Customer Testimonials That Speak Volumes

This chapter tells the story of the founding of Melita International and its success in providing innovative call center solutions on 6 continents to clients like:

Fingerhut, 

American Express, 

Citigroup, 

HSBC/Household Finance, 

Toyota

IC Systems

Snyder Communications

Bank of Canada, 

Banc One

Bancomer of Mexico, 

Bank Ireland, 

Korean Bank,  

including resellers like -

SIS France, 

Cystelcom Spain

ComFlow Norway

CPE SA Switzerland

CPE S.R.O Chech Republic

Symico Poland

AFT Limited Greece

ATIS Telecom Netherlands

Alcatel Div Telefonica Venezuela

Teleconnect & Services GmbH Germany

CTI Mega Systems Australia

Mitsubishi Office Machinery Japan, 

Equant Taiwan

Equant Malaysia

Equant Integration Services Singapore

Equant Indonesia

Equant Hong Kong 

Lucent Technologies Argentina

Master Link SA Lima

CEB Telesystems South Africa

IBM Europe, 

Teletech Brazil, 

Bell Tech Chile

Lucent Tech BCS, Colombia

Leverage Systems Tech Philippines

and 

dozens of world-class service providers across six continents.

The birth of the call center industry and Melita's rapid growth as sales around the world soared.

Prelude to a company -

It was during 1978, when an assistant professor at Ga Tech, John Lukas arrived at Alek's apartment with an answering machine, requesting he modify it, thus allowing the machine to make outgoing calls. Alek told him such was not possible due to the electro-mechanical, mostly passive components upon which the machine was built. 

He suggested he would build such a phone dialing system from scratch using a microprocessor and other components, allowing for programmability by users. 

As such, an 'Expedialer® ' was born, and John would sell these initially to furniture distribution centers for scheduling delivery appointments.

One day in 1979 while working at Solid State Systems, Alek overheard a conversation between one of the owners, Joe Mehaffey, and a director of Wisconsin Public Services, Green Bay, asking if the company, which developed telephone systems (PBXs), would be able to design an automated outbound telephone calling capability to dispatch maintenance crews in critical situations, such as power down during freezing conditions - instructing crew of locations needing urgent attention and repairs in order to avoid a potential human tragedy. 

Alek had not realized before that there are situations in the USA when people actually freeze to death due to loss of power. 

Mehaffey explained that such an automatic solution is not possible because there is no signal indicating when the phone is answered. Alek asked if he would let him try to solve this problem outside of business hours. 

Mehaffey agreed, and after several conversations with the director, Alek began designing the "Emergency Dispatching" system. 

First, he built a computer with a microprocessor, memory, and hard disk (there were no personal computers at the time and Apple's Macintosh was just introduced). 

Alek added interface modules with connections to external devices, such as a printer for performance reporting, an Expedialer with further enhancements, serial communications interface to Wisconsin's IBM 370 Mainframe emulating a printer where software he developed would extract telephone numbers of maintenance crews to be dispatched during emergencies - all in accordance to the Workers Union's rules..

Alek built electronic filters for the four telephone line interfaces which processed both incoming and outgoing telephone calls, as well as the so-called "inductive spike indicator" to sense and recognize the moment a phone call was answered. 

He bought a book on programming in the Algol language, learned it, and wrote thousands of lines of code in support of the Emergency Planning and Dispatching of Crews during power-down conditions. 

Also purchased and installed a so-called "assembler" for the 8080 microprocessor, and wrote a bunch of real-time code in support of the automated telephone call processing functions. 

Alek called this system Compudialer. 

He tested it many times: the system called his family and colleagues, to different numbers, and each time it correctly recognized the exact moment the phone was answered. 

After about three months of designing, assembling, and connecting the computer to the Expedialer, and many tests, Alek concluded that the system was ready for installation at the "Emergency Dispatching Center" in Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

However, during the testing in Green Bay, in August 1980, the only part that did not work properly was the recognition of when the phone was answered, yet this was the most important part of the system. 

Alek was very embittered and irritated. 

Nevertheless, something very good came out of this repeated testing. Alek discovered a concrete way to allow people to see on the screen who is calling. 

Alek patented this invention after many years. 

Also, over time when cell phones appeared, this invention made it possible to display not only a name but also a photo. 

It also allowed people to send text messages and use WhatsApp or Messenger. 

When Alek returned to Atlanta, he began to intensively analyze the problem with his system, and after a few days, he came to a solution, so that the system recognized the exact moment a phone call was received almost 100 percent of the time. 

Alek created an algorithm that allowed the level of signals to be entered into memory every time the system rang. The moment the signal changed or disappeared meant that the phone was answered. The algorithm also recognizes and distinguishes existing signals while the phone is ringing.

Janusz Lukas sold about ten Expedialers in 1980-81, which were initially built in Alek's garage. His wife (that girl), Halina was in charge of ordering parts. They also worked in his sister Melita's garage, where her husband Wienia (Benjamin) Feldgajer, an electronics engineer, checked the operation of the systems before delivery to the customer. 

Alek named the new company Melita Electronic Labs, using his sister's name.

Two years later, after leaving his job at Lockheed, a new system called Sprintel was developed, based on technology and an algorithm from that project built in Wisconsin, capable of automatically recognizing the answering of a phone call without operator confirmation (as was the case with Expedialer). 

