Sharon Call Center Adds Second Office in Warren

WARREN, Ohio – What started from an idea of two lifelong friends is now a profitable business with two locations and potentially more in the future, say principals of a call center that opened its newest location here.

“In Pennsylvania, we started with six employees and now we’re up to 200,” says Nicole Watkins, who along with Rachel Bacich are partners in TeleLink LLC and TeleStars LLC, inbound and outbound call centers that serve two major clients.

TeleStars opened five years ago in Sharon, Pa., while TeleLink, its Warren counterpart, opened its doors about a month ago at the Elm Street Village Plaza. The objective is to mirror the success of the Sharon office.

Warren’s TeleLink center handles just one client at the moment and outbound calls, and employs about 50 on a single shift, Watkins says. The goal is to add another shift to the outbound operations, while adding 50 more cubicles to handle inbound calls on two shifts in an adjacent room within a year.

Eventually, the Warren location will handle both inbound and outbound calls from its two clients – Starion Energy, an energy supplier based in Middlebury Conn., and Keo, a smart home automation company.

“It’s going great,” Watkins says. “For our next location, I’m shooting for Florida.”

Company employees and representatives of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber gathered Wednesday for a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the opening of the Warren office.

“We’ve done sales since we were 18 and just out of high school,” Bacich says. “We’ve driven over to Warren a lot and we know a lot of people here that have experience. We also know that they need jobs here and we need employees, so we help each other.”

Watkins and Bacich started out working for the MCI call center, and were employed at other centers before branching off on their own, Bacich says.

Starion is an electrical energy supplier that sells in nine states, Bacich says. As that business expands, so too does the potential for TeleLink’s growth.

The Warren location as of now serves outbound sales calls for the Starion account, but there are plans to bring on more employees once TeleLink begins to handle the Keo business.

“We’re going to be starting that next week, so we’ll actually be hiring more,” he says.

The work for Keo includes sales and tech support for smart home monitoring systems, which enables a homeowner to control heating and cooling, security and lighting from a smart phone application.

Keo does business in 50 states and has great potential for growth, Bacich says, which means additional business for TeleLink. “Within six months to a year, we should expand into the new room.”

Pictured: Co-owners Nicole Watkins and Rachel Bacich cut the ribbon inside their company’s new office in Warren.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.