East Texas

By KELLY PREW
Staff Writer

JACKSONVILLE - Alliance Data announced Thursday it will close its Jacksonville customer call center, leaving 230 people out of work.

"We will actually be closing the facility on April 18," Director of External Communications Shelley Whiddon told the Tyler Paper in a phone interview Friday. "We tried to give those employees as much notice as possible."

Alliance Data offered current employees positions in other areas of the company and at other call centers and will pay for relocation. For those who choose not to take those positions, the company will assist with a job search, holding community and in-house job fairs.

Jacksonville Economic and Development Corporation President Darrell Prcin said that although the local community will be hit hard, there is a silver lining.

"Anytime you have a community of 15,000 that loses 230 jobs, there will be an impact," he said. "But that just makes us work harder. We'll have a facility that will be open, and we're already working on economic development."

Prcin said current unemployment in Cherokee County is 5 percent with 21,000 people working, and this closure will rattle that number.

Whiddon said the company made the decision because it was difficult to staff that center and, overall, no longer cost effective.

The Jacksonville call center was formerly owned by Stage Stores, but in 2002-03, Alliance Data acquired that portfolio and the facility.

"This was obviously not a decision that was made overnight," Whiddon said. "It was the only center we were looking at closing."

Prcin said he is impressed with the way the company has approached the closure, and said JEDCO is committed to helping those losing their jobs by participating in job fairs with Alliance Data.

"We realize the call center ebbs and flows, but it appears, at least on the surface, that Alliance Data is going to do what it says it's going to do," Prcin said.

Alliance Data has more than 600 clients in industries including retail, petroleum, utility, financial services, insurance, hospitality and pharmaceutical markets, according to information for its Web site.

It has more than 5,000 available call center seats and handled more than 375 million customer calls in 2006.