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A Mixed Bag of Domestic Call Center Locations News

By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor

The call center industry represents great hope for a number of nations. As many countries (including our own) change into service-based economies, the nations of the world will begin to compete even more heavily for critical functionality like contact center and customer support, help desk, back-office processes, tech support and more.

That said, there is some good news for the U.S. call center industry this week, as follows:

General Dynamics (News - Alert) has been much talked about in the call center industry recently since its call center subsidiary has won government contracts to provide support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, otherwise known as “Obamacare”) which goes mostly into full effect next year. Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced last week that the company’s Information Technology division (under which call center services fall) will be hiring about 300 call center agents in Winchester, Kentucky this summer, according to the Winchester Sun.

The General Dynamics call center will operate from a building formerly occupied by ailing tech giant HP. The new call center will be one of several in the state that will operate to support the PPACA.

The news is even better in the Boise, Idaho, area. Call center services company MAXIMUS has announced it will be hiring 1,800 workers for a new contact center, according to a local news affiliate. Interestingly, this new call center will also be located on an HP campus (similar to General Dynamics’ new center in Kentucky, above). The majority of those positions will be for customer service representatives and operations support staff. The center will operate from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and service customers all over the country.

Finally, since there is seldom good news without bad, a contact center run by Integrity Solution Services in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, recently announced it plans to lay off all of its 420 employees at the site and shut down the facility in mid-September. According to NPR-affiliated KRCU, the call center supported one single large client that has discontinued services with Integrity, eliminating the need for the contact center. Cape Girardeau Mayor Harry Rediger lamented the loss but noted that there were other call centers scouting out the Cape Girardeau area that could help replace some of the lost jobs.

That’s all the news (good and bad) for this week on the call center openings and closings front.