers to solve problems in our own way,” Jeff said.

“In the process, as we have grown, not knowing what we didn’t know, we developed a whole new way of doing things. That’s what led to contact centre like this one.”

24-7 Intouch was at the forefront of the use of live chats and social media in the outsourced customer-contact business, and they are now championing the use of artificial intelligence.

‘Others are chasing a different road, but for us, it’s all about AI,” Greg said. “And it is not about reducing the number of people but putting more accurate, better information in front of them. We use AI tools to create incredible customer experiences by partnering AI with all the people you see here.”

They claim to have one of the largest AI development teams in Canada that now numbers about 70 AI developers and growing.

Speaking to some of the 500 employees at the new centre, Greg said, “This site is important for us for a number of reasons. Everyone knows how much we love Winnipeg. We’re really a local company that I think Winnipeg can be really proud of.”

Until now, many Winnipeggers might not have known much about 24-7 Intouch other than it sponsors the ice scrapers during the breaks at Winnipeg Jets games.

But it was also one of only two Canadian companies that made it onto Forbes’ first-ever list of the 250 best employers for new grads and was also named the Asper School of Business Co-Op Employer of the Year this year.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca