00:00:02
Hey everyone, welcome to yet another podcast from from Kaisen uh where we chat a little bit about i gaming and what’s uh what’s moving. Today I am joined by Marcus from Prime Entertainment. He’s one of our newest partners who’s just finished almost four months now live in in Finland uh with their brand Kah House. Finland as is as you know a market known uh for high standards uh fastm moving and uh very very local. So we’re going to chat a bit about how it has been to have a startup

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in Finland and uh how how uh how we in Kaisen have uh have also supported that and uh what it takes to launch fast uh scale smart and uh maybe stand out a little bit. So to get a little bit of uh of background here, can you tell us a little bit about your brand Marcus car house and uh what makes that unique? Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Dola. It’s uh great to be here and it’s good to work together for a little while now. Now, um K House uh is in a sense pretty straightforward. That’s

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really what we’re aiming for. Kos is pay casino. We’re working in Finland and um now I know it’s it’s not really unique with pay and play nowadays. No frrills quick all of that. What we do offer though which I would say puts us a little bit in the forefront compared to the competition is that uh is our reward programs. We have a cashback which is completely wager free and it is daily. So, we have a daily cash back that is paid out in cash. You can do whatever you want with it. It’s pure money. And

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the fact that it’s every 24 hours, I think that is something that’s fairly unique. I haven’t seen it myself elsewhere. So, don’t don’t hold that against me. Besides that, of course, we do the the wagering free uh rewards and free spins. So, it’s yeah, as a pay and play, it should be simple. The reward should be simple and it should be cash. So, no, going into your reward section and looking at how much wagering you got left, it’s it’s your money. Yeah. Yeah. From from my perspective and what what

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I’ve seen from from customer service as well, this is this is also valued by customers, you know. It it’s uh it’s easy, it’s fast, and it’s free, you know. It doesn’t get much better than that. And that’s it. It should be simple. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. and uh the players appreciate that of course and also the agents uh of course I’m sure that so going into Finland I mean they they have a they also have a a license coming up uh but uh that’s still some some time

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time too but uh what did you know about uh the Finnish marking market going in and has has anything caught you by surprise? Yeah. Now, historically, I mean, I worked with other brands in the past and always close to Finland as well. I was a little bit surprised how quickly it went to actually get players to sign up and really engage with the product. I I assume it would take longer. And as you said, we’re almost four full months in and it’s been over my expectations. Now, I shouldn’t speak on behalf of of of the

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whole team, but um being an operations man first and foremost, I I couldn’t see this coming. I I’m quite impressed with how quickly uh players have gotten used to to the features, how it works, and just getting on with it. Yeah. And it is casino. It should be pretty straightforward. Yeah. And those players that have been signing up as well are of course it’s unlikely that it’s their first brand. So it’s very very unlikely. Yeah. All right. So yeah from from from our perspective in from Kaisen’s

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perspective uh doing doing uh going to customer service in in the outsourcing obviously the first the early weeks and the first time is is all about sinking the tone of voice uh getting the support flows correct you know it’s it’s a lot of uh a lot of work uh with with fine-tuning and and aligning and um I was I was hoping to to get your thoughts on uh why you chose to to go uh for outsourcing uh in instead of going you know uh the traditional way if you might call it that to you know get your your

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own team. So so what yeah isn’t it? It’s I mean it is it is it’s the big question. It it really is. I mean we were weighing all alternatives now with the whole point being that the product should be strong enough good enough that in a perfect world customer service shouldn’t even be be required. We know that that’s not how it works. And then as a startup you’re looking okay to to go live right you need a rather big team to keep the opening hours that that we were interested in

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having. If you want a team that’s available basically 247, seven days a week, 365 days a year, you require quite a big team to have the bare minimum. And then that doesn’t really take into account how long it takes to replace someone if they they leave to to do the onboarding. um to have a team that’s ready for launch as well takes I would say realistically maybe three months at least if you if you have a start date to make sure you get people uh hired, trained and and ready. Yeah. And with the volumes of players you

