CapTel, Inc., officially opened a new call center in downtown Milwaukee at a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Alderman Robert Bauman, and Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Michael Morgan. The new center, the company’s second center in Wisconsin, expects to employ several hundred people over the next five years.
The new CapTel call center provides captioned telephone service that enables people who are deaf or hard of hearing to view text captions during their phone conversations. The captions appear on a CapTel phone, allowing people who have difficulty hearing to continue enjoying the telephone regardless of their hearing ability.
“We’re grateful to the state and to the City of Milwaukee for making it possible to expand our high-tech operations right here in Wisconsin,” stated CapTel President Robert Engelke. “In addition to creating new jobs and training opportunities for the Milwaukee community, this state-of-the-art center helps to further CapTel’s leadership position in the assistive technology field.”
“Job creation is a number one priority for Milwaukee and we are aggressively seeking opportunities to partner with Wisconsin companies that are poised to grow,” said Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. “CapTel’s expansion into Milwaukee will mean new jobs for our residents and continued growth of this impressive company.”
The new call center was opened in response to the popularity of the CapTel telephone, which has been well received by people with hearing loss. Having multiple centers also ensures minimum interruptions in service if something unexpectedly halts operations in one center or the other, such as a flood or a tornado. In those instances, traffic from one center can automatically be routed to another.
CapTel technology was developed by Ultratec, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of text telecommunications equipment for people with hearing loss.
