With its 100 employees now settled into their new digs, a grand opening was held Thursday for the FortisBC call centre in downtown Prince George, the culmination of a two-year effort to bring in-house natural gas provider's customer service wing.
FortisBC CEO and president John Walker called the move a big step, but one he believes will pay off in improved customer service as people who "understand the general nature of the communities" will now man the phones and handle the e-mails.
"The relationship with the customer needs to be as direct as possible," Walker said in a speech before local dignitaries and media toured the freshly renovated building.
FortisBC required permission from the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) to establish the call centres and, most importantly, reach an agreement with the employees' union.
"We firmly believe hiring people from the communities that we serve provides much better customer service than by removing the work from those communities and indeed outsourcing or offshoring," said Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union Local 378 president David Black.
The payroll for the Prince George call centre adds up to about $5 million a year. Entry level jobs in customer service and billing, including wages and benefits, range around $42,000 while workers with higher-rated skill sets can earn up to $64,000.
FortisBC received some 3,000 applications for the openings in Prince George. About a dozen area first nations people were among those hired after they completed a customer service course through the Prince George Nechako Aboriginal Employment and Training Association.
"This is a very important potential workforce for all of us as we are challenged with the demographic shifts as we look around over the next decade," Walker said.
Formerly the home of the Affiliated Computer Service (ACS) call centre, the building at Second and Dominion had remained vacant since July 2009.
But in December 2009, building's landlord, Initiatives Prince George, reached a deal to sell the building to FortisBC for $2.35 million, and after the BCUC approved the transaction, contracts worth $4 million were awarded in July 2010 to three local companies for renovations and upgrades.
The centre is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
