Unemployed workers in Glasgow may have 300 new job opportunities soon.

Dave Garner, president and CEO of Sitel, told representatives of city and county government and Rotary club members Thursday that the company is “in the splash zone” for the time frame to bring a client in for the new call center facility.

He said he didn’t have an exact date, but that it would be very soon – hopefully in the next few weeks.

“I don’t know whether it’s tomorrow or three weeks,” he said.

Garner met with Mayor Darrell Pickett and members of the city council’s finance committee, as well as Barren County Judge-Executive Davie Greer and magistrates from fiscal court, Thursday morning in city council chambers. He answered questions and provided officials with information about his company.

Sitel is a large international business process outsourcing (BPO) company – not a telemarketing operation. Although a small percentage of their business deals with outgoing calls – they have three or four centers in Oklahoma and Maine with 300 to 400 people who do outbound calling – the large majority of service involves incoming calls from customers.

“We are not a telemarketing company,” he explained.

The privately owned company has $2 billion in revenues, operates in 29 countries with 154 facilities and more than 60,000 employees.

Garner said they are looking for more than one client for the facility because that model offers more stability in case one of them decides to leave at some point. He said they are talking to six different companies about using the resources of the Glasgow call center.

Sitel works typically with Fortune 1000 companies. Some of their clients include Microsoft, DirectTV, British Telecom, Toshiba, Sony, AT&T, XM Sirius Satellite Radio, Norwegian Cruise Lines, ComCast and Cox Communications.

Employees at the facility may deal with a wide range of customer service calls. Garner said it could be something as simple as a person calling to say “I got my bill in the mail and I don’t think I owe this much” to adding channels to a TV package, helping someone installing a fax machine to troubleshoot a problem, taking a company supply order, working with someone on how to fix broken equipment or taking credit card information from a customer who is buying a business’ product.

Workers at the facility will be Sitel employees, but they will be trained to deal with a specific client’s customer service techniques. The training will range from one week to six months based on the complexity of the services they are providing for a client. All training will occur on site and at the Glasgow campus of Western Kentucky University, which is next door to the facility. He said average training time is three weeks.

Benefits for full-time employees will include health, dental and life insurance and a 401K plan.

According to Garner, the call center will have more than 500 workstations with 1.3 full-time position equivalents per seat. This is because the facility could be open from 6 a.m. until midnight and on weekends. In some cases, depending on the client, it may be open for business 24 hours a day. Employees may have to take calls from London, England, or Hawaii, he said, which would mean large time zone differences.

The facility will have 650-700 employees at full capacity. Garner said he thinks that will happen by the end of the year.