A week after announcing an investment deal with Amazon, Greenwood Village-based StarTek said it will close a Colorado Springs customer service facility and lay off 261 people.
The site, at 4455 Arrowswest Drive in Colorado Springs, will close on March 31. Some employees are being offered jobs at other sites within the company.
“We are closing our Colorado Springs facility in response to the changing business needs of some of our clients,” said Michelle Tripp, a StarTek marketing specialist. “This was a very difficult decision to make and is in no way a reflection on our employees or the highly valued work they perform each day on behalf of our clients.”
StarTek was founded in Greeley in 1987. It offers outsourced customer support for retail, telecommunications, e-commerce and health-care clients. Customers include T-Mobile and AT&T. But the company has seen declining revenues in recent quarters and is focusing on more profitable business.
Last week, StarTek said in a regulatory filing that it had expanded its existing relationship with an Amazon subsidiary to give the company an option to buy up to a fifth of StarTek shares. But the deal moves forward only if Amazon generates $600 million in commercial services for StarTek. News of the deal helped StarTek’s price jump to a high of $13.55. It closed Thursday at $12.10.
Tripp said the Colorado Springs closure and Amazon investment news “are completely unrelated.”
StarTek notified Colorado’s Department of Labor on Jan. 30 about the 261 job cuts, which include customer-care representatives, managers and trainers. StarTek has support centers in Greeley and Grand Junction, and in dozens of other cities around the world. Tripp said StarTek employs 14,000 people in five countries, including about 1,200 people in Colorado.