Mike, blasted through a door not realizing Pat was on the other side, and hit him on the head. Pat dropped and had to go to the hospital. Once we knew he was ok, Steve brought him his laptop. Our clients always needed atten- tion. There was no way around it. In another incident, we were always adding wires and stations. I don’t think Stephen would ever have called an electrician to install a cable if he could do it himself. One time he and his assistant got a ladder and started drilling holes in the ceiling. A part of the concrete roof sheared off, and a sharp edge dropped on his assistant’s head creating a gash. His assistant had to be rushed to the hospital. Head wounds bleed profusely. He was ok, but they had to be more careful from that point forward. Today, we have four full-time electri- cians and two full-time construction people. It didn’t take long to find out that the call center was a completely different type of busi- ness than an answering service. The buyers were knowledgeable and interested in far more than price. When we got our first big call center customer, we also got a lesson in dealing with receivables. They racked up a large bill in just one month, not the usual $75 to $150 we were accustomed to. It was thousands of dollars. It was a nervous feeling to wait for payment after you’ve already paid the salaries of the employ- ees. Receivables can take 90 days for payment. We needed a bank to help us with the gap.
Cubicals built on Speculation 1994
Two monitors, one for answering service, other for call center. A single keyboard designed by Stephen Shooster controls both devices.
The problem was that when a client called the phone company for a new phone line, they would be offered voice mail before we had a fair chance to make a competing offer. Our industry association decided to fight. It was against my advice, but they did it anyway. How could such a small association fight a giant corporation? Realizing voice mail was a hot new tech- nology, we bought our own and found a mildly successful niche market. Later, that technology would become embedded in every part of the call center of the future. Our answering service systems were not designed to be a call center. To handle the defi- ciency, Stephen worked feverishly. He placed a personal computer next to each station. The agents would answer the call on one system and take an order on the other. The system worked fine, but we need- ed better software to handle the challenges our clients demanded. It was something you couldn’t buy. It had to be built, and we had to figure it out to grow. Enter, Patrick O’Shea. Pat, a Navy veter- an and software engineer. He started us with a simple program that allowed us to build custom forms. The software cured lots of prob- lems, but we still had a lot to learn. Pat was a very busy guy. One day he was studying a lengthy report with his head down as he was walking. At the same time, my son,
Stephen Shooster with multiplexer in a Miami truck tunnel. 1989
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