TD Bank plans to keep its regional offices in Western Massachusetts and has a number of retail branch bank offices in the area.
This is an updated version of a story posted at 6:45 this morning.
SPRINGFIELD – TD Bank is closing its customer service call center at 1441 Main Street and eliminated 200 call center jobs.
But those workers may have a lifeline in the form of Thing5, a fast-growing company that is still looking for 350 employees to staff a call center it just completed in the neighboring One Financial Place Building at 1350 Main Street. The center is scheduled to close in December.
“So technically we could absorb them all. I don’t know if what we have is right for all those people. But by numbers we could absorb them all, “ said David Thor, managing director of Thing5 which is doing its hiring through United Personnel in Springfield. “Lately, we’ve been struggling to get enough candidates.”
In January, Thing 5 announced that it was expanding downtown from small offices in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and in Longmeadow. Back then, Thor talked about 500 jobs, a number he’s since bumped up to 600 because of the work he has available.
Thing5 works as a hotel information contact centers and travel consultant service handling reservations and event planning. People are paid $10 to $10.50 an hour but can progress through the ranks to making $14 an hour. The company also pays more for people in supervisory roles and for people who work overnight or weekend shifts.
TD Bank spokesman Jimmy Hernandez wouldn’t say how much TD’s Springfield call-center employees are used to making. But he specifically noted Thing 5 as a company TD will work with to place its former workers.
TD will also keep its regional offices here and has a number of retail branch bank offices in the region. All told that means about 170 jobs and about 40 current openings for bank tellers.
Call center workers will be encouraged to apply for teller jobs, he said.
TD Bank, part of Toronto-Dominion Bank, will consolidate its call center operations in Mount Laurel, N. J., Auburn, Maine, and a call center in Greenville, S.C., TD Bank acquired when it purchased The South Financial Group in 2010.
Hernandez stressed that the decision to close the Springfield call center doesn’t reflect poorly on the job performance of the workers. TD Bank is putting a priority on finding those workers new jobs, Hernandez said.
Kevin E. Lynn, manager of business services at FutureWorks Career Center in Springfield said call center employees could easily transition to a customer service position. But Thing5 is certainly hiring more call-center employees than any other local company right now.
Overall, he said the job picture is slowly improving. But jobs are still by no means plentiful.