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expect as a as a startup as well. It’s not the best business to sit with a big team like that from day one. I mean we’re both in operations for a long time. And we know that efficiency is one of the if not the key metric to make sure that it’s uh it’s it’s pulling its weight, right? Yeah. And we could not find a setup justifying that cost to have that in-house from day one. So um we were reviewing our options and Kaizen came up as as the best option to go live and it kind of gives us uh that

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flexibility and the best of uh best of both I would say. M working very close with you guys outsourcing it’s uh yeah it’s a bit tricky for myself not having outsourced in the past always had things internally but you know it’s a it’s a learning process. Yeah, it always is. And uh and and obviously from from from my point of view as well, it’s also uh easy when it’s uh when I I get to work with with people from with your background, you know, who who has a lot of experience in operations, in customer

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service, who knows how things works, you know, it’s it makes my life so much easier. Uh it is nice when you don’t have to explain the why behind things. It’s just okay. This is all right, let’s let’s get on it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it’s it was just not viable for us to have an in-house team and I think the volume of uh of contact you need to be v viable is is quite high and the whole business idea is to keep it at so simple at a level where we don’t see uh customer contacts coming in. I mean,

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with pay and play, you’re not doing a lot of KYC, right? It’s and that’s usually one of the things that uh that causes the most frustration with customers driving them to to contact CS. As long as the promotions are working, you should be able to have an awful lot of activity without anyone reaching out. Where are my free SP? Well, if you get them, it’s no no reason to contact us. I must say on the KPIs that we have been tracking it’s been um definitely proven so far to be the right decision going

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with with outsourcing and um dare say that I’m I’m quite pleased with our collaboration so far with Kaisen as well. So that you can put on record. Yeah, happy to hear that. And uh another thing about uh outsourcing is obviously this is obviously one of our uh key selling points as well is that you know we handle that well you can focus on your core business. Uh so so that’s that’s obviously one of one of our key selling points. What would you say has been the biggest challenge uh so far in

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in this kind of setup and also uh also with launching a new brand? I know this is a very big question uh but uh but share if you can share some thoughts around uh around that. Well ahead of launching uh GH house of course you need to make sure that the guys and the team that’s going to support the brand are trained up to speed. That wasn’t really a challenge. I think that was really simple actually. Um we had the set setup um trainings, walkthroughs with platform people. Your guys were there asking

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relevant questions. You could tell I mean this is it’s pretty standard stuff, right? Where where do you find this? Where do you find that? How does that work? Yeah. I I think really the biggest challenge has by far been to not have that direct control that I’m used to. I work with yourself, your supervisors and then they have been been actioning that is probably the biggest challenge but that is more of a challenge for me that’s not really a practical challenge as a that’s more of a of a learning

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curve to you know okay you guys are sitting over there handling that so I have to work on myself when it comes to all right what kind of instructions am I providing what kind of process because I I I have to say that a few times when I got frustrated, it was my own fault for not having provided the the right content. Oh, the guys have actually been been following exactly what’s been written and then I can’t go back and say, “Hey guys, you should have u should have thought about this.” Yeah. Yeah. It’s on

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me. So, I think that has been the major thing to kind of adapt a bit and to be more thorough. you can’t expect, you know, the the agents to to read between lines at times or or to to apply what I would in my subjective way would you as common sense when you’re having multiple brands and you are getting the the instructions that you’ve been told you have to do things a certain way and I get it as a as a third party you can’t really wing it at any point because the customers is always right and if we

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provide the wrong information or it’s not adequate, it’s really on on my side and on us. So yeah, that’s that’s been improving uh I think gradually quite quickly actually. Yeah, I’m happy to hear that. Um, so, um, if if you were to launch, uh, another brand, is there something that you would have done, uh, different, uh, than, uh, what you did this time around? If we were to launch another brand, that’s a good question. In terms of the outsourcing and the um, collaboration there, I don’t think I

