Always on call [Highlands Today, Sebring, Fla.]

March 25--SEBRING -- Just stepping into the Agero (pronounced A-jee-ro) call center in Sebring is impressive; with bustling workers seemingly everywhere.

Located at 3310 U.S. 27 S., it is the former site of a Sebring Walmart store before it moved to the north end of town.

The name change to Agero took place in December. It's been operating in Sebring for about 11 years. For 40 years the company operated as Cross Country Automotive Services.

That's a name that became synonymous in the automotive and automotive insurance industries with private-labeled roadside assistance and accident management services for auto insurers, said Gary Wallace, vice president of corporate relations.

The term "private-labeled" means Agero answers the phones in the names of the companies it does business for.

"If you receive roadside assistance through a new vehicle purchase or through your insurance carrier, good chance you're using our service," Wallace said.

Inside, a few employees scurried up and down the numerous aisles, but most were seated at about 320 computer workstations.

The atmosphere was anything but drab for such a big space. Lots of the workstations had a colorful personalized feeling, with photos, pinwheels, balloons or other reminders of employees' lives outside the building. Each station had plenty of elbow room.

In their training, employees are encouraged to envision themselves as heroes to people stranded on the highways.

With about 600 employees, Agero is one of the largest employers in Highlands County. It boasts about 2,500 employees companywide, with seven call centers located in the United States, Canada and Europe. The company is headquartered in Medford, Mass.

In Greek, Agero means "to lead or to drive," said Barry T. Bittner, director of operations in Sebring, who joined the company 10 years ago. So the new name is a good fit, he said.

"The core business that we do is roadside service," Bittner said Tuesday.

"We handle the emergency warranty work for the car manufacturers -- the insurance companies -- and there's some diversified business also; the credit cards, where you would pick up a roadside service if you're at a certain credit level."

They do 100 percent of the car manufacturers in the United States, he said. Any car manufactured in the United States that sits under warranty, Agero provides roadside service for it.

"We do 75-80 percent of the European market and the Asian market car manufacturers," Bittner said.

Its Sebring agents could easily be helping someone in any of the 50 states and Puerto Rico. They have multilingual services.

"Not everyone who drives a car speaks English," Bittner said. "When their car breaks down we have to be able to speak with them."

There are now three product lines in Sebring's Agero center: Roadside Assistance, Accident Management Services and Connected Vehicle Services.

Inside Agero, customer service agents are separated representing at least one of the three product lines over the telephone, and receive calls from customers accordingly.

A few years ago, the company branched out to Accident Management Services. Years before it was called VIMS -- vehicle incident management services, he said.

"We handle that for the insurance companies," he said. "We pick up the car from the scene of the accident and move it to a location where it can be repaired or totaled, saving the insurance company money in storage, saving the insured time of getting the car fixed, etc. ... We answer with the name of the insurance company also."

About four years ago, Cross Country bought the ATX Group, also a well-known company throughout the automotive world as the private-labeled alternative to General Motors'OnStar Corp., Wallace said.

"Agero now provides Connected Vehicle (or telematics) Services -- what the auto industry calls OnStar-like services -- to BMW, Hyundai, Infiniti, Lexus, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars and Toyota," he said.

"So, if you sign up to receive BMW Assist, Rolls-Royce Assist, Hyundai Blue Link, Lexus Enform, Infiniti Connection or Toyota Safety Connect, you are receiving service through Agero.

"We currently are growing the Connected Vehicle," he said. "Prior to a year ago the connected vehicles business was solely done in Dallas, and we started to migrate that into Sebring. ... We're going from about 100 current agents to about 180."

Connected Vehicle works with electronic signals from a car versus a driver telephoning, he said, through services such as accident notification, emergency notification and airbag deployment.

With growth will come management and supervisory positions.

It's an opportunity for advancement for existing employees, said Judy B. Stone, director of human resources.

"We'll look internally first for those positions," she said. "We do go through a pretty extensive screening process. We try to put 15 to 20 in a class."

Those employees willing to move to the new Connected Vehicle service are being replaced with new hires, she said. Unfilled positions will be met through outside hires.

The Connected Vehicle business is the future, Bittner said.

"Cars are talking to us, telling us 'I'm breaking down, I need oil, gas' and everything else," he said, adding that it's very exciting.

"It's gone into a suite of services you can offer: directions, points of interest. 'I'm driving up 27, can you tell me where the nearest McDonald's is? Can you look up and see where the nearest pizza parlor is? What is the best way to go to work between point A and point B avoiding traffic?'

