Fast-growing center looking to fill 400 full-time positions
Laura Newpoff
A Columbus-based call center is growing so rapidly it needs to hire 400
full-time workers.
Executives at CallTech Communications Inc., a customer service,
technical support and product sales representative for Internet service
providers and electronic commerce companies, said more employees are
needed because the Internet services industry is booming. The company
specializes in Web-based communications and has grown from 15 employees
in 1996 to more than 1,100.
The hiring effort will help fill the company's headquarters on Equity
Drive and its office at Arlingate Plaza. CallTech also is building
centers in Brownsville, Pa., and Fort Myers, Fla.
"Everything we do is Web-based," said George Zimmerman, CallTech's
senior vice president. "All of our clients have a relationship to the
Internet."
One of those clients, priceline.com, is an e-commerce site through which
customers name their price for airline and hotel reservations.
"Many of their customers place bids through the telephone and those
calls come to us," Zimmerman said. "We're acting as their agent; we're
their customer service reps. We also pass the data back to priceline.com
via the Web."
CallTech's representatives also answer technical support calls for ISPs
such as CompuServe and Prodigy. Further, the company takes reservations
for the Ohio Hotel and Lodging Association.
Howard Nusbaum, executive vice president of the Ohio Hotel and Lodging
Association, hired CallTech because of its Internet focus as well as its
travel and tourism experience.
"We decided to put together a reservation service and realized some
customers weren't quite ready to put their Visa number on the Web," he
said. "We needed a call center. So here's CallTech, one of the few, if
the only, Internet-based call centers around. All of their operators are
online when they're talking to customers, and they are highly
knowledgeable in the travel sector."
Nusbaum said the American Hotel and Motel Association was so impressed
with the Ohio association's partnership with CallTech, that it has
chosen the call center as well.
Zimmerman doesn't expect difficulty in recruiting workers even though
the Central Ohio unemployment rate is under 3 percent. The company, he
said, is active in job fairs and in partnerships with universities to
recruit employees.
The added employees, he said, will fill positions in new customer
service areas, such as e-mail response.
"With e-commerce, the consumer is offered the opportunity to e-mail the
company," he said. "Somebody has to answer all those e-mails because a
lot of potential clients could be buried in them. The days of companies
being able to answer e-mails individually, one by one, are over."
Instant messaging also is another new CallTech service.
"If a consumer is on a Web site and wants to buy something but needs
information before he completes the transaction, the old way was to call
the company's 800 number," Zimmerman said. "With instant messaging,
there's an icon on the Web site for the customer to click on to
communicate with a customer service rep. With e-mail there's a delay.
This gives them a live response right away."
CallTech's representatives are the ones communicating with those
customers, Zimmerman said.
"It all happens right there on the site," he said. "So the customer
doesn't go away from the site to find an answer. This is a way to keep
them there because your competition is just one click away. This is the
next big wave for us."
