Stream in the News
Stream Opens Call Center in Familiar Sergeant Bluff Site
Progress Edition: Special Publication of the Sioux City Journal
Sergeant Bluff, IA, March 18, 2007 — Stream is steaming forward with a call center in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, adding a third client 10 days ago and moving about halfway toward a goal of employing 1,000 workers.
Stream’s call center has been open five months at 102 Sergeant Square Drive, the former home of a Verizon call center, and prior to that, WorldCom and MCI in Sergeant Bluff. Stream has something of a Verizon feel, with several of the same employees and furniture, but functions much differently than the predecessor firm, which closed in June 2006.
The closure was a jolt to the Siouxland market, with the loss of 569 jobs, but by October, Stream - a Dallas, Texas-based firm providing technical support and customer service for national clients - had opened in the same building. Stream has 27 contact centers and 14,000 employees, with about 450 in Sergeant Bluff as of early March, site director Tracie Franko explained.
Franko said the entire building is being leased by Stream, but only a portion is being used until more clients and employees are added. “The intent is to move into the whole building,” she said.
Stream call center workers are handling calls from Sirius satellite radio customers, a well-known national tax preparation company and, in a few days, a national high speed Internet service provider yet to be named. “The great thing about adding an additional client is it provides our employees additional options in terms of positions,” Franko said.
She said the goal is to get a fourth and fifth client to service from Sergeant Bluff as soon as possible, and that should pan out, since “we have a very aggressive and very talented group at Stream” seeking clients nationally.
Stream reached about 600 employees at Christmas time to aid a busy year-end period with Sirius. Then when that need lessened, the number of employees has dropped to 450, primarily from those who left and weren’t replaced. The tax-prep client is also seasonal, so the addition of more clients will allow the staffing to rise, Franko said.
Said Franko, “The goal is to fill up the call center to between 800 and 1,000 employees, which would mean we would probably have four or five clients. That just offers us more flexibility, a variety of work, and with that comes promotional opportunities. It is great too, because our employees get to learn different skills.”
For example, Stream employees handle billing and customer service duties with Sirius customers, “while with other clients it might be more troubleshooting or technical service they are providing,” she said.
Franko is a Cushing, Iowa, native and Morningside College graduate with 17 years of call center management experience, including all the business permutations in Sergeant Bluff - first Pioneer TeleTechnologies, then PTI, MCI Services Marketing, MCI Consumer Markets, WorldCom and Verizon. About 40 workers comprise the management staff at Stream.
“Many of our employees have former experience in the call center industry,” Franko said, and the workers generally hail from within about a 40-mile radius of Sergeant Bluff.
“We also have a lot of the workforce where it is the first time in the call center industry and it is a great chance for them to learn,” she said.
Franko said Stream national executives have been satisfied with the Northwest Iowa site, which opened on Oct. 23, 2006.
“They are very pleased so far with our performance. They know they are getting a very good employee base here,” and a “very educated workforce with a Midwestern work ethic,” she said.
In an October 2006 statement, Stream CEO and president Toni Portmann said, “We’ve been interested in the Sioux City area for quite some time.”
From the perspective of the Stream Sergeant Bluff employees, Franko said, “Stream gives an opportunity to learn so much about the high-tech and telecom type industries. When you look at Stream overall, they have over 85 business clients that they support. A lot of these companies are Fortune 500 companies and most of them are high-tech companies, very well known and well respected. And they are trusting Stream to handle their customer base.”