200,000 Toll-Free Calls Come in Each Day : If You Dial 800 Number, Chances Are It’s Omaha

Looming large on the downtown skyline of this Midwestern city are two towering Northwestern Bell buildings, one the company’s corporate headquarters, the other a structure crammed with state-of-the-art switching equipment, with a complex of microwave antennae piercing skyward on its rooftop.

It’s only fitting that the phone company dominates this city’s heart, for in the last 10 years Omaha has become the “800 Capital of America,” the largest telephone marketing center in the nation.

Last year more than 73 million phone calls placed on toll-free 800 lines were transmitted through the microwave dishes on the downtown tower and relayed to 19 individually owned and operated telemarketing centers here.

That’s an average of 200,000 such calls every day.

Omaha’s telemarketing companies employ as many as 10,000 operators, technicians, salespeople and administrators during peak periods. It’s an industry that injected $100 million into Omaha’s economy last year, reports Terry Sanford, Northwestern Bell’s account manager for the 800 numbers, with almost all the money originating from outside Omaha.

If you call an 800 number to reserve a hotel room or in response to ads selling almost every conceivable type of merchandise on television or in newspapers and magazines, there’s a good chance the operator taking the call will be in one of Omaha’s telemarketing centers.

Many Computer Terminals

Row upon row of operators, each wearing earphones to muffle the battle of voices, occupy desks in large rooms in front of a battery of computer terminals. Formats that appear on the screen serve as scripts for appropriate questions and as a record of information.

The largest of the telemarketing firms is Wats Marketing of America Inc., a subsidiary of American Express, which employs as many as 2,000 operators on a busy day. The company’s gross sales for processing 800 calls in 1984 totaled $21 million, according to Craig Gavin, 36, vice president of marketing.

“It’s a bursting type of traffic on our phones,” Gavin explained in a room filled with telephone operators. “We’re involved in high volume type ad campaigns. As soon as TV commercials air all over America, we get a surge of calls. Our operators average 45 calls an hour. Time is money. A typical call is less than 75 seconds. The more calls that get through, the more potential orders.”

Posted on the wall beside supervisor Jim Talbitzer’s desk is a sign that proclaims: “TALK TIME. YESTERDAY’S AVERAGE 66. LAST HOUR’S AVERAGE 64. PREVIOUS HOUR’S AVERAGE 71.” That’s seconds per phone call.

A call comes in. Zip, it’s done. On to the next. “Name. Street address. City. State. Zip Code. Credit card number.” Over the din is heard, “Fullerton, Calif.; Denver, Colo.; Little Rock, Ark.; Dover, Del.; Blue Hill, Me.”

A Real Challenge

“The busier it is, the faster the day goes,” observes Talbitzer, 31, who worked for five years as an 800 operator before becoming a supervisor. “It’s a real challenge working with as many types of people as we deal with. Many people can’t take this job. We have had people here since the place opened seven years ago, and we have had others who did not make it through the first day of training.”

Gavin explained that Wats Marketing of America is working at any given time with 50 to 75 different companies.

Many customers, Gavin says, won’t abandon their television watching to call an 800 line during prime time. “It’s the midday and late-night programs, third time seeing an old movie, that often gets the best results,” he says.

He mentioned the biggest day of record for telemarketing companies in Omaha--Aug. 16, 1977, the day Elvis Presley died. “All direct-marketing records were shattered the next three days. Everybody started calling in for Elvis records and tapes advertised on the air. Severe telephone blockage problems occurred all over the nation caused by people trying to call Omaha.”

Special campaigns can result in heavy hiring, as when 1,200 people were hired to answer phones for a marketing blitz by Lorillard Corp., which introduced its new Satin cigarette. A package of Satin cigarettes wrapped in a satin pouch was offered free to anyone calling the 800 number. The campaign went on for five weeks and resulted in 2 million calls.

Jim Venuto, 34, former national advertising manager for Wats Marketing, recently started his own company, American Telemarketing Corp., specializing in fund-raising campaigns for religious organizations and for political candidates.

Venuto, who has 120 telephone operators working for him, says he had no trouble raising money to start his company. “Omaha people understand telemarketing. I told a few people I was going to start my own company and within 24 hours had enough money to launch it. People in this city have seen a company like Wats Marketing go from zero seven years ago to $21 million in sales last year.”

Why make Omaha the telemarketing center?

“For a number of reasons,” responds Terry Sanford, who oversees the 800 operation for Northwestern Bell. “The technology was here. We put in an inordinate number of lines years ago to provide the Strategic Air Command with the best communications system money could buy. This is a spinoff from that effort.”

Get Hourly Readouts

Omaha’s central location helps hold down the rates that clients using 800 numbers must pay, he noted. Other factors help, too. “There is no regional dialect here. The Midwestern voice can be understood anywhere in the country, unlike a Mississippi drawl or a New England twang,” he added.

Sanford’s office provides each of the telemarketing companies hourly readouts of how many calls are placed to each client’s 800 line, how much time operators spend on the calls, etc. “The 800 telemarketing industry got its start in Omaha 10 years ago. It has come a long way and we continue to grow by leaps and bounds,” Sanford says. “We expect growth to continue at a 10% to 20% annual rate.”

Revenue is divided between Northwestern Bell and American Telephone & Telegraph, over whose network the 800 long-distance calls travel. Equal access, which will enable customers to designate the long-distance carrier they want to reach by dialing 1, has not been implemented in Omaha yet and is not expected to be until late in 1986, Stanford says.

Leading hotel chains such as Hyatt, Marriott, Westin, Radisson, Ramada and Roadway have 800-number reservation centers in Omaha. At the plush Hyatt Reservation Center where operators sit in dimly lit rooms (to make it easier on their eyes) in soft swivel chairs before computer terminals taking reservations for 55,000 rooms in 120 worldwide hotels, Joyce Haftings, 27, acknowledged between calls:

“I do a lot of dreaming on this job. We’ve had this severe cold snap in Omaha, with temperatures dropping to 20 below zero. I’m taking reservations for people vacationing in Florida, California, Hawaii, the Caribbean. I wish someone were taking my reservation. . . . “