Escapes! comes to Springfield

by Jill Henry

SBJ Reporter

jhenry@sbj.net

A vacation timeshare sales company that moved its call center from Houston, Mo., to Springfield in February continues to grow.

The call center, according to General Manager Brent Cox, is to employ a staff of 200 by the end of August.

The call center now employs 130, including a day and night manager, seven bay supervisors and 95 telesales representatives. The rest, Cox said, are administrative employees.

Telemarketers go though five days of training and start at $8 per hour, with benefits available after 60 days of full-time employment.

Houston's loss

While the call center's move is good news for Springfield, it was a shock for about 70 Escapes! employees in Houston, who were left without jobs.

Marjorie Stroup worked at Houston's center from August 2000 until it closed at the end of 2003. Workers weren't given much notice, the former senior supervisor said. About a week before the company was set to close for its annual two-week Christmas vacation, Stroup said workers were told they wouldn't be coming back.

"They did, however, offer a few of us in the office a little bit of time to come back in and finish some things up but they went ahead and shut us down even before then because people just weren't in the frame of mind to work, knowing they were losing their jobs," she said. Two employees stayed until the doors closed in Houston Stroup and Candi Knight, who started with the company in May 2001.

Escapes! and its parent company, Cooper Communities Inc., Stroup said, "were a very, very good, family-oriented company to work for. It's just that it did put us in a lot of hardship when they abruptly pulled out and left us with no employment."

Barry Brown, vice president of telemarketing for Escapes!, said moving the call center "was really an economic decision for the company because it just eliminated double overhead."

But the loss of jobs was discouraging and surprising in Houston, a town of 1,992, that is about 85 miles east of Springfield. Escapes! had been one of Houston's larger employees.

"We really felt like (Escapes!) had made a commitment to grow here," said Brenda Senter, executive director of Houston's chamber of commerce. "We were all expecting something to really happen. They just up and shut the doors, just bam."

In fact, Knight continued to hire and train people right up to the closing, unaware of the company's plans.

"I had set up interviews that same week (the office closed) and hired people," she said.

Ron Reed, Houston's director of economic development, said Brown's presentations to the economic development committee gave the impression that Escapes! planned a future there.

"Could they grow to 200 people in a call center in Houston? I doubt it," he said. "The frustration was when they originally moved there, that wasn't the plan anyway. The plan was to have about 80 people, and that's what they accomplished."

T.L. Spencer, president of Escapes!, said it was difficult to keep the Houston call center staffed. "We liked Houston. We still like Houston. We think it's a great town," he said, adding that leaving was based on a need for "technical services for the equipment and personnel. That's what we looked at when we made the decision to go to Springfield."

Spencer said of Houston, "I think the community is doing better and there are other competitors out there for employees."

But jobs in Texas County are scarce, Stroup said. "I actually found a job in Cabool. I drive over 40 miles a day roundtrip for employment now."

Knight has not yet found a job. "I've even applied for an assistant manager position at a gas station and the lady told me I'm overqualified. My last position with (Escapes!) was public relations director, trainer and recruiter. I was a senior manager for them and I haven't been able to find a job. It's been difficult," she said, adding that many of her former co-workers have moved, taken part-time jobs or are also unemployed.

Brown said the Houston workers were given the opportunity to transfer to Springfield, but only one worker did.

"I guess people were really loyal to that town and we feel the same way about the town," he said. "They were nothing but terrific to do business with the entire time over there and were absolutely fantastic employees. So we were disappointed that we didn't get a lot of those folks coming with us."

Brown declined to specify whether workers were offered financial assistance to move.

Springfield's gain

Escapes! call center occupies the second floor of the Protel building at Interstate 44 and U.S. Highway 65, approximately 8,800 square feet. Outbound cold calls are made from four bays of 23 workstations each.

The center has two shifts of workers, Cox said, with a day shift working 9 a.m-3:30 p.m., and a night shift from 5-9 p.m.

"As of right now, we're very much focused on getting this center to its capacity, but we would certainly love to make it larger," Brown said.

Future plans

He added that Springfield is a "telemarketing town," and he hopes Escapes! will flourish here. "I can't say with any certainty if that's (going to happen) a year or two or farther down the road. As long as we're successful here, obviously, it's attractive to us to grow this business and make it larger," he said.

Parent company Cooper Communities Inc. is a 50-year-old builder of homes and golf courses and is based in Rogers, Ark. Escapes! timeshare resorts are located in Arkansas, Texas, Alabama and Florida, and two are located in the Branson area Escapes! to StoneBridge Village and Escapes! to Branson Yacht Club. Escapes! employees make outbound cold calls to bring prospective buyers to the resorts.

"We're a big part of the marketing plan to get people into our marketing resorts," Cox said.

Keeping up with do-not-call legislation, Brown said, is an ongoing educational process. "We have considerable staff at our corporate headquarters that acquire the list for the different states (and) follow the legislative requirements that we're to adhere to," he said.

With procedures in place on a corporate level, Cox said that locally "it really hasn't had much of an impact at all. We adhere to all the (do-not-call) regulations and adhere to anybody that doesn't want to be on our list."

As for Houston, Reed said, the town is recovering. "The city of Houston is one of the towns over the last two years, our retail tax base has increased over one-fourth, so you can see the success of everything that is going on in the city as a whole," he said. "But this was a little setback right here because it was one of the industries that we had recruited when we were really on our upswing. Kind of like the two steps forward, one step back type thing."