LIMESTONE – The Sitel Corp., a multinational company dealing with insurance services, is increasing its call center staff by 100 people at its site on the Loring Commerce Centre.

The company has signed a new contract giving the northern Maine facility its first endeavor in inbound calling. The program was awarded to the Loring facility after a testing phase.

The addition to the services comes after the Loring facility dealt with 24 million customers over its lifetime.

The company has been on the former Air Force base for five years and now has a staff of about 250 people.

The new line of business will increase the staff, with 50 of the new employees being licensed insurance agents.

The facility is a call center, mostly for insurance products. Inbound calling is a service in which customers call into the center, in contrast to outbound calls, which are initiated by the center.

“We have started hiring new people, and training programs have been initiated,” Attila Cseh, facility manager at Loring, said Monday afternoon by telephone. “We are looking for people with sales, people and communication skills.

“We find people here in northern Maine are amongst the best in the country for this kind of work,” said the manager, who has worked in several company sites across the country. “We also have a good field of applicants to choose from.”

The operation is located in the old base commissary, a building with 47,783 square feet of space. The building is located on 12 acres of land.

The average worker makes between $8.50 and $9 per hour, according to the manager.

Cseh said people in northern Maine are unique, have good communication skills, provide feedback, and are focused in the way they think. He cited the strong work ethic of northern Maine residents.

“Their communication skills make employees very good for inbound work,” he said.

“This is a great win for our employees, our site, the company and Aroostook County,” Cseh said. “Our people make the difference, and once a client visits our site, they are sold on Sitel Loring.”

“This is why we located to the Greater Loring community,” Dave Oneal, director of operations for Sitel, wrote in a press release.

About half the staff at the Loring site are involved in selling insurance, and the remainder are involved in support services.

Prior to acquiring the inbound calling contract, the number of staff varied between 250 and 320 people, depending on the time of year.

The new program, as it grows, will allow the Limestone facility to manage all types of inbound work. The center did not have the capability before the current addition.

The company has offices in the United States, Canada, England, Japan, Mexico, India and Australia, among others. The company manages 1.5 million customers in 22 countries, offering services in 25 languages.

Over the past 18 months, the Loring site, one of 23 locations in the United States and Canada, has been one of the company’s top producers, Cseh said.