AT&T, Basking Ridge, NJ, last month sealed an agreement to open a call center in Valley View, OH, in the 52,000-square-foot former corporate headquarters of HomePlace. The center will employ about 550. AT&T also had scouted sites in Cincinnati, Denver and Albuquerque, NM, according to The King Group, the real estate firm that secured the site. GC Services, Houston, will operate the center for AT&T.
EnvisionNet Computer Services Inc., Brunswick, ME, recently said it plans to open a customer care center in Orono, ME, that will employ as many as 1,000 agents. The company, which provides outsourced customer care services and technical support for e-commerce companies, said the center will operate from a temporary facility in Orono beginning in April. It expects to move into the permanent structure in October. EnvisioNet already operates contact centers and training facilities in the Maine cities of Brunswick, Winthrop and Augusta.
iSky, Columbia, MD, is scheduled to open a call center on March 23 in Bend, OR. The 42,000-square-foot facility will have 900 workstations and operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It will provide both inbound and outbound services and a variety of Web-enabled functions for iSky’s client base. It is iSky’s fifth contact center.
J. Baker Inc., Canton, MA, recently said it will open a 135,000-square-foot call center and distribution facility in suburban Atlanta to support the company’s Repp By Mail division, Casual Male Big & Tall catalogs and e-commerce operations. The facility, which is expected to open in the second quarter, will replace a 69,000-square-foot call center that served the Repp By Mail business that J. Baker acquired last year.
Lowestfare.com, Las Vegas, recently opened its second call center. The 38,000-square-foot facility, located in Kent, WA, is scheduled to employ about 250 agents by midyear. The site augments the discount airline travel merchant’s original site in Las Vegas, where it employs 550 agents.
Millennium Teleservices, Woodbridge, NJ, recently opened its 28th call center in Wellston, OH. The outsourced services provider, which said it has aggressive expansion plans for this year, also unveiled plans for another call center to open later this month in Central City, KY. That facility will employ about 200 contact agents. Both centers will offer Web services in addition to traditional inbound and outbound telesales.
Sprint Corp., Kansas City, MO, recently said it would open a new call center in Rancho Cordova, CA, to provide customer service nationwide. The center will employ about 200 agents, which will bring to 1,100 the total number of agents Sprint employs in the Sacramento, CA, area.
Synergy Solutions Inc., Phoenix, recently opened its first customer contact center. The 200-seat facility is handling outbound teleservices and customer acquisition programs for various clients, and the company said it expects eventually to employ up to 500 agents and expand into Web-based customer support. Most of the management team at Synergy previously had management positions at ProMark One Marketing Services Inc., Scottsdale, AZ.
Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, PA, recently sealed a contract to provide consulting and implementation services for the creation of a call center for non-emergency calls for the city of Houston. The “3-1-1” center is expected to handle more than 2.5 million calls annually and will operate 24 hours a day. Residents will be able to access the center via fax, e-mail and live Web chat in addition to the three-digit phone number. Houston will be among the first cities to open a 3-1-1 center, which will handle calls for all city agencies that previously had gone through more than 700 different phone numbers.
WSi Interactive Corp., Vancouver, British Columbia, said it will build a call center as part of its headquarters expansion here that will handle both inbound and outbound calls. The company, which said it is seeking to capitalize on direct marketing opportunities on the Internet, builds and manages online businesses, including Medianetsolutions.com, Targetpacks.com, Western Shores.com, Stocksecrets.com and others.
