News: Ding-a-Ling’s success according to President Herman Shooster, “Lies in our people.” In many business situations, callers may be aggravated when reaching an answering service. The person- alized service at Ding-a-Ling allows a company to have their phone answered exactly as they wish. In fact, the specially trained operators appear to be part of the business. Becuase operators are on hand continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they can field questions after-hours, during lunch breaks, or on necessity. Ding-a-Ling’s advertising emphasizes their service is, “live, courteous, and caring.” Caring is THE keyword at Ding-a-Ling. Customers and employees are equally import- ant. Six Shooster family members work in the company, all according to Wendy, Herman’s daughter, in their own specialties. Dad, Herman, is an expert in marketing. Mom, Dorothy, excels in sales. Brother Steve is a whiz on the technical end. Brother Michael is in charge of the financial aspects. Wendy does sales and hiring, and sister- in-law, Diane (married to Steve), is the top sales- person. This is definitely a family business. But the sense of family surpasses the Shoosters; the employees feel they are family too. Being a long time employee is commonplace at Ding-a-Ling. The full-time operator train- er has worked at Ding-a-Ling nine years; one of the operator supervisors, 13 years; the collection department supervisor, 11 years, etc. The list goes on. Wendy, herself, grew up in the business. And learning the business from the ground up is also a company policy.
“All our sales staff were operators first,” Wendy says. “If you’ve worked the phones you understand. It’s too hard to catch on to the busi- ness if you haven’t.” Another aspect of caring is the excellent benefits package Ding-a-Ling offers employees, reimbursement of child care, medical and dental insurance, pension plan, company credit union, bonuses and incen- tives, and profit sharing, etc. No doubt, this is another reason they retain employees with such longevity. Currently, Ding-a-Ling has three locations, with 160 people here in Broward County and another 50 at their Palm Beach location. Recent- ly, they moved all the Broward operators to the 441 location, leaving the Oakland Park office as a sales office only. Wendy says there is space available, separate cubicles, if someone is inter- ested in a place to work with minimum over- head. The space itself is $125 a month, and the FAX, copy machine, and secretarial assistance can be utilized for a nominal fee. Call Wendy at 566-6767 for details. Ding-a-Ling is also community caring. They recently provided telephone lines for OPERATION HOMEFRONT, maintained the hotline for Tiffany Sessions, and held a PHONE-a-THON for the March of Dimes.
1988 Excerpts from an unknown news article placed on Ding-a_Ling stationary for effect.
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