Economic-development leaders here were disappointed when Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. opted recently not to lower a gangplank here and instead set compass for Springfield, Ore., with plans for a reservation call center that would employ 1,000 people.


The Spokane-Coeur dAlene area hasnt missed the boat, though, in attracting a host of other call-center jobs. Since the start of this year, companies have added or announced plans to create more than 2,000 such positions here, making call centers arguably one of the hotter industry sectorsat least for the short termin a still-rebuilding Inland Northwest economy.


Available statistics suggest that call centers currently employ upwards of 7,000 people in Spokane and Kootenai counties, not including many operations that arent large enough to appear on the sonar screens of monitoring agencies. Some call centers tend to be contract-driven, so employment can fluctuate widely, but observers here say the overall trend in job numbers nevertheless appears to be continuing upward.


I would say as an aggregate theyre on the increase, says Stan Key, business-development manager for the Spokane Area Economic Development Council.


Kathryn Tacke, a Coeur dAlene-based regional labor economist with the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor, agrees, saying, The long-term potential definitely shows growth.


In one of the latest affirmations of that forecast, Nebraska-based West Corp. announced last month that it planned to add 200 call-center jobs to the 800 full-time jobs it had said earlier it would add here. Most of the additional jobs are to be at the companys Dakotah facility at 157 S. Howard.


Separately, Colorado-based Center Partners announced last month that it would hire more than 300 call-center employees in Kootenai County, bringing its total work force there to about 800.


Our clients are pleased with the quality of care they receive from our agents in Northern Idaho. As a result, they continue to grow their programs with usand that means we need more employees to meet the clients needs, said Mark Jorgensen, Center Partners vice president of human resources, in a news release about the planned additional hires.


Meanwhile, U.S. Bank has awarded a $5.5 million contract to Vandervert Construction Inc., of Spokane, for construction of a call center in Coeur dAlene thats expected to employ up to 500 people within the next five years. (See story page B3.) The bank says that call center will provide customer service to support its retail payments division, which includes debit-card credit-card accounts.


Also, in January, Verizon Communications said it would add about 300 directory-assistance positions at its call center in Coeur dAlene, raising its employment in Kootenai County to about 650. It said the new employees would provide directory assistance to customers of AT&T Wireless telephone service.


The EDCs Key says, We really havent for some time actively recruited to the call-center industry. However, we do get a lot of inquiries (from representatives for companies scouting locations for call centers), and we do try to service those as much as we can. I do believe this area, and the Northwest in general, has been an area that a lot of companies are looking at for this kind of growth.


Part of global trend


Subscribing more to the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats theory, Tacke says she believes the call-center employment upswing here simply is part of a global trend.


Call centers grew tremendously in the late 1990s, until about 2001 (before swinging upward again more recently), so whats happened in our area isnt that unusual, she says. However, she adds, We have been fairly fortunate because we have had a significant number of inbound (call-handling), higher-paying call-center jobs with benefits.


The proliferation of call centers here isnt viewed favorably in some circles because of a lingering perception that such employers tend to be high-turnover telemarketing firms that offer low pay and few benefits. Those perceptions, however, no longer are accurate in many cases, Key and Tacke say.


We call them back-office employers because, for the most part, the ones that have located here are for specific types of products and inbound calls. Those have been more the case than the ones we think of as doing telemarketing, Key says.


People tend to look at these as being typically lower-paying jobs, and so forth, and while there are some of those companies that are at the low end of the pay-scale here, as you get more of them, they get very competitive, and wages start to rise, and benefits get more competitive, he says.


Even those call centers that remain near the low end of the pay scale make for a good first-time employment for the worker whos just getting into the work force, he adds.


Tacke says, People who view them as low-wage jobs are very misinformed. Many call-center jobs here now offer decent pay, with some jobs starting at better than $11 an hour, plus excellent benefits and good advancement opportunity, she says.


Working in a call-center environment is very difficult for some people, but other people really thrive on it, she says.


Legislators might stimulate further growth of the industry in Washington state by extending sales-tax deferral and exemption incentives currently available for certain other types of construction projects to include new call-center facilities, Key says. Separate versions of such a bill passed the state Senate and House in the last legislative session, but the session closed before the differences between the two bills could be worked out and the governor could sign the bill, he says.


Key says he believes the lack of such incentives was a huge factor in Royal Caribbeans decision not to drop anchor here with its envisioned call center, and that he expects the Legislature to revisit them in its next session.


In Idaho, call-center operators have been able to take advantage of work-force development training fundsup to $3,000 per worker in rural areas and $2,000 in urban areasprovided through the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor. The money comes from unemployment-insurance tax proceeds and is focused on businesses that get their revenue from outside of the state, Tacke says.


Its been a great incentive for bringing in a lot of industrial operations to the state, she says.


Call centers emerged about 35 years ago when the travel and hospitality industries began to centralize their reservation centers as the first large-scale, high-volume telephone switches became available, according to industry sources.


Banks began using them, and the industry expanded further in the 1970s with the rise of the catalog-shopping and outbound-telemarketing movements.


In recent years, many businesses have turned to them as a way to centralize processing and support functions and to take advantage of improved telecommunications technologies.