Employees in the Construction Services area of the Capgemini Service Center field questions by phone from TXU customers. Photo by BETH FOLEY / The Palestine Herald

PALESTINE — Tucked a short distance off Loop 256 at Gillespie Road, the long, low-slung building has no large sign to announce its name, or which door is the main entrance.  No constant stream of delivery trucks or hum of industrial machinery exists to give passersby a clue as to its purpose.  But inside those walls, CapGemini quietly has exceeded all expectations — not just one-year goals but five-year projections — to become a model for service call centers.

Opened on Jan. 6, at the edge of the Willow Creek Business Park, the 44,000 square-foot CapGemini building serves as one of TXU Energy’s two call centers, fielding phone requests for everything from getting electricity turned on in an apartment to assisting multi-million-dollar corporate accounts, to billing and accounting services on the revenue-management side.

The Palestine location is part of an $8.8 billion global management and consulting company headquartered in Paris, France, which employs some 60,000 people worldwide.  According to company official Dan Woolley, CapGemini’s workforce is at 573 employees, well above the 300 expected to be employed after five years. Approximately 320 people work in the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week service call center.

“It’s a testament to the people of Palestine and to your city leaders, your civic leaders, how much we’ve been able to accomplish,” Woolley said. “This has far exceeded anything that we thought we were going to be able to do.”  Although the Willow Creek facility opened its doors earlier this year, CapGemini already had begun fielding calls from a temporary site in the Palestine Mall to have a local workforce ready to go once construction was complete. 

The wheels for CapGemini were set in motion by local voters years before, according to Palestine Economic Development Corporation Director Brian Malone.  “Really, it started in May of 1998 when the citizens of Palestine committed to do an economic sales tax,” Malone said. “They took a portion of their funds and rededicated it specifically toward the intended use of drawing and attracting new industry to Palestine.

“And that led to that subsequent date of December 2004 when the economic development corporation began pursuing a state lead that we received from the state for a back-office operation. We didn’t know who it was at the time and went through all the process, and on the first go-around we actually got eliminated and then some things changed. But we got back in the game and then there became some very hard negotiating.”

Malone and PEDC board members David Barnard, Fred Richardson and George Haas met with Woolley and Rob Duncan to negotiate getting the facility to Palestine.  “What we realized very quickly was that the economic development corporation could not do it on its own,” Malone said. “It really required us to go to the city and the county and say this looks like a good project for our community, we meet what they have, we have the necessary skills, we have the people. But we need some other assets, some things that you may have to help us contribute. So it really became a total community effort to get CapGemini here.”

By May 2005, agreements were in place between the city, Anderson County and CapGemini to bring the company to town. In the same month, the first CapGemini employees began work in temporary quarters.  According to Robert Munden, manager of the customer call center, his 320 employees have a goal of 15 seconds from the time a customer reaches the call center to when that person is able to speak to a representative, particularly one who sounds like he or she could live next door.  “From a customer perspective, when you call TXU you want to speak to a Texan,” Munden said.

Since taking the first call in the new center in January, the call center has yet to miss its weekly goals, Munden said.  The company has been so pleased with the quality of work produced by the Palestine facility that it’s using the location as a model for how to successfully start off-site service locations, Woolley said.

“This particular model that we’re doing in Palestine is something that we’re out actively selling in the marketplace,” Woolley said. “We plan on replicating this for a number of other customers. You can be proud of the fact that you’re participating in a trend and showing the way that America can be absolutely competitive on a global scale.”

With the Palestine location already surpassing the projected number of employees for five years down the road, and with the quality of work, company officials said they may consider expanding the facility in the future to employ a larger staff.

That’s a great indication of the project’s success, Malone said.

“It’s been a great project,” Malone said. “It’s been a community-wide project that shows where you have leadership involved, you can do projects that will benefit your community.”

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Beth Foley may be contacted by e-mail at bfoley@palestineherald.com