“We’re going to fill the facility up,” he said. “We’ll start off really, really quickly with the first 200, 250, 300. That will happen really fast.”

After that group is trained, it will be a more gradual pace along the lines of 40, 50 or 60 a month or 25 a week, he said.

There will also be 70 to 75 support staff. They will include site managers, operational managers, team leaders, HR specialists, finance specialists, IT people and trainers.

A typical shift will be eight hours. Lockers will be provided for employees who will be dealing with sensitive information such as customer credit card numbers. They will not be allowed to have cell phones or pens at their workstations. Team leaders or senior agents will be available to deal with irate customers.

“When people call for customer service, they usually don’t call when things are going well,” Garner added.

He was asked jokingly at both meetings if he thought there might be communication issues between employees and customers, such as the ones that occur with overseas outsourcing operations in places such as India, because of the local southern accent. He said there had been a outsourcing backlash over the last five years and the customer satisfaction rate goes down anytime a business goes offshore, but he didn’t think that would be a problem here.

No customer service agents have been hired yet, Garner said, but more than 300 applications have been received. Potential employees can apply online at Sitel’s Web site, at WKU-Glasgow campus and also get application information from the employment office.

Charlie Campbell, with the Glasgow-Barren County Industrial Development & Economic Authority, asked Garner why only half of the facility was ready. He explained that if the company invested capital to furnish both sides of the building before they had clients, it would be dead money for that period of time.

Between meetings, Garner and several of the local officials toured the Sitel facility on the Roseville Road. There is a large parking lot that can accommodate more than 600 employees and the building has a generator that can provide power for several weeks without an external source, he said.

Steve Newberry, a local businessman, commented that a CEO with more than 150 facilities doesn’t usually give personal tours and asked what makes Glasgow different. Garner said of his 154 operations they only own the “brick and mortar” on about 15 of them. The company normally utilizes pre-existing sites such as old Wal-Marts and Kmarts and freestanding retail stores, which don’t have the aesthetics of a new building. He said when they looked at constructing a new facility in the U.S. they wanted something close to corporate headquarters where they could bring potential clients to show them what a working site looks like.

He said what was attractive about Glasgow was its location halfway between Nashville and Louisville, its educational system and the standard of living.

“It’s a great community,” he said. “You can feel it when you drive around.”

He also added that the partnership with WKU-Glasgow to provide university students as potential employees was a unique opportunity.

When speaking to the Glasgow Rotary Club on Thursday afternoon, Garner told members as economic times worsen his company does better.

“Right now is a golden period for us,” he said. “As bad as this economy is, it’s great for me because what happens in times like these, large corporations cannot increase their revenue lines. They’re selling fewer units than they did before so they have to rationalize how they get costs out. ‘Can I outsource this component.’ We work as a partner, kind of as a right arm, to a lot of these companies we do business with.”