"So it's really got a concierge service going on. Some of our clients offer 32 varieties of services."

Katie Mehling was hired in September, after spending two weeks in a classroom with a trainer doing hands-on training, and two weeks of on-the-job training; handling some calls and returning to the classroom to talk about them. She works in Roadside Assistance.

"It was really exciting because it was a whole new job experience for me," she said. "The first day (on the floor) is really intimidating but it's really exciting being out there, being able to take the calls and do it hands-on.

"It's interesting because each call is different in its own way. And you can help each person out in really a big way because if they're on the side of the road in danger you could save someone's life or something."

She gets calls with people at risk frequently, she said.

For example, someone called in broken down on the side of an interstate highway and they had a small child in the car with them.

"We had to have a state trooper get out there," she said. "And we have tow trucks that can get there a lot faster for a 911 call, so (we) told them we have a really unsafe customer on the side of the road."

She gets calls every day from 20 different states, she said. She recently had a call from Hawaii. Calls from Alaska are challenging because it can be 30 miles to the next cross street. Not every car in America, obviously, has GPS in it ... yet.

The closest call she's had was in Sebring, at the CVS pharmacy.

She averages 50 to 60 calls a day, she said. This month she has handled about 800 calls, she said.

Calls from people in motor homes take longer because there are many brands with a vast array of tires and equipment; plus they may need specialized tow trucks.

Her goal is about 220 seconds per call, but she's at about 190, she said.

Goals are based upon what type of service it is, Bittner explained. They have a scorecard that measures time to complete the service and quality of service. Customers can instantly take a short survey, or they can take it later.

Supervisors are monitoring the calls to make sure they meet company standards. The quantity side has to do with not having customers stacked up on the roadways waiting.

Thus far, the employee supply pipeline in Highlands County has been good, Bittner said.

"Our potential for growth here is almost unlimited at this point," he said. "The company is growing that big."

Call center work is not for everyone, Bittner said.

"Then again, we have an extremely high retention rate for employees in this organization and this site," he said. "Anybody who does leave us is usually because they've gone on to move or have a family."

Agero is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. New hires are generally started in the afternoon shifts. With experience they can switch schedules.

"We have college students who work here that attend South Florida Community," Bittner said, "and that have been with us for the entire time they've gone through their college education out there."

June Himmelberger is one of three operations managers at Agero. The other two operations managers are Brandi Stadie and Jack Allison.

Himmelberger started in May 2001 in the first class that trained, as a supervisor to oversee a team of agents. She was a manager at a retail store but saw an opportunity.

"I think at that time it was 15 agents, which was a totally different management experience than I had in the past," she said.

She now manages the Connected Vehicles product line and also has a portion of Roadside Assistance, but is turning over the roadside service to another manager.

"Actually, I took training out at the college because the site wasn't prepared yet to have people in it," she said. "It was a really exciting time because ... I personally had never worked in a contact center."

At that time the site was open eight hours a day with about 100 employees. Then it added a p.m. shift and, eventually, an overnight.

"Now when you walk in, the people are what you see, not the building," she said.

In some situations, people's lives are hanging in the balance.

"Certainly we deal with that every day," Himmelberger said.

They want the representatives to think of themselves as heroes because nine of 10 calls might have been for a lockout or a flat tire, but that one call might have been a serious accident with a car immersed in water, or the driver injured or nonresponsive.

That representative stays on the call until he or she gets a response from someone, she said. They get two agents on that nonresponsive call because one stays on the line as the other notifies police and other emergency services.

They also keep in touch with police on vehicles reported stolen.

"We work with the police to ping that vehicle and tell them where it is," she said. "That's another way our representative are heroes all the time."

It sounds like stressful work.

"There's stress in any job," Bittner said. "It's how you deal with it; meaning, not everybody calls to say, 'Hey, having a nice day, thank you very much.' Most of them call because they are broken down.

"The point being, I know how I am when I'm broken down; I'm not in the best of moods. The majority of the people who call us are good. 'Hey, my car broke down, I need your help'."

That's not to say there aren't challenging calls.

"When my car breaks down that I bought six days ago and I'm in the middle of (U.S.) 27, I'm not a happy camper," Bittner said.

To keep it light, they have contests going on; one will hear bells going off and hooting and hollering when someone wins.

"We want to make sure people don't stress out over the next call," Bittner said.

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