In the summer of 1992 Steven Gross was President Interstate Technologies. The company owned a division which was responsible for notifying thousands of consumers weekly about bounced checks for a major supermarket retailer. The problem the company faced was that the contact rate for reaching these consumers was abysmally low. ?We had agents who were bored out of their minds, only talking to consumers 15 minutes out of each hour. And the waste in direct labor dollars finally drove us towards a technology solution? said Gross.

The answer in 1992 for Interstate Technologies was a company called Digital Systems, now part of Avaya. ?For $550,000 we leased a 6 station Predictive Dialing system. Our contact rates went from 15 minutes per hour to up to 48 minutes per hour? said Gross. However, the cost of the lease on the equipment was not the only cost to incur. ?Each agent was allocated six physical phone lines, so the system had 36 phone lines associated with it, costing an additional $3000 monthly. Add on top of that long distance charges, a maintenance contract, and insurance, and those seats were costing plenty. But there was still a nice return on investment? said Gross.

Fast forward to 2007, and how the world has changed. Gross is the CEO of Freedom TeleWork Inc., a fast growing hosted call center solution where for a fraction of what he spent in 1992 he can now service businesses with advanced call center solutions. ?For $600 a month, a business can have all the firepower and more than what we had in 1992 with the Digital Systems unit? said Gross. ?I would estimate the lease, maintenance, and phone lines were costing us almost $10, 000 monthly for a six station Predictive dialing system.?

Hosted Call center solutions in 2007 are now so economical that even small and medium sized business sectors are adopting the most advanced technology solutions to complete their sales and customer service missions. ? Whereas once you had to spend big dollars and be a technology guru to deploy these technologies, companies like Freedom teleWork put the power in the hands of ordinary business people ? said Gross.

Technologies such as Voice broadcasting, Skills based routing, Progressive dialing, Text to Speech processing, Geo mapping, etc. are all well within reach of the everyday business person in terms of cost and deployment. ?The march of technology hasd levelled the playing field so that small and medium firms can compete just as effectively in the world of telecommunications and call center solutions as Fortune 500 players? said Gross.

Jenny Gross works at Freedom Telework, the Virtual Call Center that offers hosted call center solutions such as predictive dialing, voice broadcasting, chat, inbound call center, outbound calling, IVR, skill based routing, and so much more.