Higher calling.

• Author: Mildenberg, David
• Position: NCTREND: Triad Region

High Point is emerging as a key site for Alorica, the largest U.S. provider of customer-service operations, better known as call centers. The Irvine, Calif.-based company expects to have 1,900 staffers by this month, having added about 800 in the final three months of 2016. Expert Global Solutions, a larger call-center company that Alorica acquired in June, had operated a site in High Point.

Call-center employers tend to come and go at the speed of sound: American Express and Citigroup have closed Triad operations in recent years, for example. But Guilford County officials have high hopes for Alorica, an increasingly powerful force that will rank among High Point's 10 largest employers.

The company is run by Andy Lee, who bought CTX Data Services in 1999 before turning 30. He renamed it Alorica, after the Latin word for "knight's shining armor." After buying Expert Global, the company projects 2016 revenue of $2.4 billion and has more than 90,000 workers, with sites in about 30 U.S. cities including San Antonio and Owensboro, Ky. About a third of its staff is in the Philippines, where it is adding 8,000 people this year.

Privately held Alorica doesn't disclose its clients, though press reports and legal...