About Civicom

Civicom — Ask Why We're Better
Civicom is a group of people working together to create value for others. We try to do it exceptionally well because we believe we’re creating something important. Read on.
History
When Civicom was founded in 2000, the company — originally named PlezeCall — cut its teeth on a co-developed next generation SIP/VOIP platform that was the first of its type in the world. Its first service was “Click-to-Call” — you could click a link on a web page or an email to call someone, using regular phones. PlezeCall, with e-z-e in the middle. Get it? That failed. But the platform was easily modified for conferencing. So, PlezeCall became an innovator in the new reservationless conferencing industry. We wanted to be the best in the world — partly because we thought the challenge would be fun, but also because we thought that convenience and excellence in communication would be rewarded in the marketplace. In 2005 the company name was changed to Civicom which better suited our evolving services and customers. Civicom soon developed a specialty in serving the Marketing Research industry and began to innovate with new technologies to connect researchers with respondents at a distance. In time that became our largest business. New service offerings followed customer needs for transcriptions and data entry. One such request led to the Hey DAN business which now serves sales people around the world by entering notes into CRM systems for them. The Hey DAN value proposition is compelling — we help large companies reduce costs while enabling their sales people to spend more time selling. Hey DAN increases employee satisfaction, dramatically improves institutional memory, and helps sales managers be more effective. Civicom has acquired or merged with a number of conferencing companies enabling us to serve more customers with more, better services. Most recently, in 2012, Civicom combined with ConferTel, a conferencing company with unique strengths in full service, managed webinars.
Locations
  • New York
  • San Diego
  • Kansas City
  • London
  • Manila
  • Cebu
Our Values

Sustaining a business for the long haul requires honesty, integrity and mutual respect. We not only try to live up to these standards, our managers recite a brief pledge to these principles and “doing the right thing,” twice a month. These principles include commitments to:

  • Customer service excellence
  • Civicom Mutual respect
  • Civicom Personal and intellectual integrity
  • Civicom A sense of urgency, innovation and constant improvement
  • Civicom A positive and hopeful attitude
  • Civicom Enjoying the challenges and hard work of growing a profitable business in a competitive context
  • Civicom No bureaucracy, no politics, no egos, no surprises, no high school drama, no tolerance
  • Civicom Giving back in a meaningful way

We believe that doing our best as a team to live up to these principles will lead to solid, long term financial returns and therefore will enable us to provide secure employment to those who commit to them.

Buy Forward

In 2000, well before the “Corporate Social Responsibility” trend emerged, the founders of Civicom committed the new company to giving 5-10% of profits to worthy causes. They wanted to combine the pursuit of business success with helping people. By making it explicit and permanent, they embedded the principle into the DNA of the company.

This is not just “CSR.” A commitment of 5-10% goes well beyond the usual token corporate contribution. More importantly, it wasn’t designed to be a marketing ploy; it’s more about who we are than something we’re doing — a part of the root structure of the tree we wanted to grow, not a grafted-in branch.

Our goal is to supplement corporate donations with matched employee donations to reach the gold standard of 10% of profits. This specific instance of “Buy Forward” is rooted in the age-old principle of a “tithe”, or tenth. It applies an idea historically embraced by individuals, to a company.

Over time, we discovered other “Buy Forward” companies and came to believe that as a unified concept, these companies have set forth a model that could powerfully engage corporations in helping make the world a better place in more significant and authentic ways. This idea is not without controversy. Read more here www.buyforward.org.

Most of Civicom’s donations go to Feathers Project. Feathers uses technology to connect distant people to allow 100% direct charity to happen. Corporate volunteer stewards help in vetting Feathers’ beneficiaries, and in ensuring integrity in the process.