Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

I saw this press release from our good friends at PRWeb.

TeleRep, a Maryland based call center, announced their 30th year.  Thirty years is call center years is like dog years - a call center year is like 7 normal years.  TeleRep was founded in 1976 by Sandie Olson working out of her home.

Mrs. Olson began by providing live answering services to local businesses, mostly service contractors, doctor’s offices and other small businesses. She continued to grow the company over the years to support the advanced call center needs of fortune 500 companies. TeleRep, a division of ATS call centers, Inc was established in the 1990’s to serve clients with these advanced service and technological requirements.

Mrs. Olson recalls the early years…’I worked for an answering service in my youth and often thought If I had my own company I’d pay higher wages and provide better working conditions.’ That’s exactly what Sandie did. She found that companies were willing to pay more for quality live agent services in order to get better service to their customers.

Mrs. Olson was also concerned about the working conditions of the agents:

‘I’ve always believed and experienced that operators who are paid and treated professionally, will handle call more professionally,’ Mrs. Olson continued. ‘You can find call centers everywhere, but finding a really good one is not easy. Many of our clients have come from providers that failed to meet expectations. We have built our entire infrastructure and business philosophy on being the best. We could never foresee offering a cheap service with less than desirable results. That’s simply not where we’ve come from, where we are now or where we’re headed.’

TeleRep has had offers to buy them throughout the years, but they have remained privately owned.

In the past decade TeleRep has had opportunities to sell the business to national call center chains. It has refused to do so. ‘We provide a unique service that our client’s cannot easily find in the marketplace’, said Joseph Simpkins, Business Development Manager. ‘Time and again, we hear bad experiences from companies whose customers get long hold times, rude operators, agents unfamiliar with products or services, not to mention getting stuck in frustrating IVR systems. As long as the call center industry has a plethora of these types of agencies, we’ll have a steady stream of clients itching for better results.’

Congratulations to TeleRep for 30 years.  To last this long in this industry and to have survived the land rush of the mid-90s, the collapsing prices of the late 90s, the overseas competition, and the maturing of the industry is quite an accomplishment.  Here's to another 30 years!

Have you worked for TeleRep?  Tell us how it was to work for this call center.