Kansas City Rapidly Becoming the U.S. Contact Center Hub

When discussing the new up-and-coming hotspot for call centers, you might imagine the Philippines. Perhaps Malaysia. You probably wouldn't think “Kansas City.” But in the Kansas City area, call center work is the newest hot job.

In that city, tens of thousands of people earn a living as customer service representatives in hundreds of contact centers, the Kansas City Star is reporting. The city is host to call center companies that do work on behalf of everything from catalog and Web site sales to taking orders for fast-food drive-through establishments.

“We’re constantly recruiting for that skill set throughout the Kansas City market,” Bill Welty, regional director at Grafton Staffing, told the newspaper.

Demand is high for a number of reasons. Kansas City is centrally located in the middle of U.S. time zones, has enough population density to make large pools of potential employees available, has reasonable labor costs and agents tend to be relatively accent-neutral. The region also offers a population with comparatively higher education levels for entry-level jobs and the famed “Midwestern work ethic” said Jill McCarthy, vice president of business development at the Kansas City Area Development Council. Lease rates for buildings are also good as well, with buildings suitable for call center facilities generally between $14 to $16 per square foot in the metropolitan area, according to Cassidy Turley, a commercial real estate firm.

It's not only simple customer support call centers, but the area is also attracting specialist call centers staffed by trained law professionals (for H&R Block) pharmacists (for OptumRx) or veterinarians (for Hill's Pet Nutrition Center). The area is even home to large government contact centers, including a large one operating for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Citi operates one of the largest contact centers in the area, employing about 1,500 people. Call center outsourcing companies USA800 and Convergys (News - Alert) also have large operations in Kansas City.

Analysts say it's hard to count the number of call center jobs in the Kansas City area, since many of the employees work in internal contact centers rather than business process outsourcing firms.

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