Depressed wages returning customer service jobs to Georgia

Lassiter, in essence, tried to get her old job back Wednesday, albeit with less pay and benefits.

“So many people have been unemployed for so many years, and so many companies outsourced work overseas that we need to bring the jobs back here,” said Lassiter, 45.

With double-digit unemployment bedeviling Georgia’s economy and prospects dim for a surge in well-paying jobs in 2011, job seekers embrace customer service jobs. And, unlike most industries sundered by the recession, the telemarketing/customer care industry has blossomed across Georgia.

Thirteen call center operations have located or expanded in Georgia since July 2008 -- the depth of the recession -- according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Atlanta ranks fifth nationwide with 105,000 customer care, corporate solution or telemarketing jobs.

Two job fairs were held Wednesday -- one in Norcross, the other in Marietta -- by employers seeking at-home customer service reps.

Atlanta can expect many more in the future, as once-outsourced work returns home to be filled by legions of unemployed workers in need of paychecks.

“High unemployment puts downward pressure on wages in this country and that makes the alternative of keeping these jobs in the United States a lot more viable,” said Rosemary Batt, a call center expert at Cornell University. “But it is a real problem that the fastest-growing occupation in this country is low-wage service jobs, a problem that is not unique to call centers.”

Mark Brown and his fiancée recruited at-home telemarketers in Norcross for Arise Virtual Solutions, which provides sales and technical support for U.S. and British companies. Arise CEO Angie Selden built the “virtual” company -- 18,000 contractors work at home with their own computers and phones -- by convincing retailers, cruise lines and pharmacies it was cheaper to let somebody else handle customer service needs.

Much of Arise’s work comes from companies returning call-center work from India and the Philippines to the United States, so-called “home-shoring” or “reverse outsourcing.”

Jenell Mason, who recently lost a printing job in Decatur, applied Wednesday for a telemarketing job with Arise.

“Working from home would be ideal for me because I can pursue other opportunities while still having a check come in to take care of necessities,” said Mason, 34, whose passion is graphic design.

Brown, the recruiter, said pay runs $8 to $13 an hour, but contractors can make more with sales incentives. (They won’t be paid, though, during the three-week training period.) The work, he said, is ideal for stay-at-home mothers and others who don’t want to fight Atlanta traffic and can work at their own pace.

Batt agreed.

“They have the potential to be good jobs because they require a fair amount of literacy and numeracy,” she said.  “They also require a decent education and an ability to interpret consumer inquiries and negotiate in ways that require a level of cultural understanding.”

Reliable Readers' Service, which sells magazine subscriptions by phone, interviewed potential telemarketers willing to work for $8 an hour in Marietta Wednesday.

Georgia actively recruits the telephony industry, tallying more than 320 call center and virtual marketing companies statewide. Twenty-two Georgia colleges offer customer service certificate programs. The state’s military bases lure call center operators keen to hire the spouses of active-duty service members. A mostly nonunionized workforce is also attractive.

The Internal Revenue Service, AirTran, Ryla, NCR and Automatic Data Processing employ thousands in Atlanta area call centers. Since July 2008, about 2,000 call center jobs have been added to the region’s payroll, according to the state economic development agency.

Thousands of other Atlantans sell magazines and memberships from home or answer customer service calls. As major U.S. corporations bring call center work back from abroad, more Americans will be working in their nightgowns. (Women comprise nearly three-fourths of Arise contractors.)

In all, between 3.5 million and 5.5 million Americans work in the telephony industry, a loose estimate made more difficult by the industry’s high turnover rate.

A backlash against hard-to-understand Indian customer service reps is partly credited for the resurgence in U.S. phone workers. U.S. corporations that shipped hundreds of thousands of jobs eastward the last decade realized that cost savings -- maybe 30 percent, according to Batt -- don’t outweigh customer satisfaction.

Meanwhile, India is progressing from simple customer-query work to more advanced and better paid back-office work, including software development and accounting.

“American jobs should be here to take care of the American people,” said Mason, who has worked in the customer service industry for 16 years. “Right now, with the recession, any job is better than no job.”

But economists and others question whether a U.S. economy built on a foundation of service-oriented jobs -- in call centers, malls, hotels, hospitals, schools, governments -- is healthy.

In 1998, for example, 72.8 percent of Americans worked in the service industry. By 2018, that will be 78.8 percent of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We will have a very polarized workplace future in that we will have jobs growing at the bottom and at the top -- and the jobs at the lower end are growing much faster,” Cornell’s Batt said. “Many of these jobs do not provide a living wage and the rising inequality breeds resentment among families who may not be able to make ends meet. That creates very, very difficult social and political problems for the United States.”