Aqua America Selects Kankakee, Illinois for Site of National Call Center
BRYN MAWR, Pa., Jun 22, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Aqua America, Inc. (NYSE:WTR) announced today that Kankakee, Illinois will be the site of one of three national call centers the company will operate beginning in 2006. The company will also maintain its current Illinois state headquarters in Kankakee.
"We are very excited about expanding our business in Illinois," said Aqua America Vice President Christopher Franklin. "We have been doing business in this state since March 1999, when our company merged with the former Consumers Water Company."
Franklin explained that while the Kankakee call center will be physically located in Illinois, its staff will handle calls from throughout Aqua America's Midwestern operations, which include Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana. "We chose Kankakee because it has a qualified workforce, a Midwestern location and we wanted to show the company's continued commitment to one of our home towns."
"We anticipate an initial employment level of approximately 21 people in the Kankakee call center but have negotiated an option for additional space within the building for a potential doubling of that workforce," said Franklin who is heading the centralization of company's customer service operation. "We anticipate that the majority of the employees for this operation will be hired locally and have plans to begin hiring and training employees in mid-year 2006," Franklin added.
"We are very proud that Aqua America has chosen our town for the site of its new national call center," said Kankakee Mayor Don Green. "I share the opinion of Mr. Franklin and know that Aqua will be very pleased with the quality of the workforce in our community. We are excited about the current number of jobs associated with the operation and look forward to the possibility of additional jobs that might come in the future."
The new call center operation will replace the primarily state-by-state customer call centers currently in place throughout Aqua America and provide the company greater administrative and operational efficiency by centralizing the billing and collections operations as well as traditional customer service. In addition to the Kankakee site, Aqua America will operate two other call centers--one of which will be at its Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania headquarters and a third site Cary, North Carolina.
Aqua America, Inc. is the largest U.S.-based publicly-traded water utility, serving more than 2.5 million residents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, Virginia, Maine, Missouri, New York, and South Carolina. Aqua America is listed on both the New York and Philadelphia Stock Exchanges under the ticker symbol WTR.
WTRG
SOURCE: Aqua America, Inc.
Aqua America, Inc.
Donna Alston, 610-645-1095
dpalston@aquaamerica.com
or
Aqua Illinois
Terry Rakocy, 815-935-6535 x531
tjrakocy@aquaamerica.com
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