THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150430
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 44 lines
A Denver-based company, Telelink Systems Inc., is considering taking over a telemarketing center in the Greenbrier area that cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc. planned to close early next month.
Tim Hardin, Telelink's president, said Tuesday that he plans to visit the TCI center next week. He said his nine-year-old company is looking for an East Coast center to make calls on behalf of its clients in the cable-TV industry.
If it takes over the operation in Chesapeake, he said, Telelink will likely offer full-time jobs and benefits to many of the facility's employees, who call customers all over the country to sell TCI services. All but 30 of the 295 workers at the center at the time of TCI's decision last month were part-timers.
TCI officials declined to say how many employees remain at the center. They said some other local telephone service centers, of which there are dozens in Hampton Roads, have been trying to lure away the workers.
Hardin said 95 percent of Telelink's more than 300 employees at call centers in Denver and Pueblo, Colo., and Falmouth, England, are full-timers. They do telemarketing for all the nation's major cable-TV operators, including TCI, Time Warner Inc. and Cox Communications Inc., as well as for cable networks like The Disney Channel, HBO and Showtime.
TCI announced in early December that it would close the Chesapeake center as part of a cost-cutting reorganization. The nation's largest cable-TV operator, which has been under pressure to improve its sagging stock price, said it planned to contract out its remaining telemarketing operations.
Hardin said he became interested in the Chesapeake operation soon after it was put on the cutting block.
``We're in an expansion mode. We've done a lot of work in the cable industry, and we've done work for TCI for years,'' he said, ``so this just seems like a perfect fit.''
Some TCI workers said they've heard that Telelink may eventually relocate the Greenbrier center to another site in Hampton Roads. But Hardin stressed that nothing has been finalized. MEMO: Staff writer Dave Mayfield can be reached at 446-2270 or by e-mail
at dmay(AT)infi.net