Veneta?s holiday present: 180 jobs

VENETA ? The old True Value hardware storefront in the West Lane Shopping Center that?s been empty for a dozen years will get a tenant around Christmas time. Roseburg-?based First Call Resolution has signed a lease with shopping center owner JP Hammer.

The call center is expected to hire 180 employees, boosting the Veneta area?s employment base by about 20 percent, according to state labor economist Brian Rooney.

It could be a turning point for the small town 15 miles west of Eugene.

?Many of (Veneta?s) residents who have had to commute out to the Eugene-Springfield or Coburg area now can seek gainful employment right here in town,? Veneta City Administrator Ric Ingham said Thursday.

First Call Resolution?s growth has rocketed since its founding in Roseburg in 2005, President John Stadter said Thursday. In eight years, its work force soared from 25 to the present 700. The privately held company opened a second call center in Grants Pass in 2009 and a third in Coos Bay in 2011, Stadter said.

?We?ve averaged 30 percent (growth) a year for a long time. It hasn?t slowed down ? even though 30 percent of a larger number is harder to do every year. We added over 100 people last month. It wasn?t really seasonal work, either. It was just growth in a bunch of clients and (adding) new clients. We?re on an amazing roll right now.?

The state has pledged $50,000 from its strategic investment fund for First Call Resolution?s project. Lane County will chip in a like sum. Veneta will spend $35,000 to extend a fiber optics line 1,200 feet across a parking lot to the storefront.

Ingram hopes the arrival of 180 workers will reverse the slow attrition of businesses that Veneta has seen over the past couple of decades, which was followed by a decrease in population. Three years ago, the population was more than 5,000; now, it?s down to 4,860, he said.

More than 80 percent of Veneta?s residents commute out of town to work. The call center raises hopes that more residents will stay in Veneta, shop there and patronize the restaurants, and the town?s economic snowball will roll toward prosperity. ?Hopefully ? we can start to regrow ? or at least stop the retail leakage,? Ingham said.

Call centers were invented in 1978 when appliance companies, looking for an efficient way to help homemakers run their increasingly complicated appliances, set up phone banks.

Since then, the call center phenomenon has exploded nationally and globally. Today, 1,766 Lane County residents work as customer service representatives, most of them in call centers, Rooney said.

The experience in Lane County has been that call centers come and go. In recent years, a seasonal Harry & David call center departed for a couple of years and then returned ? stopping and starting more than 700 jobs. Enterprise Rent-A-Car opened a call center in downtown Eugene in 2008, then closed the center last October, shifting its employees to a work-from-home arrangement. A new company, Sykes Enterprises Inc., took over the former Enterprise space for a call center.

?There has been a lot of churn. They?re very mobile. You just need good communications hookups and places for people to sit,? Rooney said.

Starting pay at call centers in Lane County is $10 an hour, above the state minimum wage of $8.95 per hour. The average pay is $15.59, Rooney said.

First Call offers starting pay of $9.50 to $10 an hour; $12.50 for employees who are bilingual in Spanish and English. Full-time employees get a benefits package, including health and dental insurance, plus profit sharing after two years. The company posts openings and takes applications on its website: www.1callres.com .

Oregon-grown First Call set out to be a different kind of call center, Stadter said. It?s a comparatively small, boutique firm that offers highly customized service. It can replicate a customer?s own in-house customer service desks, and each client sets the evaluation standards for the First Call employees that service the client?s customers.

?Some clients are more concerned about talk time for each call, and other clients are a lot less concerned with that,? Stadter said. ?The big companies tend to not want to (customize).?

First Call provides telephone, e-mail and webchat support in industries such as consumer products, telecom, Internet, medical, merchant services, finance, travel, high tech, transportation and insurance. Stadter declined to name any customers. ?Clients tend to sometimes not want to have the world know they?re outsourcing the work. Part of what we do is make the help desk look exactly like theirs,? he said.

Ingham said he saw the company?s customer list. ?There?s some major Fortune 500 companies that they cater to.?

Stadter also declined to say how much the company would spend on situating a call center in Veneta, saying that?s part of the company?s ?secret sauce? that gives it a competitive advantage.

First Call locates its call centers in rural Oregon towns instead of large urban centers with a pool of students and other low-cost, part-time employees. Instead, the company looks to hire capable rural dwellers who?ve been underemployed or idled by the contraction in the fishing and forestry industries.

Stadter, who grew up in Seaside and studied economics at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, said Veneta is about as close to an urban setting as the company would ever want to be. In the future, the company will look to expand in small towns, such as Cottage Grove, Lebanon, Monmouth, McMinnville and Mount Angel, he said.

Wages at the firm are not on the higher end of the wage spectrum, Stadter said, ?but they?re good jobs ? better than flipping burgers. There?s a career path. You can move up in our company because we are growing. It creates opportunities.?

While turnover in the call center industry averages 80 or 90 percent annually ? ?north of 100 (percent) is not uncommon? ? the turnover at First Call Resolution is 20 percent, Stadter said.

?Our idea is: If you have tenured people, clients are going to stay because you are delivering a better product. Yeah, maybe your margins aren?t as good because tenured people are making more money, and you?re paying all those benefits, but in the long run, you?re going to prosper.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rgbusiness/~3/BSM6_z11WF4/call-center-veneta-company-stadter.html.csp

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