FEDERAL WAY, Wash. — Conduent, a Xerox spinoff, will close its Federal Way customer-care center for good this summer.
The center at 3600 S. 344th St. recently appeared in a state-issued notice with all of its 304 positions being eliminated starting July 31.
"We have made the difficult decision to exit our Federal Way location as part of our previously announced strategic transformation initiative to enable greater operational efficiencies and support long-term growth," the company said in a statement sent Thursday in response to questions from The News Tribune.
"We realize this affects individuals and every effort is being made to ensure that all employees are treated fairly. We will provide a separation package to eligible employees."
Conduent's senior director of communications, Sean Collins, told The News Tribune via email that the the closure will not affect the company's other operations in Washington.
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"This decision affects our support of a single client," Collins said. "We will continue to serve this client’s needs from other locations, in Washington State and elsewhere in the U.S., using our existing employee base."
Conduent has offices in Seattle, Everett and Lacey. Job openings are still posted for those locations.
The Federal Way closure is in sharp contrast to two years ago, when it was still a Xerox Business Services location and sought entry-level customer care representatives for its call center.
At the time, Xerox Recruiting Director Sabrina Jones told The Federal Way Mirror: "We're growing. There really isn't a better time than now. We are going to become our very own company, our own $7 billion company out of the gate. … The direction the company is going is really exciting."
Conduent, a Fortune 500 company based in Florham Park, New Jersey, came into existence at the start of 2017 after Xerox spun off its business services division the previous year. This was partially the result of Xerox buying Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services in 2010 for $6 billion.
ACS in the 1990s was one of the largest outsource provider companies in the nation.
Conduent's name is "derived with inspiration from several places," according to its corporate blog. Conduit, confluence and constituent were part of the mix, the blog explained.
The company is reducing redundancies from its former Xerox life and ACS, and has been working toward saving about $700 million by the end of 2018.
The company's reach might surprise you. In a recent news release, it notes its clients "include a majority of the Fortune 100 companies and over 500 government entities."
As for what it does, the company’s official bio says: “Conduent's differentiated offerings touch millions of lives every day, including two-thirds of all insured patients in the U.S. and nearly nine million people who travel through toll systems daily.
“Whether it's digital payments, claims processing, benefit administration, automated tolling, customer care or distributed learning – Conduent manages and modernizes these interactions.”
In a May 9 earnings call, CEO Ashok Vemuri offered some insight into the company's future direction regarding what work it was willing to part with, notably its customer-care businesses.
He went on to say the company had “identified the standalone transactional call center work as something that we intend to divest.”
KIRO
