"El Paso beat Laredo out for recent call center"- Que Pues??



Hello, You're calling from where??? Laredo. Hi, We were just talking about eating your lunch

 Roger Creery, head of the Laredo Development Foundation was a guest on the Tom Wade show this morning. They talked about numbers and bridge crossings and even mentioned that a new "clothing" store is planning to open in Laredo sometime this year. Although Wade pressed Creery somewhat for more info, Creery said he was unable to mention names. As the conversation continued, Creery made a comment to the effect of "well, El Paso beat us out on a new call center".  Maybe I was asleep like Rip Van Winkle because that was news to me. Anyway, I came to found out Creery might have been referring to Alorica's El Paso call center which handles technical questions for a cell phone customer. The total number of eventual jobs Alorica is expected to bring (It's already open) is approximately 1,500.

As it turns out, El Paso' call centers are thriving since at least 2000. It is one of the business sectors that continues to hire despite the ongoing recession.  An article on TCM.net states:

More than 13,600 people work in 33 El Paso call centers for 20 companies, according to data from the El Paso Regional Economic Development Corp. and from some of the companies.
Most of the facilities are traditional call centers, which take calls from customers of companies selling products and services, or which make sales pitches to people calling about products. A few are more sophisticated places where call takers deal with more-technical problems.

Alorica, a California company, opened the latest large call center. It opened an East Side center in early 2008 and employs about 1,400. Alorica last week held a job fair to fill 150 customer-service jobs that opened through normal turnover at its center, which takes customer calls from a wireless phone carrier.
"This is one of our largest centers in the country. It's very productive," said Danel Kuhlmann, an Alorica spokeswoman.

Below is a list of some of the call centers currently active in El Paso and the number of employees. As they say in El Paso......"Que Pues"??

T&T: 2,444 at four locations.
--GC Services: 1,985 at seven locations.
--Alorica: 1,400.
--ACS: 1,089 at three locations.
--ADP: 1,050 at two locations.
--Dish Network: 900.
--Redcats: 900.
--West Corp.: 820.
--State Farm: 600.
--Verizon Wireless: 450.
--Affina: 400.
--Telerx: 370 jobs.
--Bilingual Research Services: 300 at two locations.
--Dial America: 225.

I'm sorry McAllen and Brownsville. If you guys are going to want to continue eating our lunch. You're just going to have to get in line. Everybody's in on it now.