SYRACUSE — A Syracuse–based call-center firm is lined up for growth over the next several months thanks to a new contract with an energy company. Highfield Call Centers, based at 807 N. Salina St. in Syracuse, has signed a contract with a Canadian firm, Superior Plus Corp. (TSX: SPB), and its upstate New York arm, […]
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SYRACUSE — A Syracuse–based call-center firm is lined up for growth over the next several months thanks to a new contract with an energy company.
Highfield Call Centers, based at 807 N. Salina St. in Syracuse, has signed a contract with a Canadian firm, Superior Plus Corp. (TSX: SPB), and its upstate New York arm, Griffith Energy, which is based in Brighton, outside Rochester. The Syracuse company will handle after-hours call-center services for customers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states as well as crisis overflow on weekends. Highfield will also probably take on daytime support services in the future.
“We’re in the early conversion, starting to fulfill the responsibilities of the contract now,” says Joseph Bonacci, president and CEO of Highfield Call Centers. “We’re really in a growth period, and that’s a good thing.”
Highfield won the contract in June and has already hired eight full-time employees to work on it. The company plans to hire eight to 10 more people in the next month. And it expects to continue to hire until it has added a total of about 50 people to work on its new contract, according to Bonacci. Those employees will come on board by early 2013, he says.
They will be in addition to 65 people who already work for Highfield. The company has other call-center contracts, including one with the pharmaceutical giant Merck (NYSE: MRK).
The new employees working on the contract with Superior Plus and Griffith Energy will be in 3,500 square feet of newly leased space at 5990 Drott Drive in DeWitt. Highfield leased that location from Gregory Rinaldi, who owns it, according to records from Onondaga County’s Office of Real Property Tax Services.
Highfield spent about $50,000 of its operating cash to ready the new space to hold a call center. Kingsfort Builders, Inc. of DeWitt performed the work, according to Bonacci.
“You have to retrofit it for technology,” he says. “Phone systems, servers, wireless, televisions, computers, and then you also have a lot of electrical work that needs to be done. And you also have the interior-type work, workstations.”
In addition to the new location on Drott Drive, Highfield houses call-center operations for its other contracts at 7222 Fly Road in DeWitt. It leases 6,400 square feet of space there from Frank Magari, Bonacci says.
Most of Highfield’s employees currently work at Fly Road. It also has four employees in its headquarters of 807 N. Salina St., a building Bonacci owns. About 1,500 square feet of the building space is dedicated to the call-center company’s headquarters, he says.
Highfield will cast a wide net as it tries to nearly double in size over the next several months to meet the demands of its Superior Plus and Griffith Energy contract, according to Bonacci. The call-center firm will try to find new employees through classified advertisements in print, online advertising, and word-of-mouth.
“We’re in a business that’s a ramp-up business,” Bonacci says. “All of a sudden, you win another contract, and you have responsibilities. You have to find people, and you have to find people quickly. And you have to find talented people.”
Highfield may need to find even more talented people soon, he adds. The company is attempting to win two more contracts. Bonacci says he can’t be specific about the potential contracts, only divulging that one would be with a local firm and the other would be with a national company.
He does estimate that Highfield would probably need to double its labor force if it lands both deals. That doubling would occur after the Superior Plus and Griffith Energy-related hiring is complete, meaning Highfield’s employment rolls would swell to exceed 200 people.
Bonacci projects 2012 revenue at Highfield will total about $5 million. That’s up from $4.6 million in 2011 and $3.5 million in 2010.
It is too early to predict revenue for 2013, Bonacci adds. But he says the upstate New York area is a perfect place to expand a call-center business.
“This is a reasonable and realistic place to run,” he says. “There is a very good labor force with the universities.”
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
