Arizona-based wireless carrier Consumer Cellular, led by a former Oklahoman, is opening a customer service center in Oklahoma City that he said would almost immediately employ around 300 people.

Eventually, up to 500 people could be hired by the company, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is leasing two floors of the Baker Hughes building at 12701 N Santa Fe Ave. at the Kilpatrick Turnpike.

Chairman and CEO Ed Evans, former part-owner of Oak Tree National, the golf and country club in Edmond, made the announcement Tuesday with government and business leaders at the Oklahoma History Center. The Baker Hughes building wasn't yet ready.

Evans said he had a personal desire to open a center here, but that Consumer Cellular commissioned a study "to validate it."

"What we found is what we expected," he said: quality of life and quality of workforce.

Evans said the center will hire two kinds of employees: customer experience representatives — inbound sales — at a salary of around $55,000 per year plus benefits, and customer service representatives making around $35,000 per year plus benefits.

He noted Oklahoma City's median per capita annual income of around $30,000, and said Consumer Wireless is happy to offer more.

Consumer Cellular has about 4 million customers. It markets to people 50 and older who generally aren’t as tech savvy as younger people. Evans said people applying to work there – or choosing to work remotely – need to understand that.

“We’re looking for the best of the best. What is unique about (us) is we’re taking care of the elderly,” said Evans, who is 60. “So our calls tend to take a little bit longer, as opposed to the five- to seven-minute kind of typical call that you’re going to have at a call center.

“Our calls can take 15 or 20 minutes, the time to really walk a senior through the technology that they’re dealing with, and that’s OK with us. The person we’re looking for in our center is someone who’s patient and is going to be able to take time, think about dealing with their grandparents, or dealing with aging parents, and really walking through that journey to use technology in the right way.”

Evans said it might surprise some people to see a company needing 300 to 500 employees come to a city with such a tight job market. He said he’s not concerned because Consumer Cellular can compete.

“A lot of people look at the unemployment rate in Oklahoma City and go, ‘Why would anybody want to expand into somewhere that’s got 1.2% unemployment?’ And I actually think that’s a pretty easy question,” he said. “What that says to me is we have a workforce that wants to get out and work. I’m not afraid to compete with any other employer that’s out there.

“We offer solid wages, a great place to work, and an environment that you can grow and learn in. I think we’re going to be very competitive in the market. It’s exactly the type of market that we were looking to expand into.”

Consumer Cellular is offering more than jobs, said Shelley Zumwalt, director of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.

The company “is offering people careers, not just a job,” Zumwalt said. “These are places where they can grow. Consumer Cellular is offering benefits thst lot of other employers don’t.

“When I was doing my research on Consumer Cellular, one thing that stood out to me was their investment in their workers. … They hire from within, and many of the people who are in leadership positions have been with the company and possibly started at entry-level positions. It pays off tremendously.”

Consumer Cellular is not participating in the state Quality Jobs Program, which offers incentives in the form of limited reimbursement for companies' payroll expenses. Evans said he considered it, but it wouldn't have affected the decision to open the center.

Evans said he'd rather see the incentives used to attract a company that might not come to Oklahoma City otherwise.

Consumer Cellular was established in 1995 in Portland, Oregon. It moved to Scottsdale in 2019. Evans and a private equity group bought the company about a year ago.

Consumer Cellular has two customer service centers in Oregon and three in Arizona — all in the United States, a company spokesman said in an email. The new one here should be fully operational early next year.

Consumer Cellular is growing after forming a partnership with Target, and "plans to open numerous brick-and-mortar stores" next year, according to a company spokesman.

Senior Business Writer Richard Mize has covered housing, construction, commercial real estate, and related topics for the newspaper and Oklahoman.com since 1999. Contact him at rmize@oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Consumer Cellular customer service center coming to Oklahoma City