It's nice to be acknowledged for one's accomplishments in life...

The other day I was visiting a client for the first time. When I walked into their office there were four support engineers manning a help desk, of the four, three were former employees of mine when I founded the first call center in Central America. I hadn't seen any of them for years, but they greeted me like a long lost brother.

The General Manager of the operation is a cousin of one of my former employees, who is now a senior executive with Western Union. We had a conference call with the clients main office in Miami. The GM started the conversation by proclaiming to his associates in Miami, "I don't know if you know this, but David Anderson is a Pioneer in Call Centers. He is the Father of the Call Center industry in Costa Rica."

While I have often been described as the "father of Costa Rican Call Centers", and of the Technology industry in Costa Rica, it is most striking to me when it happens on an occasion like this one.

Sometimes I sit back and just think about my life... The places I have been, the adventures I have had, and it's all good. But there are times... When it is just nice to reflect on one's accomplishments, and perhaps even more important, the impact of those accomplishments on others.

I founded the Acer Call Center in 1994, it was the first or at minimum one of the first in all Latin America, and almost certainly the first International Call Center. Today, Call Centers are a thriving industry in Costa Rica, with thousands of employees in Call Centers from Sykes, Dell, HP and others.

It could be said that the Acer Center paved the way, and served as a proof of concept. What it did was to create a market, and train a legion of pioneers, who went on to establish and manage all those that followed.

I am indeed proud, and blessed.

Crossposted to Business Blog

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