Harte Hanks to lay off 460
Harte Hanks center in Texarkana has announced a coming layoff of 460 of its 570 employees.
According to company spokeman Scott Hamilton, this layoff will start in approximately 60 days and will be staggered over several weeks, extending into spring of this year.
“It isn’t going to happen all at once,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton described the cause of the layoffs as “changes in the services Harte Hanks provides to one of its clients.”
“This center supports several clients, but the change of services with one client has necessitated these changes,” he said.
Harte Hanks in Texarkana is what Hamilton describes as a “contact center.” Known in the past as a call center, the communications needs Harte Hanks provides go far beyond the telephone.
“We live in a multimedia
age, and this includes the way companies interact with each other and with clients,” he said. “In the past, they were called ‘call centers’, but nowadays, they do much more. Email, chat, social media and the like—our contact centers do it all.”
Hamilton described Harte Hank’s services as helping companies interact with clients.
“We provide skills as services on behalf of companies who may not have the infrastructure or personnel to do it themselves,” he said.
The services are provided on a contractual basis.
“Our customers are the companies who hire us,” he said. “We have contact centers in Texas, the Philippines and a few in Europe.”
As to the future of the Texarkana contact center, “we are continuing operations, and if an opportunity comes to expand again in Texarkana, we would be interested.”