Call-Center Jobs That Pay $100K a Year

Generous wages and benefits help heartland call center iQor compete with overseas outsourcers

By Vivek Wadhwa

In a column a few weeks ago, I wrote about "smallsourcing" and how U.S. workers are competing for jobs that small companies haven't chosen to outsource. Some of these jobs are in the very areas where the doomsayers said the U.S. had no chance of competing, such as information technology, Web development, and graphic design.

That U.S. workers have been competitive in these fields underscores my belief that the nation's workforce can be more competitive in other fields than is broadly understood.

Yes, outsourcing will continue and globalization will change the world's economic landscape. But the U.S. is hardly helpless. With smart processes and the proper incentives, U.S. companies can keep jobs here in America, and do so in a way that is actually better for the company and its employees.

Handles Big Names

Consider iQor, a call center and business process outsourcing company based in Columbus, Ohio, that's increased revenues at a 40% clip for the past four years. It's done this primarily by expanding its U.S. operations. IQor also gives its U.S. employees universal health insurance, and pays salaries and bonuses that are nearly 50% above industry norms.

IQor's services include customer management and other call-center work. The company also handles financial services and industry-specific tasks. IQor has big-name clients in finance, media, and telecom including Capital One (COF), the BBC, DirecTV (DTV), and MetroPCS Communications (PCS).

Handling the back-office functions for those kinds of companies is work that's largely been relegated to the scrap heap in the U.S., considered a source of little more than low-wage, low-value, and low-self-esteem jobs. A significant number of such jobs has moved to India and other parts of the world. Sure, some companies, such as Dell (DELL), have moved call centers back home after customer protests. For the most part, though, call centers and back-office work in all but the most specialized areas have been rapidly moving off U.S. soil.

Pulling Down $100K a Year

IQor, on the other hand, has 12 locations in the U.S. that house nearly half its 11,000 employees, including in such all-American cities as Columbus, Buffalo, and Greensboro, N.C. It also has operations in Canada, India, the Philippines, and Britain.

The best of iQor's front-line call-center workers make more than $100,000 per year, and that's not a typo. During the past four years, iQor added nearly 3,000 jobs in the U.S., making it the company's fastest growing region. IQor CEO Vikas Kapoor took an industry that's viewed as a lemon and has made lemonade.

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