Klaus Harisch uses Corona boost to expand

Munich Remote customer service was often in demand during the corona pandemic. “Without a call and service center, we would certainly not have been able to cope with this crisis so well,” says Dirk Egelseer, President of the CCV industry association. The acceptance of call centers by customers has increased noticeably over time.

Klaus Harisch is now also using the good situation in the sector to attract further investors. The entrepreneur was once known for the telephone information service Telegate – slogan “11880 – you will be helped” – which he floated on the stock exchange in 1999 in the midst of the Neue Markt hype. A few years ago he founded the call center platform Yoummday with his sons Lion and Pablo.

The company provides freelance telephone agents to corporate customers. Now Harisch has been able to convince other financiers of his business model. The investors Armira Growth and Project A Ventures put 30 million euros in Yoummday, as announced on Wednesday.

The company now has a good 200 permanent employees and 25,000 telephone agents in the files at the Munich, Halle an der Saale, Berlin and Sofia locations. According to industry estimates, sales should have regularly doubled in recent years to a figure in the higher double-digit millions. “We can certainly maintain this pace for another two or three years,” says Harisch.

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The entrepreneur sees great potential on the market. In Germany alone, the industry’s turnover is ten billion euros. In the coming years, the demand will continue to grow, for example due to the increasing importance of online trading. “In the end, if there are problems or questions, customers always want a real contact person on the phone,” says Harisch.

However, not all providers went up in the pandemic. “We are not a homogeneous industry,” said the head of the association, Egelseer. The service points of large Internet retailers would certainly have benefited. In addition, some sectors have discovered remote service by telephone for the first time.

Yoummday tour

The company continues to see great potential in the call center market.

(Photo: Yoummday)

The situation was different with tour operators, for example, whose business collapsed at times – and with it the need for call center services. But the bottom line is that the industry is likely to have grown. “We see great growth opportunities in the medium term,” said Harisch.

Harisch plans acquisitions for more growth

His company could also reach a new dimension by expanding the business model. With the proceeds from the financing round, Harisch wants to take over smaller software companies specializing in AI and traditional call centers and convert them to the Yoummday model.

The previously permanent employees of the center should therefore switch to self-employment. “I think that the overwhelming majority will do that,” says Harisch, “The employees will then earn significantly more.”

So far, the start-up has placed the agents and taken care of billing, debt collection and quality assurance. Yoummday usually receives a commission of 19 percent for this. The self-employed, some of whom live in Spain or Turkey, often earn twice as much as in a call center, on average around 20 euros an hour. But they also have to accept the disadvantages of being self-employed.

The basis is the self-developed software platform, which is also used for telephony. The agents are trained for their respective tasks – sometimes it’s a service hotline, sometimes taking orders by phone – and can work for several clients at the same time.

This benefits the providers. Because the personnel situation is also tense in the call center industry. In the pandemic, however, there was also an influx. “We have seen that some employees have switched to us from nursing, for example,” says Egelseer, head of the association.

Here, too, the trend is towards working from home. However, a healthy mix is ​​best. “With 100 percent remote, quality is a challenge.”

New managing director drives digital strategy forward

And quality is a crucial issue for the industry, which hasn’t always had the best reputation. “There is little we can do about illegal advertising calls,” says Egelseer. But the “customer service made in Germany” has won over both customers and companies.

The new Yoummday strategy is to be driven forward by the digital expert Claas van Delden as the new managing director. He had previously helped build up the Internet portfolio of Pro Sieben Sat 1 Media. First of all, they want to take over a first call center with about 500 to 1000 employees as a test, he says. “If everything goes well, we can also imagine a lot more.”

In about three years, Harisch can then imagine an IPO. “We definitely want to go to the capital market.” But he wants to maintain the character of a family business and win sustainable investors. That is one of the lessons from the turbulent times with Telegate on the new market.

More: Call center operator Majorel goes public with a valuation in the billions

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