550-employee call center will add 400 jobs in Springs

A Florida company is adding 400 jobs to its Colorado Springs call center, making it one of the area’s larger private employers only six months after it arrived in town.

Fort Lauderdale-based PRC, which Fortune 500 companies and other businesses hire to perform their customer service work, said Monday that it will add the jobs by year’s end to the 550-employee call center it opened in February on the Springs’ north side.

The 400 call-center jobs will pay wages that translate to roughly $20,800 to $28,080 a year and come as two well-known names in Colorado Springs downsize their operations: Intel Corp. has cut 600 jobs this year and will eliminate another 400 in October when it closes its chip-making plant, while Wells Fargo has cut 76 jobs and will trim more later as it closes a customer service center.

“Any job is important,” and the additional PRC jobs are part of a mix of about 2,000 primary jobs — those pumping wealth into the community from the outside — that have been added in 2007, said David White, marketing vice president for the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp.

“There are people in our community who are prepared to work at Intel and have the training and educational level to be able to work at an environment like Intel.”

Other people don’t necessarily have the same training, yet still need a good job to fit their education and experience, he said.

White added that PRC’s bullishness casts Colorado Springs in a positive light, which will help the city as it courts other employers.

PRC says it’s expanding in the Springs because it’s been impressed by the education, experience and work ethic of the local labor force, said Alicia Miyares, vice president of marketing and communications.

The company’s local employees also have shown they work well with the businesses PRC serves from Colorado Springs, Miyares said. Although PRC doesn’t disclose client names, she said companies served by the Springs call center include those in the telecommunications, cable, satellite and transportation industries.

Many of the businesses served by the Springs call center are recognizable Fortune 500 companies, said Brie Temple, operations manager for PRC’s customer service unit here.

Colorado Springs has been a call-center hub for years. In PRC’s case, its employees aren’t telemarketers who cold-call consumers to solicit business, Temple said. Instead, PRC is an inbound center where employees field calls from customers of specific companies, she said.

“We’re an ‘outsourcer,’ a call center for hire,” she said. “These Fortune 500 companies contact us, and we have contracts with them to provide their customer service or their customer service management,” she said.

Most PRC employees are full time, Miyares said. Wages range from $10 to $13.50 an hour; some employees make more with commissions and others might receive higher pay if they’re trained to work with the customers of a particular PRC client, she said. Bilingual employees also are paid more, she added.

With 950 employees, PRC would rank among the largest 25 private employers in town, according to Gazette research.

PRC leases 96,000 square feet in the Tiffany Square office and retail building, southwest of Interstate 25 and Woodmen Road. The company has enough space to accommodate additional workers, and the expansion won’t require larger quarters, Miyares said.

Privately held PRC — once known as Precision Response Corp. — has more than 14,000 employees worldwide and operates in about two dozen cities in the United States, including Colorado Springs and Denver. Its client list has included DirecTV, Sprint, Wells Fargo, U.S. Airways and British Airways.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0228 or rich.laden@gazette.com

HELP WANTED

PRC has launched training classes for its additional 400 employees and wants to hire the workers as soon as possible — no later than the end of the year. Applicants can send résumés to springsjobs@prcnet.com or call 262-5607.