By Phil Villarreal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
July 26, 2011
A Florida-based company will open a call center in Tucson and host a job fair Wednesday and Thursday to fill full-time positions.
Customer service company CustomerContactChannels (C3) will open its first Arizona site at 1150 W. Drexel Road. The company plans to hire 320 workers by Sept. 6 and be fully staffed with 600 employees by the end of November.
In operation since 2009, C3 handles sales and customer service, as well as consulting and infrastructure, including email and benefits management, and says its clients are all Fortune 500 companies.
C3’s other locations include Plantation, Fla., its headquarters; Twin Falls, Idaho; Ashland, Ohio; San Jose, Costa Rica; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Mumbai, India; Salt Lake City; and two facilities in Manila, Philippines.
Laura Shaw, senior vice president of Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities (TREO), said the organization began working with C3 seven months ago.
“I think it will bring a number of new jobs to Tucsonans in a still-difficult economic recovery,” Shaw said, adding that the city of Tucson, Pima County, The Temp Connection, Randstad Staffing and Recruiting and CB Richard Ellis all helped land the C3 expansion.
C3 spokeswoman Alicia Laszewski said the vast majority of the openings would be customer-service reps paid around $10 per hour, with a small number slated for management. The company does not plan to relocate current employees, meaning all the openings would go to local workers.
Training for new employees starts Sept. 6.
Laszewski said the company chose Tucson because of the workforce. The company prefers workers with previous customer-service experience, but doesn’t require it.
Laszewski said C3 looked at “a number of different cities,” but chose Tucson in the early stages of planning. She added that C3 will expand its Salt Lake City operations and may expand to other cities by the end of the year.
She said the need for a new call center comes from expanding demands from current and new clients.
Laszewski declined to name any of C3’s clients, citing the company’s confidentiality policy.
IF YOU GO
• What: C3 Job Fair
• When: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday.
• Where: Radisson Suite Hotel Tucson Airport, 7051 S. Tucson Blvd.
Contact reporter Phil Villarreal at 573-4130 or pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Read more: http://azstarnet.com/business/local/article_22e369dd-9d17-561a-8654-a863230a97da.html#ixzz1TL2OmYO3
