Amidst all the economic doom and gloom, including contact center closures it is very rewarding to see teleservices companies expand.
One of these, and one which truly deserves to grow, is Thomas L. Cardella & Associates (TLC&A). It has been for the past new months expanding existing and opening new contact centers in Cedar Rapids, Coralville, Keokuk, and Marshalltown, Iowa. It also has at-home agents.
TLC&A has been focusing on and as a result experiencing strong growth serving the direct marketing needs of Fortune 500 clients in the financial services, insurance, publication, specialty retail, technology, telecom, entertainment, utilities, and travel industries.
One of these clients, Office Depot, has contracted with TLC&A to provide B2B teleservices, which led the teleservices firm to announce that hiring will begin immediately for 60 new full time Office Depot account manager positions in Cedar Rapids and Coralville, paying up to $14 per hour.
Little wonder that TLC&A was able to snag and grow with the Office Depot contract. The firm's founder and namesake is Tom Cardella, a highly acclaimed and well-respected teleservices entrepreneur who launched Access Direct in 1995 and quickly grew it to have a payroll of 2,000 employees in the state.
The honors he achieved include ten consecutive quality awards from Customer Interaction Solutions, Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Small Business Administration Entrepreneurial Award, Inc.500, and induction into the into Customer Interaction Solutions Hall of Fame. CIS and TMC founder Nadji Tehrani featured an interview with Cardella in the August 2007 CIS Boardroom Report.
In 2000 Cardella sold Access Direct to IAC/InterActiveCorp (IAC), parent company of Ticketmaster, Expedia.com, LendingTree, Match.com, Home Shopping Network, and teleservices firm Precision Response (PRC). In January 2003, IAC asked Mr. Cardella to run PRC that employed 12,000 people worldwide.
When IAC sold PRC, in November 2006, Cardella returned to his Iowa roots and formed TLC&A in April 2007. In twenty months his firm has grown to four locations and over 500 employees and is ranked as one of the fastest growing contact center companies in the U.S.
TLC&A's 'formula' is meeting clients' needs with solutions including inbound customer service, outbound teleservices, e-mail management, chat, and customer support services, using cutting edge IP, multimedia routing, list analysis and custom-designed call attempt parameter algorithms. The firm aims and achieves quality service on the inbound and better success rates and less inconvenience to customers on the outbound.
Keep up the great work, Tom! You are an inspiration to the industry and to businesses everywhere who are seeking to survive and grow in these challenging times.