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would have done an awful lot differently. Perhaps just planned even even better when it came to to how things were to be now. Yeah. From from day one, there’s been gradual improvements, process updates, uh improving content, so on. So, it’s there’s usually a bit of learning by doing because no matter how prepared you are, you usually find areas that could be improved and and adjusted and clarified and elaborated on. So I think we’ll just spend even more time on on the prep work to make sure that from day one

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everything is mint really. Yeah. And you also know how it is you know you can you can prepare for one year and once you go live there is these things that you didn’t think about. Yeah. There’s always always always those things. Uh at least from my experience. So uh so yeah. anything else you would like to uh you like to share uh you would like to uh to ask me uh to talk about in in the end? I don’t know if it makes for podcast or for one of our regular catchups, but I am curious what it’s like to deal with

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clients because I’ve been uh you and I I think we have fairly similar backgrounds that you have your KPIs, you’re running your department, you’re delivering this, but I’ve never done that on behalf of a of a company that’s, you know, yeah, a third party like this. So I am curious how that is to be on your side of the fence to be honest. Yeah. No, it it can uh it can be uh it can get complicated obviously. Uh usually um I’m I’m lucky with in the sense that most of the

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people that I am talking to do have our background. uh because most companies have someone who is you know ultimately responsible for a customer service but not leading it like like I am doing. So luckily I have uh a good cooperation with uh with all of them. But uh what what can be tricky is is obviously when you are working with uh different clients and they all have uh different areas what they feel is most important and that gets challenging trickling down to the agent as well. um you know because if you talk to customers from

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this you know overall you know it’s it’s more or less the same but there’s like small small uh differences. So with this client uh you have to say this in every single conversation while as if you’re talking to this client’s customers you don’t have to then you have to say this instead you know and that gets complicated fast when when you have a lot of that but uh I must say overall it’s it’s uh it’s a bit more challenging than to to have like your own department

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and you’re kind of running all of the show for for a company uh it gets more challenging and a little bit more uh tricky, but in the end that’s also what what makes it interesting as well. I mean there’s there’s never a boring day. Uh I would say oh there’s a lot of change. Yes. I mean there’s constant change. There’s changes to in in the licenses. There’s changing in the processes and procedures. there’s updates and yeah I mean if if there’s a update on a on a on a welcome bonus and

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if if we now uh have uh let’s say 14 brands and all 14 has update in welcome bonus it’s uh it it’s challenging to stay on top of everything at all times but uh but the good thing is I I I do have a a very good team good supervisors that that uh that really really really are on top of things. Sometimes things do slip, but luckily that’s rare. Um, but in the end, we’re all humans. So, yeah. My last question uh for you uh is where can uh people go uh to learn more about Prime Entertainment and Kahos?

00:16:29
Where where can they go? What should they Google? Well, there’s not an awful lot of information yet. We are a startup. We are doing our best to first of all just ensuring that the gah house.com is working the way it’s intended but we keep improving the uh the site functionality the features the offers and that’s where you will find all about that on kahhost.com. When it comes to prime entertainment the uh main place to go would definitely be our LinkedIn. It’s uh brand spanking new so

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it’s uh it’s still work in prog progress but uh Prime Entertainment on LinkedIn would be if you wanted to get in touch with us in any perfect in any manner. Yes. Perfect. I’ll um we’ll uh we’ll try to to link it as well in the end of uh this video so we can u so we can uh so people can go check it out when they are curious. Thank you very much. Well, thanks for joining Marcus. It’s uh been a pleasure. And uh for everyone who’s who’s listening in, thank you as well.

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And uh if you’re launching uh launching in a competitive market uh like Finland uh and want to scale support without losing that that local touch, you know, that’s what Kaisen is here for. And uh yeah, well, thank you so much and um I think we will speak again later today. Thank you very much for having me still.