Saveology adds 175 local jobs, expects up to $100M in sales
More than 200 staff handle the company’s call volume
South Florida Business Journal - by Bill Frogameni
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – July 30, 2010 -- Fort Lauderdale-based Saveology and its affiliate, SupportSquad, are growing by leaps and bounds.
The online marketing and inbound call center business has grown its South Florida workforce from about 375 employees in January to 550. Including the New Jersey offices, there are now about 800 employees, said CEO Benny Aboud. He predicted adding another 50 to 75 employees by the end of the year.
The company also has added a 10,000-square-foot space to its existing 30,000-square-foot campus in western Fort Lauderdale.
Saveology.com is a website that allows consumers to compare prices for telephone services, Internet access, insurance and more – similar to Travelocity or Expedia. Customers can just visit Saveology’s website, but many purchases come from those who first visit the website, then call to speak to a sales representative, Aboud said.
To accommodate the call volume, the company had more than 200 employees staffing phones at its buzzing call center on a recent weekday afternoon. They work in tightly packed cubicles, surrounded by brightly colored, upbeat décor and slogans posted on the walls like “assume the sale.”
There’s a pool table in the cafeteria where the company partially subsidizes the cost of employee meals.
Growth due to tech support product
Much of the growth is due to SupportSquad, an IT support product and Saveology affiliate that’s been offered since last fall, Aboud said. SupportSquad offers people remote technical assistance with tasks as diverse as removing a virus from their computer or browsing the Internet.
For $9.99 a month, people can contact SupportSquad for much less than they would pay to call a technician to their home, Aboud said. The services are sold in Fort Lauderdale, but the actual tech support is outsourced to a company in Utah, Aboud said.
Still, Aboud said his company is hiring a number of highly paid programmers and developers to provide support for the website. These jobs typically pay from $80,000 to $120,000 a year, he said.
Aboud said he’s hired between 12 to 15 backend tech experts so far this year and is hoping to hire another 20 by end of the year.
Sunrise resident Pierre Decembre is one of the new high-end techs. The veteran programmer started working for SupportSquad a few weeks ago after spending five years at another local company.
“I really like the fast-paced online marketing environment that we’re in,” he said.
But, given the oft-lamented difficulty of hiring top tech talent in South Florida, Aboud said some of the other new employees may have to be hired in New Jersey.
“If you could find me 20 developers right now, I would hire 20 tomorrow if they fit the bill,” he said.
Despite this bump in the road, Aboud said Saveology and SupportSquad together are “very profitable,” and likely to have over $100 million in revenue this year.
Bob Swindell, President and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward Alliance, welcomed the news.
“We talk a lot about reputation building in South Florida and Broward County and we really want to declare that the county is a destination for knowledge-based workers,” he said. “It’s companies like this that are going to help us transition from our legacy economy to a new, diversified economy.”