Tahlak Honored Twice At The First Mohammed bin Rashid Awards for Small & Medium-Sized Enterprises
3rd April '04 Dubai

Ahmad Tahlak, the owner and chief consultant at TSC, was honored twice at the first 'Mohammed bin Rashid Awards for Small and Medium Sized Enterprise' at a ceremony held at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel on March 22nd 2004. Tahlak won 'Best Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Male)' and the 'Best Consulting & Professional Business Award,' for his company, The TeleServices Company (TSC) which was established under the auspices of and supported by the 'Mohammed bin Rashid Establishment for Young Business Leaders.' The awards were given out by H.H. General Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defence.

"I am very honored to have received the two awards, and my gratitude towards the 'Mohammed bin Rashid Establishment for Young Business Leaders,' is immense," said Ahmad Tahlak, The TeleServices Company (TSC) founder, director and chief consultant. "The support and leadership I received from the Establishment since I established TSC had a great impact on my ability to create a solid business foundation."

Speaking at the ceremony, H.H. Shiekh Hamdan bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Board of Mohammed Bin Rashid Establishment For Young Business Leaders, said, "The vision of our leader, Father of the nation H.H. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President of UAE, is very evident in the success and achievements of the present day UAE. The vision of our wise leadership is witnessed in the great projects which were established by the pioneer of Dubai's development H.H. Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum. These projects were the basis of nurturing the development process which was followed up under the continued support of H.H. Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister, Ruler of Dubai."

Tahlak is renowned internationally in the call center industry as an innovative and bottom line driven expert. His career which spans over 14 years in the industry has seen him lead successful projects with the regions largest airline industry call center. In 1991 and as route manager - yield management with Emirates Airlines, Tahlak implemented a revenue optimization mechanism in order to reduce cost and maximize revenue. In 1994, he was named manager reservations, telesales and quality control at

Emirates Airlines where he took over a 30 agent reservations unit and turned it into one of the first call centers in the region, a concept which was at the time still very much in its infancy. He was also responsible for converting the Airline's Call Center from a cost center into a revenue generating center.

Following this success, Tahlak was handpicked by management in 2001 to join Emirates Airline's first customer relationship management (CRM) project. Then in 2002 he moved to the Dubai National Airline Travel Agency (DNATA) as call center manager where he was responsible for the management of the region's largest airline industry call center with more than 140 agent seats, with an expansion plan to 1,000 agent seats in one year. Under this program, Tahlak brought various telephone driven services such as Holiday Line, Business Travel International (BTI), World of Events and MARHABA Services to name a few, under 'one roof' and one management. His greatest achievements in his post were to improve the 'Quality Service Level (SQL) from and average of 30% to an average of 90% and reduce the abandoned call rate from an average of 25% to 3%.

Tahlak holds an undergraduate degree in business administration and management information services from the University of Arizona and a diploma in airline management from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Geneva. A UAE National, Tahlak was awarded the International Call Center Management Association's (ICCM) 'Global Call Center Manager of the Year' for 2 consecutive years in 2001 and 2002, which has never happened before in the history of the Association.