Behind the Scenes of Stand Up To Cancer’s 10th Anniversary
August 31, 2018
Today alone, 4,754 people in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer. That is a statistic that cannot be ignored. Being a two-time survivor of cancer, I know firsthand that it can be beat.
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) is initiating the acceleration in innovative cancer research to bring new treatments to patients faster, and saving lives now. Next Friday, September 7th, this remarkable organization is hosting a live, commercial-free fundraising telecast to support research with Bradley Cooper as host.
To call this event massive is an understatement, especially as this year marks the 10th anniversary of the bi-annual telethon. The 2016 event alone raised $111 million towards cancer research. As you can see, the results are groundbreaking as everyone, including celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon, Matthew McConaughey, and Katie Couric (just to name a few) act as agents to take pledges and support the mission that all cancer patients can be survivors.
That being said, the one-hour event requires a huge team working behind the scenes. NexRep is a business process outsourcing (BPO) company that is operating the contact center behind the event. The contact center agents will be using Five9 software and working with multiple cloud carriers to make this possible. For this one night, NexRep has scaled their agents for an additional 1,500 licensees. How do you incentivize these agents? According to NexRep CEO Teddy Liaw, there are no need for incentives. He told me these agents are working “purely for the cause. In fact, a lot of them donate the money they make back to the cause.”
More often than not, people can relate to cancer in some form or another. Everyone has a reason to give back. Teddy is no exception. His mother and aunt were both diagnosed within a few weeks of each other. Teddy says, “This event is beyond raising money. Cancer doesn’t mean death anymore; it’s fightable. We’re bringing the conversation of cancer into homes on a Friday night in September; it’s raising awareness.”
The telethon wouldn’t be possible without the cloud technology behind it. The only way to scale up to the number of agents required for one night, the agents have to everywhere – remote, at home, or on-site. A platform that allows agents to be physically anywhere, while still having visibility into the contact center is the only way to pull of an event of this size.
Be sure to tune in on September 7th to support cancer research. More information about SU2C here.
