The Beginnings of a New Collection Call Center Hub?

It started innocently enough last October when Sallie Mae announced they were opening a debt collection call center in Muncie, IN.  The student loan/collection giant said that they would be employing up to 700 people in the call center.  City officials were thrilled.

Fast forward to this week when IBM announced it would be placing a new customer service call center in Daleville, a town about 10 miles from Muncie.  The call center will launch with 200 employees, with the ultimate goal being 500 total workers.  Speaking of hiring goals, the Sallie Mae collection call center is already staffed at about 640 right now, very near its ultimate goal of 700, and ahead of schedule.

But do just two companies – albeit very large and powerful ones – make a trend?  That’s what Muncie Chamber of Commerce officials are thinking.  They are looking at the business growth phenomenon called "call center clustering," the purposeful placement of competing call centers in close proximity to one another.  And they think the clustering is already taking place.  But it’s not just wishful thinking; Sallie Mae intimated last year that competing debt collection operations have followed them before.

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After the announcement of the opening of the Sallie Mae call center in Muncie last fall, Jeff Whorley — EVP of Sallie Mae’s debt management operations — told local paper The Star-Press that debt collection operations tend to follow Sallie Mae around, and he used a very specific example.

"Our experience in Western New York was that we have seen competitors and companies that do similar work move into the outskirts of Buffalo and rural areas all around us," Whorley said. "When other companies see us choose a community, it blips on their radar that they should look there, too. That has happened in a half-dozen cases around us in Western New York."

Muncie makes sense for debt collection call center clustering.  The county that Muncie serves as the official seat of, Delaware, has a population of around 120,000.  Ball State University is also in the county.  But that aside, Muncie also has access to a much larger labor pool offering for interested businesses.  It lies only 50 miles Northeast of Indianapolis.

Sallie Mae’s has not officially resulted in any major followers.  The IBM announcement this week was part of a previously-announced commitment.  But if what happened in Buffalo happens in Muncie, it could be the beginning of a new call center, and specifically debt collection, hub.