Posted by Mark Fichera on Mon, Jul 12, 2010 @ 06:32 AM
Jeff Velodota, whose 23-year career in the call center industry spans all facets of call center operations, has joined OnBrand24 as Vice President of Sales.
“Jeff is a call center industry leader,” said Mark Fichera, CEO of OnBrand24. “He has an outstanding record of delivering great client service – from inbound call center customer service to outbound lead generation and sales appointment setting. We look forward to the highly positive impact Jeff’s expertise will have on the success of OnBrand24 clients.”
Jeff spent most of his career rising through the ranks at a major call center services company, beginning as a telemarketer in 1987 while a college student at the University of Connecticut, from which he earned a Bachelor of Science degree (with honors) in accounting. He eventually became Vice President of Client Services and Sales.
Instrumental in building that company into a Top 25 call center services provider, Jeff was involved in all aspects of its business, client service and marketing operations, including implementation of advanced call center technology.
“OnBrand24 has a great group of clients and a highly talented and experienced group of managers and call center agents,” said Jeff. “As a leading Massachusetts call center, OnBrand24 draws on a great talent pool in the Boston area. OnBrand24 is poised for great growth.
“I’ve always found it very exciting to partner with clients in developing the call center strategy that will boost their sales, improve customer service and customer satisfaction – all the while lowering their business costs,” said Jeff.
Outside of work, Jeff is an avid motorcyclist. But he says his greatest passion in life is being a good father to his four-year-old son.
Welcome Jeff!
Posted by Mark Fichera on Tue, Feb 23, 2010 @ 10:44 AM
When the history of the Great Recession (2008 - ?) is written, the sad accounts of lost jobs, shuttered businesses and general economic hardship will also include a few pockets of prosperity. One of them will be service providers that help companies cut the cost of doing business, such as outsourced call centers.
To be sure, I'm generalizing based on my own experience. I can't speak for the call center business overall, just OnBrand24's - and our business is booming.
Why this is happening is no mystery. In recessions, businesses have the strong tendency to:
- Cut business costs
- Look for ways to grow bottom-line revenue
- Resist hiring new staff
- Look for ways to increase sales resources
Contradictory? Sure. But just as individuals in panic situations become irrational and incoherent, businesses also tend to want things that are at cross-purposes with each other.
Here's the beauty of OnBrand24: We satisfy each of those contradictory goals simultaneously. Let's take a look:
Cut costs and grow revenue: OnBrand24 does this in many ways. For example, at very low cost we can augment and extend our clients' customer service, providing additional hours for customers to call for assistance or to order products. On the outbound call center side, OnBrand24 can make thousands of lead generation and appointment setting calls to existing or new customers in a matter of weeks, spurring significant new sales revenue - at very low cost.
Increase sales resources without adding new staff: Companies that hire OnBrand24 add significant resources to their inside and outside sales staffs. On the inbound call center side, we can teach a team of agents to be an extension of your brand, processing customer orders and quickly creating relationships that reduce shopping cart abandonment, improve customer loyalty and generate revenue. On the outbound telemarketing side, we can blitz your markets, generating leads, setting quality appointments, surveying your existing and potential customers or engaging in direct sales - without adding to your headcount.
Come to think of it, it's not just our call center that's thriving through the recession. OnBrand24 is helping other companies - our clients - come through the recession as well.
That's what I call a win-win.
-- Mark Fichera
Posted by Mark Fichera on Tue, Feb 16, 2010 @ 07:08 AM
Good call centers fire on all cylinders:
1. Experienced managers who devise great inbound and outbound telemarketing campaigns.
2. Professional outsourced call center agents adept at B2B communications and sales.
3. State-the-art call center technology.
At OnBrand24, we’ve recently enhanced Cylinder No. 3 – the central nervous system of OnBrand24 call center services. This is part of our ongoing investment in a flexible, scalable and stable technology infrastructure capable of handling the most demanding inbound and outbound call center programs.
