By Angela Garfinkel, President
When I was a student at the University of Nebraska-Kearney (Lopers, not Huskers!), my advisor told me that people with professional skills were needed in this hot new industry: telemarketing. While it was a very short-lived program in the late 80’s, I’m one of the few — the proud — the graduate of a four-year college with a degree in telemarketing. And when I say, “few”, I’m serious.
After completing an internship at Aurora Telemarketing Inc., I was hooked. I found telemarketing interesting and challenging, and my parents were happy that I no longer wanted to be a manager at Wendy’s. That was in 1988.
Fast forward 20 years to when Quality Contact Solutions (QCS) was founded. The core employees in the beginning had a vision to provide a new model in the telemarketing industry: a full-service, outsourced telemarketing solution for clients who didn’t have the internal resources to manage their telemarketing.
Our business beliefs formed the values that guide how we operate: quality, urgency, service, being positive, conducting worthwhile work, being easy to work with, and achieving goals.
Quality — At the core, we believe that quality and productivity are not mutually exclusive. We believe that good quality calls result in high productivity.
Urgency — We care about our clients’ businesses as much as we care about our own, so we’re urgent in addressing their needs. When a client has a question or a problem, we work to find a solution immediately.
Service — We are experts in telemarketing services, so we anticipate challenges and are proactive to ensure that challenges are not roadblocks to our success. This allows us to provide superior service to our clients in coming up with solutions to decrease costs, lower average call lengths, and increase sales conversion rates.
Being Positive — Telemarketing is a tough business and we have to work hard to create a positive work environment where people are happy and engaged. Being positive is not optional. When we bring ourselves to work with a positive attitude, we expect and strive for the best every single day – and most days we achieve the best.
Conducting Worthwhile Work —Some telemarketing programs can be lucrative. However, conducting work that is shady or something we wouldn’t be proud of in the long-run is not acceptable. When contemplating a new client opportunity, we always ask ourselves, “Is this a program that I’d want to tell my grandma about?”. If the answer is “no”, and we wouldn’t be proud of the client or the program, we don’t do it. Money is not worth it if we destroy the pride our team has in their work.
Being Easy to Work With and Achieving Goals — Our business is largely focused on helping clients create telemarketing programs that achieve specific sales results. Our model uses a variety of in-house and outsourced telemarketing locations (including a work-from-home team with some client programs). When we outsource to our valued telemarketing vendors, we are sub-contracting the work but not the responsibility for delivering results. We believe that we achieve the best results for our clients when our sub-vendors enjoy working with our team. We summarize this as being easy to work with. When our vendors are treated with fairness and kindness, their performance yields the best results, which is a win for our company, our clients, and our vendor team. With Quality Contact Solutions as the glue in the program, we find that everyone achieves more on a sustained basis.
Angela Garfinkel is the President and Founder of Quality Contact Solutions, a leading outsourced telemarketing services organization. Angela has the pleasure of leading a talented team that runs thousands of outbound telemarketing program hours on a daily basis. Angela can be reached at angela.garfinkel@qualitycontactsolutions.com or 516.656.5118.
