An Albany retail store goes dark, but lights go up in new CallTech
Facility
"We are live!" exclaimed Bob Massey at the recent grand opening of his
company's newest call center, located in Albany, Ga.
As chairman of Columbus, Ohio-based CallTech Communications LLC, Massey
was the featured speaker at the June 11 ceremony marking the end of a
whirlwind effort to revamp a vacated Wal-Mart store into a center that
would handle thousands of incoming phone calls daily.
With 325 workstations in 21,000 sq. ft. of floor space, the facility
currently houses 170 customer service agents who provide technical
support for subscribers to BellSouth's asymmetric digital subscriber
line (ADSL). CallTech, which operates four other call centers, plans to
serve additional clients at the Albany location and fill the facility
with up to 600 agents taking calls around the clock.
At the grand opening, Massey commended those who participated in the
team effort to bring CallTech to Georgia, including Albany city
officials, Albany Technical College and Quick Start.
"The key to our success has been finding the right people to do the job
day in and day out," he said. "To find 200 people who can handle a very
technical product is not easy. But we've been very successful in
attracting the right people, getting them trained and getting them up
and running."
To help CallTech prepare for its soft opening on June 1, Quick Start
provided 32 hours of pre-employment training to 195 people in May,
utilizing Albany Tech's computer labs.
Massey commented that he has already received feedback from a caller
about the high quality of customer service provided by his Quick
Start-trained staff. "[He] said it was the finest support call he ever
had with an 800 number where he asked for technical support," Massey
said. "So I think we're doing something right."
Designed to develop technical support skills with realistic job
simulations, the Quick Start training program taught fundamentals of
broadband, computer networks and troubleshooting.
"I thought the students were extremely well-prepared and well-trained,"
Massey noted after the ceremony. "They developed a lot of knowledge in a
brief period to become productive employees of CallTech." Unlike many
call center start-ups, which ramp in 20 to 30 agents at a time, this
center was launched with all 170 newly trained agents going live at
once.
"The Quick Start program was a nice adjunct to the normal training we
provide our employees," Massey said. "It made our people better equipped
to handle the day-to-day situation they would face on the job."
