Gas South, one of Georgia’s fastest-growing gas marketers, has more than doubled its number of employees by starting its own customer-service center instead of outsourcing the work.
The company added 100 workers during the first six months of the year for its Cobb County-based call center, which started operating May 1. Gas South hired 16 additional workers last week and is adding another 16 now as the company prepares for the busy winter heating months.
“We wanted to keep our competitive edge,” said Meredith Hodges, a company spokeswoman. “One way to do that was to bring all of the employees in house.”
Originally Gas South customers would be talking to customer-service representatives in Canada if they had a question about their bill or wanted to change their service. Then the gas marketer contracted with a company that had employees in Georgia before deciding to open its own service center.
“We were interested in keeping these jobs in Georgia,” Hodges said.
Hodges said that move has allowed the company to work more directly with the representatives and give them specific training. Many of the newly hired Gas South employees are from the company that the marketer contracted with when it outsourced its customer-service work, Hodges said.
“You really have more ability to be involved in the business and to get feedback from the representatives and provide more coaching and training,” she said.
The company received hundreds of applications for additional jobs, Hodges said. For example, for a group of 22 positions posted in April, Gas South received between 1,600 and 1,700 applications. For this recent round of 16 jobs, about 300 people applied.
“There’s been a lot of interest and a lot of people out there looking for jobs,” she said.
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