Wolfram Dura appointed as Managing Director

On 1 July of this year @FRIENDS appointed Company Secretary and associate of the company Wolfram Dura as Managing Director. “We are thus taking account of the increasing importance of Wolfram Dura’s spheres of responsibility, IT and Controlling, reinforcing the @FRIENDS management inwards and outwards,” says Marc Gobbetto. The entire @FRIENDS team congratulates Wolfram Dura on his appointment, wishing him every success and a successful outcome in his new position.

@FRIENDS again among the top 30 agencies in Germany

The annual ranking of leading call centre service providers done by the CallCenterProfi specialist magazine is listing @FRIENDS as number 21 among the German call centres that are most highly profitable and employ most staff. Again this is an honour for @FRIENDS rewarding the continuity of their work and the good position in the market. “The increasing consolidation of the market and the ‘growth’ of some providers caused by taking over smaller enterprises makes it more and more difficult for owner-run call centres to reach front positions in the ranking,” says Marc Gobbetto. “Our position as the specialist in successful telephone sales certainly gives us some competitive advantage. Therefore we are more than happy that also in 2006 we are among the leading service providers in the field, which confirms our course. You won’t find many owner-run organizations among the top 30 in the field. This makes the position even more valuable for @FRIENDS.” In the past weeks @FRIENDS was able to expand their capacities at the Bielefeld site by another 20 seats, thus meeting with the increasing demand for qualified, result-oriented and above all sustainable outbound performance. The course towards quality leadership in outbound telemarketing will be maintained also in 2007.

Great training offensive with Umberto Saxer

Also in 2006 @FRIENDS is focusing on top quality and sensitive and reputable telemarketing. “Particularly in the telesales sector there are still too many ‘black sheep’ around and you have to distinguish yourself from them through good and ‘genuine’ communication. Latest surveys show that the usual ‘call centre rap’ – no matter whether in the B2B or B2C sector – has no positive effect on existing and potential customers any more“, says Marc Gobbetto. “Therefore a comprehensive series of trainings with the entire management circle of @FRIENDS supervised by Umberto will provide us with the important and above all new impulse and necessary tools to distinguish our Communication @FRIENDS positively from the competition“. It was not difficult to opt for Umberto Saxer as a partner of @FRIENDS: as one of the most successful sales trainers in Europe and founder of modern sales cybernetics he is just the right professional to further qualify the @FRIENDS management. “Following the motto ‘Profit from the best’ we are putting our hopes on Umberto this year. The first training modules of spring have already brought about success, and we are convinced that @FRIENDS will achieve a distinctive competitive advantage with this ‘new’ kind of respectful communication“, adds Heike Ehlers. In a train-the-trainer procedure @FRIENDS will work out the contents of cybernetics and its translation into professional telesales practice in several training modules this year.