Utah-based Focus Services LLC, a global innovator in customer contact solutions, will create up to 200 jobs at a new operations center in Tarboro, NC. The company’s plans, which includes a $1 million capital investment, mark a return of the telecommunications sector to Tarboro, onetime headquarters of Carolina Telephone & Telegraph.
“We are excited to expand our domestic operations in Tarboro, NC,” said Paul Liljenquist, president of Focus Services. “During this unprecedented time, as the world fights COVID-19, our company family continues to provide essential services on behalf of our clients and is keeping our team members employed. We are blessed to be part of a team that is so customer focused in a time of rapid change as we add as many as 200 jobs in this market.”
Focus Services operates 13 contact centers in the U.S., Central America, the United Kingdom and the Philippines. The company provides clients across numerous industries with multilingual customer contact solutions such as marketing and tech support via telephone, email, webchat and text. Its worldwide workforce currently totals 3,000. Among its existing facilities is a 380-seat contact center in Greenville, NC.
Carolinas Gateway Partnership, the Town of Tarboro and Edgecombe Community College worked to facilitate the arrival of Focus Services, which will assume occupancy of a building in downtown Tarboro that once housed Carolina Telephone & Telegraph. With corporate roots dating to 1895, Carolina Telephone was a staple of the town’s economy, providing telephone service to customers throughout much of eastern and central North Carolina.
“Today’s announcement by Focus fuels new energy and job growth for downtown Tarboro and brings additional diversification to Edgecombe County’s economy,” said North Carolina Department of Commerce Secretary Anthony M. Copeland. “Sustained, heightened demand for telephone and computer-based customer contact solutions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is renewing opportunity for one of our state’s most storied rural downtowns.”
The arrival of Focus Services is expected to boost Tarboro’s downtown district. In 1977, the National Park Service recognized Tarboro’s 45-block Historic District with a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1980, the town was among the initial class of designated North Carolina communities to participate in the state’s Main Street Program, which is now administered by the Main Street & Rural Planning Center at the Department of Commerce.
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