Enterprise Rent-A-Car plans to open a call center in downtown Eugene this spring, company and local officials recently announced.
The company will accept applications from students for the customer service jobs, which pay above minimum wage and provide benefits. The call center will bring a larger workforce downtown and may pave the way for more downtown development.
The call center will employ about 200 people, 120 of which will be full-time positions, and handle roughly 10,000 car rental reservation and customer service calls each day from Enterprise, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car customers, said company spokeswoman Christy Conrad.
Enterprise wanted a call center to serve customers on the West Coast and in Hawaii, Conrad said. The company chose Eugene for a few reasons, one of which was the University. Enterprise hopes to recruit on campus because Conrad says it ensures high-quality applicants.
Jack Roberts, executive director of the nonprofit economic agency Lane Metro Partnership, worked closely with Enterprise officials to recruit the company to Eugene.
“They liked the area. They liked the people,” Roberts said. “We have an upper-end customer service approach. Our people are friendly and polite.”
Roberts said the company plans to hire employees at a starting hourly wage of $9.50 and pay roughly $13 to employees who stay with the company.
University applicants may qualify for full-time and part-time positions, Conrad said. The company will offer flexible schedules to accommodate course loads.
“We can handle students that are going to school and work with them to see when they’re available,” Conrad said.
Employees will receive benefits, including paid time off, profit sharing and a 401(k) plan. Enterprise also plans to offer summer internships in 2009.
The call center will open at 175 W. Broadway in the former Symantec building. Conrad said the company chose a downtown location because Enterprise encourages employees to use public transportation. Lane Transit District routes buses, along with a rapid transit bus system, through downtown and operates a downtown bus hub.
The call center will bring hundreds to work downtown, which means more people will spend money downtown and encourage development.
“The addition of several hundred employees to the downtown is nothing but a positive development, particularly since the building has been slow to fill up after Symantec left downtown, and that area of West Broadway desperately needs life, activity and people,” said Russ Brink, executive director of Downtown Eugene Inc., which represents property and business owners in the downtown core.
Brink said the entire downtown area will benefit from the call center location.
“We need many other new or expanding businesses to locate downtown, and we hope Enterprise will be the leading edge of that effort,” Brink said.
Eugene-Springfield is already home to other major call centers. Symantec employs hundreds, while the Royal Caribbean call center in Springfiled that opened in 2006 plans to hire 1,000 people by 2009.
Another call center isn’t necessarily good or bad for the area, economics professor Tim Duy said.
“It’s bad in the sense if you value your manufacturing jobs, but it’s good in the sense that manufacturing itself is likely to be a declining industry in terms of employment.”
Duy added that call centers may actually fit well for Eugene.
“There’s a constituency in Eugene that thinks they want manufacturing, but really Eugene doesn’t want all these negative externalities that go along with that such as pollution,” Duy said.
Enterprise, which has six car rental branches in the Eugene-Springfield area, is headquartered in St. Louis and started in 1957. The company ranks No. 21 on the Forbes Top 500 Private Companies in America, and BusinessWeek named Enterprise among the top five companies to launch a career at.
Students can apply for jobs at the Eugene Enterprise call center starting in February or March at www.enterprise.com/careers.
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