Employees’ Local Ties Draw VXI to City

VXI Global Solutions Inc. executives began to notice a common denominator in recent years among several of its top employees: a Mahoning Valley point of origin.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- VXI Global Solutions Inc. executives began to notice a common denominator in recent years among several of its top employees: a Mahoning Valley point of origin.

VXI saw how those employees were excelling at its various sites, prompting company officials to take a “serious look” at establishing a call center here, said its vice president of operations, Tobias Parrish.

“If they’re that good, what if we had 500 people from the Mahoning Valley working here? How good could we be as a company?” he said. “We felt that this was a perfect place for us to have a competitive advantage in the global economy.”

Los Angeles-based VXI settled on Youngstown after a year-long search, and Parrish joined city officials and representatives of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday at its new inbound call center at 20 Federal Place. The company is spending in excess of $4 million to convert the fourth floor of the building into space for its 503-seat call center. Until earlier this year, the space had been occupied by InfoCision Management Corp. of Akron, another call center firm with operations in the Mahoning Valley.

Chris Butcher, senior operations manager, a native of Howland, said he has been with VXI for about two years, having left the Mahoning Valley to work for the company in Los Angeles. “We knew that they were looking for a call center in the Eastern time zone, and so we took it upon ourselves to let them know that if you want more people like us, to perform the way we perform, Youngstown probably would be a good place for you,” he said.

Company officials “spoke very highly” of their employees with local roots, “and as a result of that and the performance of those employees they decided that this would be a place that they wanted to check out,” confirmed Mayor Jay Williams. That a “globally oriented company like VXI chose to expand their operations to Youngstown is ”something that is of extreme significance,” he said.

The “plug and play” space that VXI had been looking for to allow it to quickly establish operations wasn’t available a year ago when it originally looked at the area, said Walter Good, vice president for economic development, retention and expansion for the Regional Chamber. When the 20 Federal space became available, chamber officials “quickly notified” VXI.

“This was a very competitive process. The company had numerous sites that they looked at as part of the evaluation process,” Good said. In the end, the incentive package the city put together, the available wok force and the region’s success with other call centers “made a very strong case that led to VXI launching the facility,” he said.

Those incentives include favorable lease terms at the city-owned 20 Federal Place and a $400,000 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, funneled into the city’s Community Development Block Grant allocation to fund improvements at the space. A job creation tax credit was also provided by the state.

Williams acknowledged there has been “a lot of discussion and debate” about the ability of the federal stimulus money to create jobs, but said the use of the $400,000 to attract the $4 million investment and 500 jobs to the city is “a lot better than any return that you‘re going to get on Wall Street.”

Thursday was also the first day for the customer service center’s operations. Starting with 40 employees now, VXI plans to add 40 to 50 employees every three weeks, for a total of 250 by the end of the year. In December, training will begin for another 100 employees who will take calls in January for what Parrish described as “the largest cellular provider in the United States.” The company expects to employ 500 in the space within a year. The call center positions pay a base rate of $9 to $10 per hour, depending on the client, plus “very attractive” incentives.

“So basically if you perform you have an opportunity to make a lot of money,” Parrish said.

Depending on the success of the local operation, VXI also has an option to lease space on the fifth floor of the building, bringing additional jobs. Williams said.

“We want to bring diversity in terms of business. We don’t want to be a one-hit wonder,” Parrish remarked. “We want to bring diversity of programs so we can leverage all the talents this city can provide.”

The transition so far has been ‘really good,” Butcher said. Training classes are full through the third wave of hires, he said. “We haven’t had a problem finding supervisors with the experience that we need to do the job,” he added. “We’re looking to have a lot of success here in Youngstown and make Youngstown our No. 1 site,” he said.

“I can’t tell you how much it meant for us as a company to see folks showing up early for training, waiting in line, excited, couldn’t wait to get on the phones and show what they can do and the value they can bring,” Parrish said. “This has been from my perspective the best and easiest transition we’ve ever made in opening up a site.”

Other companies operating call centers in the Mahoning Valley include West Corporation, AT&T, which last week announced an expansion at its Boardman site, and Verizon.

“You build upon success,” Parrish said, and the success that other call centers have had in the area lends credibility when making the case to other companies that they should bring their back-office operations here.