Call Center On Demand Featured Article

Cake Boss Gets a Cloud Contact Center

By Mae Kowalke
TMCnet Contributor

You don’t need to be a cake boss with a nationally known television show to have a contact center, but the Cake Boss is leading the way by showing that contact centers are possible for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Buddy Valastro, who is the “Cake Boss” on the TLC network, is expanding his small cake business after the exposure the television show has brought the brand, reported NJ.com last week.

He has expanded from Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop in New Jersey, the location for the television show, opening a new location last week in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Carlo's Bakery plans to roll out a total of five shops in the tri-state area within the next 18 months, Leo Minervini told NJ.com, chief information officer at Carlo’s City Hall Baker Shop.

The company operates the Cake Boss Cafe at the Port Authority Terminal on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue in New York City, too.

“This work is in Buddy Valastro's DNA. This is what he lives for – to make cakes,” Minervini said. “Even pre-'Cake Boss' the family business was known for quality. The show provided platform for exceptional growth all over the country and all over the world.”

Beyond a case study about the power of national exposure, the expansion also highlights the fact that businesses of all sizes can now leverage contact centers. The Cake Boss is going there, too.

Carlo’s Bakery has hired Comcast (News - Alert) Business Class Ethernet and voice services to upgrade the communications technology at their baking facility and roll out a cloud-based call center to handle special orders for delivery to local stores. Currently, the business handles up to 200 cake orders a day and 400 during the holiday season.

The technology will also be able to handle videoconferencing enabling cake design consultations and interactive classes to be held across the country and overseas.

“We have been a family business for 67 years,” Minervini told NJ.com. “(Since June) we have gone from paper-based ordering system to a cloud based technology where you can make an order from our cake factory on your iPad.”

Companies such as Contactual (News - Alert) offer virtual call center software that can quickly empower business, providing all of the amenities previously available only in on-premise based appliances, as TMCnet has noted.

Since contact center adoption does not require any hardware installation, the initial investment is much more manageable than an on-premise solution. This makes it ideal for the SMB market.

“Being able to cut costs while simultaneously expanding the area you can hire from is a boon to SMBs trying to make a name for themselves in tough economic conditions,” noted Chris DiMarco in a TMCnet article on the topic. “Both benefits are an immediate ROI from a virtual call center solution, making the technology worthy of a look for any business that needs call center support on a budget.”

So while it doesn’t hurt to have a national television show about your business, you can have a contact center even if you don’t.