Sitel
 | |
| Private | |
| Industry | Customer service |
| Founded | 1985 |
| Founder | James F. Lynch |
| Headquarters | Nashville, Tennessee, United States |
Number of locations | 130+ |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Bert Quintana (CEO) |
| Services | Outsourced customer contact centers |
| Owner | Onex |
Number of employees | 59,000[1] |
| Website | http://www.sitel.com |
Sitel is a telemarketing and outsourcing business headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It maintains over 130 offices in 26 countries.[2]
Prior to its acquisition by ClientLogic, described below, it had 70 call centers in 25 countries and over 30,000 employees. It maintains offices in its previous headquarters location of Omaha, Nebraska but its headquarters was moved to ClientLogic's headquarters in Nashville.
The original SITEL (Systems International TELemarketing) was founded in 1985 by James F. Lynch, as a result of his purchase of HQ800, an answering service company owned by United Technologies, for just $165,000. After the signing of its first major client in 1988, Allstate Insurance, SITEL's client list rapidly grew. Today the company serves many of the Fortune 500 companies, including Cricket Wireless, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Philips Electronics, Dell, Cox Communications, Capital One, Best Buy, Bell Canada, Sony, Microsoft, HP, DirecTV, walmart.com, Gevalia, Euro-Pro (Shark), and HTC .
In June 1985, SITEL became the first publicly traded, independent teleservices company and was listed on the NASDAQ through an initial public offering (IPO). Six months later, they moved from NASDAQ to the NYSE as 'SWW'.
In October 2006, SITEL announced a merger with ClientLogic, another outsourcing firm. On January 30, 2007, ClientLogic Corporation finalized its acquisition of SITEL Corporation. Less than one month later, on February 20, 2007, ClientLogic announced it was adopting a new corporate name and global brand. The combined company would now be called Sitel (now in lowercase letters).
The company is privately held by private equity funds and majority owned by Canada's Onex Corporation.[3]
References
- ↑ ONEX page
- ↑ "http://www.sitel.com/index.php?p=Locations".
- ↑ "Sitel Worldwide Corporation". businessweek.com. Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 21 October 2014.