kgb USA has announced it will close its Hawaii call center on June 2 of this year, laying off 17 employees, reported Pacific Business News. kgb, which stands for “Knowledge Generation Bureau,” is a privately held, New York-based company that provides directory assistance and enhanced information services across Europe and North America. It describes itself as “the world’s largest independent provider of directory assistance and enhanced information services.”
The company was founded in 1992 by Robert Pines under the name INFONXX, but the company rebranded and changed its name in 2008. kbg USA also provides operator services and order-taking as well as outsourced customer care, including general customer service, inquiry handling, help desk and technical support.
It provides directory services for customers of Oceanic Time Warner Cable, Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS/Nextel (Virgin & Boost Mobile) and Wavecom Solutions, formerly Pacific Lightnet, according to the Hawaii office.“We've known about it and already migrated half of the traffic away from them to other sources and plan on migrating the other half by May 1 so there will be no disruption at all,” said Alan Pollack, vice president of marketing of Oceanic.
The Hawaii call center is closing due to “structural shifts in the directory assistance sector” and because of operational costs, according to kgb spokeswoman Amy Wolfcale. The call center handles directory assistance calls for an unspecified number of companies.
kgb USA notified the 17 employees last week that the call center would be closing, according to Wolfcale.
In December 2008, kgb acquired Texperts, a UK-based firm, in order to benefit from the British company's software platform and industry experience. In January 2009, kgb launched a new suite of products in the U.S., providing answers to customers’ questions through multiple platforms. The first is through a mobile search service known as 542542 (kgbkgb). The company had already launched a similar service called 118118 “Ask Us Anything” in the UK.