THE LEDGER FEATURED THE WRONG COMPANY

In today's Lakeland Ledger business section, the main feature focused on one of several telephone call centres located in Polk County.

Unfortunately, the newspaper made a poor choice on which company to feature.

The story spotlighted Accent Marketing Services, an Indiana-based company which operates a center at the old Scotty's Homecenters corporate site in Winter Haven and recently was presented an expanded contract with Sprint/Nextel wireless division to provide customer service, account upgrades, and sales.

Sadly, from personal experience I can tell you that Accent is one of the worst companies in the field when it comes to employee relations. It was so bad that, after leaving with two years of it behind me, I actually e-mailed Founder/Chairman Thomas Hansen to express my concerns. Several of my collegues where I work now are also Accent veterans, and they expressed many of the same complaints.

I understand the feature was in regard to Accent's expansion and hiring of another 50-70 staff members, but if the Ledger really wanted to spotlight some good call centre operations, it could have selected GC Services, which handles a variety of items for MCI, or ICT Group, which employs several hundred on behalf of seven different clients at it's facility. Both are located in Lakeland; GC Services also has a centre in Jacksonville.

Although there are a few ways that both centres can be improved, they are far superior to the Accent operation. Let that be a warning for anyone interested in applying there, or at it's sister facilities in Eustis and Zephyrhills.