Kenneth Tuchman

About Kenneth Tuchman

Birth Year: 1959
Birth Place: Denver, Colorado, United States
Residence: Denver, Colorado
Occupation: Businessman
Known for: founder of TeleTech
Spouse(s): Debra L. Mautner
Children: two

Kenneth Tuchman

Kenneth Tuchman was born on 1959 in Denver, Colorado, United States. Kenneth Tuchman is the chairman and CEO of call center outsourcing giant TeleTech. Tuchman's personal frustration with the difficulties businesses faced when trying to interact with customers led him to found the company in 1982. The company went public in 1996. Tuchman got into business at a young age. He got his first job at 12 working at a bike shop. Three years later, he started a small venture selling puka shell necklaces to friends. Before long, he was the one of the largest shell importers from the Philippines and was selling millions of necklaces to department stores. "That was really my first look into what it's like to have a start-up business take off into high gear very quickly," Tuchman told FORBES. Tuchman studied architecture at a junior college and had planned to transfer to UCLA. Instead, he dropped out of college to pursue a variety of business ventures before starting TeleTech. Today, the company has 44,000 employees and operates in 80 countries.
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Biography/Timeline

1980

Born to a Jewish family, Tuchman worked various jobs as a teenager: in a surf shop and renting lots for car sales which blossomed into a Business where he would answer inquiries and then set up appointments. In the 1980s, Tuchman worked for his father's luxury-home construction Business in California. Often he would inquire about products advertised in magazines that might be useful in the homes his Father constructed. Noting that it usually took several months for a response (and often well after the house had begun construction), the idea of a Business that would serve as a centralized base for potential customer inquiries was germinated. In 1982, he founded Teletech in an old nursery school near Los Angeles allowing businesses to outsource their customer Service requirements. His first big customer was Herbalife. In 1984, after the conglomerate AT&T was broken up, TeleTech was hired to monitor AT&T’s transactions with customers who were switching carriers which led to Business with two of the resulting phone companies, MCI, Inc. and United Telecom (now Sprint Corporation), to sign up new customers.

1986

In 1986, he moved the company to Sherman Oaks, California. In 1992, it had $6 million in revenue which grew to $50 million in 1995 and he relocated the company to centrally located Denver. In 1995, Sam Zell purchased a 17% stake in the company and in 1996, Teletech completed its IPO. In 1999, he left the company after a disagreement with the Board over strategy but returned in 2001 after the company went through difficulties, the result of too much debt and the dot-com crash. The company went through a severe restructuring with numerous layoffs and consolidation of call centers; and re-directed the company from being sole an intake provider into higher margin back office services (such as insurance and claims processing).

2011

He has two children with his wife Debra (née Mautner) Tuchman who is also Jewish. In 2011, his wife was appointed the Director of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL). The Tuchmans live in Denver, Colorado.

2018

TeleTech has continued to expand and as of 2013, it had operations in 14 countries. Nine of these countries provide services for onshore clients (the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom); the other six countries provide services for offshore clients (Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, India, Mexico and the Philippines). 24,000 of Teletech's 48,000 employees are in the Philippines. On January 9, 2018, TeleTech officially changed its name to TTEC.

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