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By Marvin Tessner
Sun-News BUSINESS
Work crews in downtown Las Cruces are finishing a conversion of the historic Popular Dry Goods store for use by a neighboring telephone call center.
The front part of the store facing the Downtown Mall is being converted into a directory assistance operation by Excell Agent Services to expand its operations, said Thena Pettey, center director in Phoenix.
The Popular, which preceded the Urban Renewal project that turned that part of the Main Street merchandising sector into the Downtown Mall, was closed recently after 80 years of business. Its owners cited declining downtown retail traffic and growing competition from national chain stores.
Excell provides directory assistance, to telephone users seeking long-distance telephone numbers. One of its main customers is AT&T. The service covers the Continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii, Pettey said.
Excell opened its first call center in Las Cruces in December 1997, due mainly to the availability of workers in the Las Cruces area.
"We're open seven days a week, 24 hours around the clock, and we expect more calls," Pettey said. "So we need to increase our number of workstations. We wanted to find a location where a lot of people were abspharm.com
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"We're open seven days a week, 24 hours around the clock, and we expect more calls. So we need to increase our number of work stations.
-Thena Pettey,
center director
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available so we could attract high-quality people."
The addition is adjacent to the first large call center on the mall. The company plans to add 130 additional stations, which will increase the employee total to more than 500.
More than 20 new employees are now being trained in the former store site. The major renovation work is installing cable equipment, which is being done by LE Electric Inc.
Electricians also are installing a second call center backup generator. The company plans to have it in full operation in about a week, Pettey said.
Excell also has call centers in Mesa and Peoria, Ariz. The employees work with personal computers that are modified for directory assistance, Pettey said.
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