Mark Williams didn’t need any outside inspiration to dream up the concept that launched Virtual Hold Technology.
As a part-time call-center agent/manager for the Scandinavian Health Club chain (now known as Bally’s), he’d spend much of his shift placating frustrated members whose quick calls to clear up a billing problem had turned into an exercise in Muzak tolerance. And he discovered the astronomical cost of extensive 800-number hold times when he dropped out of the University of Akron and started his own call-center consulting firm.
Coming up with idea of a “virtual queue” that allowed callers to hang up the telephone and yet maintain their place in line was truly an example of the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
But the 29-year-old entrepreneur readily acknowledges that it is Virtual Hold’s employees, now 18 in number, who are responsible for the five-year-old West Akron company’s prosperity. In 1999, the business posted revenue six times that earned in 1998. And Williams projects Virtual Hold will triple that figure this year.
“Once you have an idea, you’ve got to bring the people in who can help you get from Point A to Point B,” he says. “You have to surround yourself with people who are better than you and have diversified skills. … The key is to understand what your weaknesses are and hire the people who have the skills that complement yours.”
Williams is a firm believer in giving workers “a piece of the action” and creating innovative incentive packages. Each Virtual Hold employee owns a portion of a substantial equity pool and has the opportunity to gain additional options based on the company’s performance. Such an arrangement motivates the salesman as well as the technician who might otherwise view a new order as just more work.
“One hundred percent of a small pie is not as good as a smaller piece of a larger pie,” he says. “It’s important to make sure that all of your people have their blood and sweat in this thing, too. They have to look at it as their business.”
According to Williams, that attitude helps foster the team, or family, environment he believes is so critical to the survival of a start-up concern. He encourages that camaraderie by scheduling regular company get-togethers that include employees’ families and by creating a workplace people want to come to every day. The latter is perhaps in part because of a lesson he learned from his father, who drove a truck for 40 years.
“He made good money and kept a roof over our heads,” Williams remembers. “I never wanted for anything. But he hated getting up every morning. He told me, ‘Mark, don’t make the mistake I did. It doesn’t matter how much you make. You gotta enjoy what you do. If you don’t, you’ll be miserable.’” How to reach: Virtual Hold Technology, (330) 666-1181
Lynne Thompson is a free-lancer for SBN.
