Teleperformance Announces Shreveport Center Growing With 740 New Jobs

SHREVEPORT, La. — Today, Gov. Bobby Jindal and Teleperformance Executive Vice President of Operations Travis Coates announced the company will create 740 new direct jobs at its Shreveport customer contact center in the next two years, bringing total employment at the campus to 2,000 workers. In addition to expanding the Shreveport workforce, the company will also retain 1,260 existing employees, creating one of the largest domestic Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centers.

Additionally, LED estimates the project will result in 637 new indirect jobs, for a total of more than 1,370 new jobs across the Northwest Region. Parent company Teleperformance SA, based in Paris, leads the BPO industry worldwide with more than 270 global contact centers, 138,000 employees and more than $3 billion in 2012 revenue.

In Shreveport, the company will expand its total annual payroll to more than $45 million over the next several years. Teleperformance acquired new customer contracts in the healthcare and telecommunications industries to create the job growth in Shreveport.

Gov. Jindal said, “Teleperformance’s customer contact center in Shreveport has been an asset to our economy for nearly 10 years, and the company’s continued growth is bringing more good jobs to the people of Northwest Louisiana. As a global leader in the customer support industry, Teleperformance could have located these new jobs anywhere in the world, but they chose Louisiana because of our strong business climate and outstanding workforce. Louisiana’s strong economy and our great track record of providing job creators with top-notch employees are proof that our state is the best place for businesses to invest and create jobs.”

The Shreveport site opened in 2004 as a customer support center of The Answer Group, a Florida-based company that served clients in the telecommunications, Internet access, cable TV, specialized retail and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) industries. The Answer Group operated the Shreveport center under the U.S. Support name before selling its operations to Teleperformance in late 2008.

“Teleperformance is excited to announce that we are expanding our operations in Shreveport to include new customer service positions for one of the nation’s largest wireless carriers and two of the nation’s largest health insurance carriers,” Coates said. “The continued top-tier performance by our team in Shreveport has enabled us to expand existing client relationships and will ensure that we can attract new clients and bring additional business, and jobs, to Shreveport.”

LED’s Business Expansion and Retention Group, or BERG, began discussing expansion options with Teleperformance in August 2012. To secure the project, the State of Louisiana offered the company a custom incentives package that includes a $200,000 performance-based grant and the workforce solutions of LED FastStart^®, the nation’s top-ranked state workforce program, at no cost. In addition, Teleperformance is expected to utilize the state’s Enterprise Zone incentive.

Teleperformance plans to add more than 400 new employees in 2013, reaching the full target of 740 new jobs in 2014.

“I am happy to celebrate this good news not only with everyone in the City of Shreveport, but also everyone in this part of the state; because an expansion of this magnitude has a positive economic impact that touches lives even beyond our city limits,” Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover said. “I applaud Teleperformance first for keeping more than 1,200 jobs here, and then second for creating nearly 740 more. This is truly a fantastic day for everyone involved and I couldn’t be more pleased.”

“Teleperformance’s expansion in Shreveport is a testament to the great business climate and competitive advantages the company has found in North Louisiana. The North Louisiana Economic Partnership and its state and local partners worked with this long-term client to expand their employment base, reaffirming their commitment to North Louisiana,” said NLEP President Scott Martinez.

About Teleperformance
Teleperformance, the worldwide leader in outsourced multichannel customer experience managements, serves companies around the world with customer care, technical support, customer acquisition, and debt collection programs. Teleperformance operates more than 100,000 computerized workstations, with 138,000 employees across more than 270 contact centers in 46 countries. It manages programs in more than 66 languages and dialects on behalf of major international companies operating in a wide variety of industries. For more information, visit teleperformance.com.