We’ve enhanced system reliability with a new IP vaulting and off-site disaster recovery solution, which includes sophisticated remote data backup technologies and redundant server hardware. In doing so, we replicate our most critical business applications, which reside remotely in a data center, reducing downtime risk brought on by hardware failure or environmental factors.
Client data is moved off-site to a secure underground facility and mirrored to a second data center for full fail-over redundancy. Data stays encrypted in transport and storage, and it remains encrypted in our remote data centers, which meet Sys Trust certification as well as compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard for 2009.
This is the kind of ongoing technology improvements OnBrand24 continues to make. Enhancements to data security, risk reduction and cutting downtime to the absolute minimum are a constant focus for us.
Whether it’s inbound call center customer service or outbound lead generation and appointment setting, we’ve got the technology backbone to support highly effective – and secure – outsourced call center programs.
Posted by Mark Fichera on Sat, Feb 06, 2010 @ 06:56 PM
A call center services company is only as good as the quality of its call center agents. At OnBrand24, we have a major advantage: our agents are residents of Massachusetts, which offers one of – if not the – deepest pools of professional talent in the country.
In fact,
a recent study ranked Boston the third smartest metropolitan area in the country. Historically, Massachusetts has always been brainy. Having found themselves in an inhospitable climate and with few natural resources, the original Massachusetts settlers quickly realized they had to rely on intelligence and hard work for survival and success.
Today, the Boston metropolitan area is chock full of universities and college graduates. Our companies lead the country in innovation, and our influence on the worlds of politics, media and culture is disproportion to our size.
So when OnBrand24 needs to hire call center agents we have a large population of highly articulate, educated, professional people to draw on.
The result: our clients get agents who go way beyond merely reading a script. They have the ability to immerse themselves in the products, marketing messages and customer requirements of our clients. They have the professional background to converse effectively with senior-level business managers. They have the business acumen to identify decision makers and sales opportunities.
We’ve harnessed our agents to a proven call center methodology and comprehensive roster of inbound and outbound services that make us one of the most talent-rich customer services call centers and lead generation companies anywhere.
Sure, you can go to other cities and other parts of the country for your call center services. But before you do, keep in mind what Mark Twain said after he visited Boston:
“In New York, they ask how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, they ask who were his parents? In Boston they ask, how much does he know?”
-- Mark Fichera
Posted by Mark Fichera on Mon, Feb 01, 2010 @ 12:51 PM
Picture a room filled with sales vice presidents. Imagine you've told them there's a way to lower their costs while increasing their revenues. You'd be the most popular person in the room, right?
That's exactly what outsourced call center services companies - well, that's what good call centers - do. It's why more companies are turning to call centers to replace or augment their existing inbound and outbound customer service and sales operations. In today's tough economic environment, there isn't a better way to simultaneously cut costs and create new revenue.
OnBrand24 is a case in point. In the last two months, we've hired 25 new employees, added six new clients and we've never had so many companies asking about our call center services.
On the inbound customer service call center side, we're now handling:
Catalog order processing for a national pet supplies company.
E-commerce order processing and customer service inquiries for a national home furnishings company.
On the outbound lead generation and appointment setting side, OnBrand24 is:
Conducting an extensive market survey identifying sales trends and vendor preferences for a leader in precision instruments.
Executing a customer win-back campaign covering thousands of accounts for a major promotional products company.
Conducting telesales of a new version of database development application targeting the software vendor's existing customers.
Promoting an annual industry competition sponsored by a leading paper products company.
There's no better or more cost-effective way to boost sales and improve customer service than with a call center services company optimized to make, handle, track and analyze large volumes of inbound and outbound calls.
The advantages can be significant. Our clients realize ROI of between 5-to-1 and 10-to-1 of new revenue over call center fees. They also report improved customer support and large numbers of new sales leads ready for closing by their sales staffs. And they cut their cost of doing business.
Isn't it time you took a look at what a great call center services company like OnBrand24 can do for you?
-- Mark Fichera