This automatic system rang four lines and recognized a number of signals such as a busy line, no one answering, or a wrong number. The device then played the appropriate announcement, pre-recorded by a human voice. 

For example, schools used Sprintels to inform parents that their children had not come to school, and the police, using Sprintels, notified residents in an area to search for missing persons.

Fortunately, in the studio where Alek was recording the voice of a TV woman (for the tape on Sprintel), he met a man who became very interested in his invention.

After several conversations and meetings, they signed a contract, making him a Sprintel distributor, and paid Melita a certain amount per month, allowing them to support themselves temporarily. 

In 1983, Alek and his wife earned only $19,000, about half of what they had the previous year. 

There were no existing orders, initially, and renting an office was going to cost about $1,400 a month. But somehow they supported the family and Melita's business grew. 

These first successes gave Alek so much confidence that in 1982 he decided to leave his then job at Lockheed and work for himself. Wienia decided to stay at Lockheed because he didn't want to take risks. 

Alek changed the company's name to Melita International, Inc. and after a few months signed a contract to lease an industrial hall of about 3,000 sqft. 

It was there that Halina and Alek officially started their business operations, including small production. 

The Sprintel system was the first achievement of this startup company. 

A year later, when Melita received a contract from the Los Angeles Unified School District for 135 systems worth $1.4 million, Alek was seriously concerned.! 

Big production, big money, and big responsibility. 

The schools were not high-tech, so Sprintel had to be simple to use and work reliably. 

It also had to support recordings in forty languages, using only magnetic loop tapes, as digital recordings were almost non-existent, hard to come by, and monstrously expensive. 

Also, the program that controlled Sprintel had to be updated and uploaded from time to time.

Based on the Sprintel platform, further inventions were made. 

In 1985, Alek combined two Sprintels (eight telephone lines) and built a switchboard that connected eight lines and five operators. 

The first automated customer contact system was created, named PhoneFrame, which automatically searched lists of people to call according to the various rules, processed unproductive calls (busy, no answers, bad numbers, answering machines, etc.,) and connected answered calls to operators, eliminating all undesired situations.

It should be remembered that in those days "call centers" did not exist, only so-called "sweatshops" that employed hundreds and thousands of operators who handled all phone calls manually, spending more than 85% of their time waiting for someone to answer the phone. 

Using their innovative systems, companies could achieve the same results by employing only a third of the people. Thus, the work of 100 people could be done by about 30-33 people. This generated massive profits for our customers. 

As such, Meita customers were able to save on the wages for about seventy people and were therefore able to pay a great deal for our technological solutions. Of course, 100 people could also do the work of nearly 400 people!

Melita International had never taken loans, and remained debt-free and profitable for nearly 18 straight years, while growth from garage to nearly $100M in revenues by 1999 came from the company's own earnings and consistent profits. 

Halina worked in the company and over time was responsible for finances, parts for building electronic boards, and assembling systems, she was also in charge of hiring employees and setting up offices. 

Halina was initially worried about whether they would be able to make a living running their own company because Alek resigned from Lockheed where he was earning about $37,000 a year. 

She would spend an hour and often even more time driving each way to and from the company, their first rented place., Halina would drop off children at daycare, cook dinner, do laundry, clean, and take care of the children.  

Where there is uncertainty, there is often a desire, a determination to change one's situation for the better, and as soon as possible.

After a year, they rented an additional 6,000 sqft office next door. 

The company grew rapidly and within a few years, they moved employees to a newly constructed 40,00 sqf building in the same complex ("Bay Colony Business Park"). 

In time, even this building was not enough, so again they expanded and moved production, systems packaging and testing, shipping, and customer services employees to an additional building of about 50,000 space..

By 1993 as the company's sales just about doubled, Halina and Alek decided to build their own high-tech facility that could accommodate more than 500 employees, production, systems testing, and everything else. 

It took over 2 years to complete construction, as they engaged an architect, and internal decorators and contracted a highly acclaimed construction company. Halina and facility management director Randy Borst oversaw the entire development process.

Negotiations for the purchase of the land also took quite a while. It was a very attractive location inside Atlanta's prominent Technology Park area, by a lake surrounded by lots of natural greenery and beauty. 

By 1995 this high-tech, two-story facility at around 110,000sqf was ready, and the local employees moved into the modernly decorated spaces. 

The two buildings were interconnected by a two-story glass ceiling atrium, which housed the main entrance, spacious lobby, and a reception area with a semicircular, custom-made mahogany countertop. 

In time, Alek and Halina also decided to acquire a four-story building in Surrey, Chertsey, near London, UK expanding from the previous smaller location where they established Melita Europe headquarters providing sales and related services across Europe, South Africa, and some of the English speaking countries.

From the very beginning, Alek's companies Melita and Inventions, Inc., patented many of their Key innovations. When it came to filing and registering patents and the various trademarks, he followed a well-thought-out, structured two-pronged strategy described in other areas of the company's history.

Modern mobile networks around the world are based on this technology. It also makes possible mobile SMS communications, like FaceTime, Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.

[NOTE: Beniamin (Wienia) Feldgajer was born on July 30, 1948, and died on February 25, 2007. For his emigration from Russia to Poland to Israel and then to the US, see more in the memoirs of Halina and Sali Szlam.]