Happy Friday: Call Center News Stories

A Healthy Work Environment
Sitel Philippines, a call center organization, possesses a distinctive healthcare program that takes great care of its employees. “Our Health, Our Wealth,” was created to assist the call center agents with all of the hardships that they have to deal with. When it first began, the program insured 1,600 employees at two sites, but has now spread to three more sites. “Our Health, Our Wealth” allows agents to attend lectures concerning catching sleep during shifting schedules, maintaining a healthy heart, correctly utilizing ear devices, and avoiding unhealthy habits. Along with this, they receive blood work, bone screening, electrocardiogram tests, and nutrition surveillance. These services don’t stop with the agents, though. It also includes the communities and families of the employees. Sitel is also working with Baguio city government, Lingap Center, and HopeHouse to provide a multitude of services. It was the only company in the call center industry to be awarded the Corporate Social Responsibility Excellence Award by the American Chamber of Commerce Philippines. Read the full story in the Business Inquirer

Flourishing Costco Opens New Call Center
Costco Wholesale Corporation has officially outgrown its call center in Issaquah, Washington, forcing the company to open a new one to accommodate other employees. The new center is located in Yakima, and ran Costco $2.6 million for the 36,000-square-foot building. There is no exact amount of employees the organization is looking to hire for the location, but Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco, plans to hire locals. Currently, Costco Wholesale Corporation has 529 warehouses in the United States, Canada, England, Mexico, and Asia employing approximately 236,000 workers. Read more in the Yakima Herald.

New Call Center Needs Agents
Alorica, Inc. has recently opened a new call center in El Paso, California, and is encouraging people to apply. For the month of January, Alorica is seeking to hire 250 employees and 700 by the end of 2008. These positions could lead to higher-skilled positions, the company said. Alorica currently employs 7,100 people and is headquartered in Chino, California. Read more in the El Paso Times

Erwin Agrees to New Call Center
Governor Sptizer has decided to place a new call center in the town of Erwin, New York. Sitel will place a call center in an Erwin building formerly used to be a photonics facility. It will provide people in the area with about 600 jobs. Read all about it on News10Now.com.

New Call Center Openings this week

XM Radio to Open New Call Center in the Lonestar State
El Paso, Texas is the site where XM will open their eighth call center by November. The facility will be comprised of approximately three hundred new employees that will take calls from XM subscribers and auto dealerships incorporating the radios in cars. The center is run by GC Services in Houston.

Debt-Collection Agency Incoporates Center in Jacksonville
The Enhanced Recovery Corporation has its eyes fixated on opening a new call center in Ware County early 2008. The organization, founded in 1999, recovers unpaid debts for those with credit cards, teleco. firms, and retailers. Initially, ERC plans on hiring 150 employees, but later expanding to a little over 300. The area is welcoming them with open arms, especially because of the 4.5 unemplyoment rate. This is the third center for ERC, who already has two in Jacksonville and the Caribbean.

Empereon Marketing Works $1.1 Million Call Center Project
Over the next three years, close to 400 jobs will be opening in Potter County, Pennsylvania. The organization is leasing a 30,000 sq. ft. building that they will convert into a call center. They specialize in outbound telemarketing services, inbound customer service and technical assistance services. Empereon is based out of Arizona, but runs call centers in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico as well.

Phones Begin Ringing in AT&T's New Call Center
AT&T has chosen Downtown Indianapolis to implement their new call center. Today at 10 a.m., a ceremony at 220 North Meridian marked the grand opening that will eventually employ about 425 representatives and managers. The center will be utilized to help consumers install AT&T's high-speed Yahoo! internet services.

ETelecare Desires for Philippine Call Center
ETelecare Global Solutions, a business process outsourcing vendor, is attempting to complete a project to implement a new call center in Makati City, Philippines. They are shooting to have it completed by the third quarter of 2007 with 13,000 employees occupying the space. Currently, ETelecare has about 2,600 workers in the United States at various locations including Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Creating a network of call center industry blogs

We're looking to find other company blogs to include in our new "blogroll" (a "blogroll" is a list of like-minded blogs) that we'll be debuting soon.

Virtually any company in the call center solutions market (who has an active blog) is encouraged to submit a link.

We'll review the quality of the blog and let you know if you've been included. We'll then ask for a link back and we'll make the entire blogroll available to include on your blog.

This will have positive effects on your blog traffic.

Segments of the call center industry we're seeking initially:

- CRM software companies
- IVR software companies
- VoIP systems companies
- Speech Analytics systems companies
- Call Center outsourcers
- Phone Systems integrators
- Call Center trade journals and news sites

If you are interested, please comment below.