Listen to this articleFounded in 1980 Startel is a provider of contact center solutions and services. Their base consisted mostly of hospitals and telephone answering services (TAS). Thirty-seven years later, the company is very much involved in both industries and has expanded its footprint to include education, government, insurance, and utilities. In 2015, they merged with a TAS competitor, Professional Teledata, and immediately doubled in size. Startel now has offices in Irvine, California and Manchester, New Hampshire, and customers located in every state across the United States as well as Canada, Central America, New Zealand and Switzerland. Below is our interview with Rachel Sauerbrey Hayes, Director of Marketing at Startel:
Q: You’ve recently announced your merger with Alston Tascom; could you tell us something more?
A: Startel, Professional Teledata and Alston Tascom have bumping into each other at industry tradeshows and regional events for 30+ years. On September 1, 2017, we merged with Alston Tascom, bringing three of the leading TAS providers together under the Startel umbrella. We are thrilled with the merger; the companies share very similar core values and a passion to provide our customers with the best service and solutions possible. During our first all-company call, Wayne Scaggs, the former president of Alston Tascom, asked “What took us so long to all come together?” Everyone in the room and on the call laughed, but Wayne made his point. While the merger was a long time in the making, it was the right time for us to come together.
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Q: What is unique about Startel and how does it stand out from competition?
A: Unless you are a customer of Startel’s, you may not know that during our annual User’s Group Conference we hold an ‘Ask Startel’ session. During this session, attendees have the opportunity to ask Startel management, engineering, technical support, product development and training personnel any question they may have regarding the company, current or future product development, etc. Often times, what is discussed later becomes incorporated into future Startel product releases and/or feature enhancements. We always look forward to this session and we believe our users feel encouraged to have a technology partner that listens and responds in ways that positively impacts their organization.
Q: Who is your ideal customer and why?
A: What’s exciting about our solution offering and our space, is that it appeals to a wide range of companies and industries. We have customers who are nationally ranked hospitals and healthcare system with hundreds of employees. We also have small, but well-established, telephone answering services with a handful of employees. Startel’s contact center solution can scale up or down quickly to meet the needs of any organization. Our ideal customer has an internal contact/call center and is looking to invest in a new platform or replace their old one. They may provide a variety of services, such as order fulfillment, appointment scheduling, reservation booking, but they are all looking to improve efficiency, increase revenue, and enhance the overall customer experience.
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Q: What are your plans for next four months?
A: Our focus over the next several months, is on our integration and bringing three distinct companies and cultures together. The merger provides us with the opportunity to learn from one another, share best practices and technical expertise, and ultimately provide our customers with a more comprehensive solution offering and better service.
We are also busy planning for our annual User’s Group Conference, which is in late April 2018 in Denver, Colorado. We are looking forward to inviting the Alston Tascom users to the conference and to providing all of our users with more opportunities to network and exchange ideas and industry best practices.
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