Deb Volansky, CEO and owner of Danbury-based Connex International, has been part of the world of teleconferencing for more than 35 years. She can recall a time before services like Zoom and Webex were household names, let alone available in homes as the key to keeping in touch with distant relatives and quarantined coworkers.
“It’s amazing to see how the industry has changed and grown,”said Volansky. “When I started, the technology was voice activated, meaning only one person could talk at a time, and a 20-port call was considered large. Outbound calls were made using a credit card specifically for long distance dial-outs. Clients calling from the side of the road using a payphone was commonplace.”
Volansky started with Connex as a part-time Bridge Operator or “BOP”while she was in college. She returned to the company after graduation and rose through the ranks from trainer to account rep to director of operations, becoming president and CEO by 2002. She marked her 21st work anniversary with Connex by purchasing the company.
Connex was founded in 1982 currently serves more than 2,200 clients. It maintains connections with its host communities in Kansas, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida as well as the Connecticut offices through the ConnexCare program which provides time and talent as well as financial support to local nonprofits.
Volansky counts Fortune 500 companies among Connex’s clients alongside a wide range of businesses of all sizes that require reliable, secure, and effective communications that are often best managed by a dedicated operator. She noted that many businesses turn to Connex for shareholder meetings, earnings announcements, investor relations calls, and other high-profile events where issues like delayed starts, dropped callers, and accidentally activated filters or inappropriate backgrounds have the potential to be devastating to a business.
“One of the specialties of Connex has always been that we are nimble and flexible to meet a client’s business needs,”Volansky said, noting that one size does not fit all when it comes to teleconferencing. “Also, we were early pioneers of the ”˜hybrid meeting’well before the term became popular during the Covid pandemic. The pandemic had a huge impact on our business growth as companies struggled to stay connected to their workforces while people sheltered at home. Our teams worked tirelessly, and we had to be resourceful and creative to support our clients.”
While the average level of familiarity with teleconferencing has increased to the point many people are comfortable hosting their own events, Volansky said that there is still major demand for Connex and its services.
“Over the past few months, we have seen the exit of many of the larger players in our industry,”Volansky said. “These widespread shakeups involve vendors selling off or simply dropping clients which severely impacts those clients’communications needs. Sometimes with very little notice. Connex has been helping many of these stranded companies get their virtual events and meetings back on track quickly and successfully.”
Connex offers support across Zoom, Teams and WebEx to let meetings go off seamlessly, but also offers solutions for large audience situations, being able to accommodate over 25,000 participants if need be.
“Over the decades, virtual meeting technologies have changed,”said Volansky, “but the need to stay connected has not. Connex will continue to combine its knowledge of over four decades of experience with new technologies and trends, to create effective, scalable, and reliable virtual meetings and event solutions.
