TNS to close market research center

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
LIBERTY -- The Mahoning Valley is losing another call center and the 356 jobs it provides.
TNS Intersearch will close its Liberty Township telephone market research center Dec. 31. Officials from the company's White Plains, N.Y., office met with employees Thursday to break the news.
It's the third local center to close this year, and the largest.
Exterra Credit Recovery, formerly in the Phar-Mor Centre downtown, closed its doors last spring. Teleperformance in Austintown shut down in January. Each had about 70 employees.
TNS, also known as Taylor Nelson Sofres, has operated the center at 114 Liberty Street since buying it from another company nine years ago. It has three full-time and 353 part-time employees.
Dave Sluka, manager of the Liberty center, declined to comment on the closing, citing a company policy that prohibits managers from talking to the press.
Reason for closing
Brenda Edwards, a spokeswoman at the company's New York office, said TNS is doing more market research and opinion polling online and cutting back on its telephone surveying. The trend has forced TNS to close some telephone centers.
"We've seen a shift in the last few years from doing telephone interviewing to doing online surveys," she said. "A lot of our customers like that because it's slightly less expensive and can be done more quickly."
Some consumers also prefer online surveys, Edwards said, because they can complete them at their own convenience.
The Liberty facility will be the third TNS call center to close this year. A similar facility in Clarksville, Tenn., and a smaller center in Chicago were closed for the same reason.
"We care a lot about our employees, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do," she said.
Edwards said the closing is not related to the national do-not-call list, which limits telemarketing calls for consumers who sign up to participate. The list has not affected TNS because the law creating the list exempts market research, she explained.
Foreign workers
The closing is also unrelated to the company's use of lower-paid workers in other countries, Edwards said.
Though TNS has call centers in 70 countries around the world, she said market research works best when the caller can develop a rapport with the survey respondent.
"That doesn't work if the person detects the caller is from another country," she said. "We even have trouble calling into southern states using workers with a strong New York accent or New England accent. Our employees in other countries are mostly calling people in their own countries."
Based in London, TNS bills itself as the third-largest market research company in the world. It has 12,600 employees and had sales of $1.39 billion in 2002.