Center Partners halts Post Falls operation
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press Yvonne Stewart assists a customer during a call Tuesday at Center Partners call center in Coeur d'Alene. The business recently closed its Post Falls call center and consolidated operations by moving employees to open spaces in its Coeur d'Alene and Hayden offices.</p>
POST FALLS - Call center company Center Partners has closed its Post Falls site that opened 10 years ago.
Matt Carleton, who also manages the company's offices in Coeur d'Alene and the Hayden area, said about 450 employees, primarily sales staff, finished up working in Post Falls on Friday and have been split to work out of the two other North Idaho centers.
He cited a slowdown in hiring as a reason for ceasing the Post Falls operation.
"We concluded our lease (in Riverbend Commerce Park in Post Falls) because ... it wasn't healthy for us as a company," Carleton said. "It was a business decision to not renew that location. The timing was right. We had an opportunity to exit that building in a very easy way."
Carleton said the company employs about 500 at its Liberty Lake site, which opened last year, 400 in Coeur d'Alene and 200 in the Hayden area.
"We still provide more than 1,000 jobs in the area," Carleton said.
The company, which started in 2001, opened its Ironwood site in Coeur d'Alene in 2001 and Hayden-area location two years ago.
The Fort Collins, Colo.-based company employed about 1,300 here in 2008.
"That's not a very large swing in that four-year period," Carleton said. "We still have a very large footprint in the area."
Carleton said the recent reduction in workforce was due to a slowdown in hiring after employees moved on and not layoffs.
"I don't want that word (layoffs) to be put anywhere near us," Carleton said. "We have not done those. It's been all normal turnover."
But Carleton said the company has been hurt by the economy like most others.
"We have multiple clients that are Fortune 500 companies," Carleton said. "If their business is slower, then their demand for our service is slower. That's where we get impacted. We're an extension of their workforce."
Center Partners offers customer service, sales, outreach and technical support for companies. Among its clients are the TiVo home entertainment company.
Carleton said Center Partners is hiring in "onesies and twosies" - mostly for entry-level customer service jobs that pay $9.50 an hour.
"We're big enough that we're doing a little hiring all the time, but we're not hiring in large amounts," Carleton said.