Come February, Macy’s will be shutting down one of its call centers in Arizona and more than 800 jobs will be affected.
Speaking to Business Insider, a Macy’s spokesperson said that the Tempe, Arizona, call center would be closing its doors in early February and that its sister locations in Mason, Ohio, and Clearwater, Florida, will be taking up the slack from the closure.
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The spokesperson added that workers who are eligible will be offered severance pay as well as be given the opportunity to transfer to a nearby Macy’s distribution center or to one of its stores.
News of the impending call center closure comes after Macy’s announced that they will be closing 30 stores within the US this year. Among the planned closures are the Bloomingdale’s store in a Miami mall as well as the company’s Seattle flagship store, a fate that was announced in September 2019.
In 2016, six consecutive years of declining sales prompted Macy’s to announce plans to close 100 stores. Since that announcement, Macy’s has been letting the leases expire on several locations and closing those stores.
A Macy’s spokesperson declined to comment if the recent waves of closures was part of its 2016 plant but did say that the company “regularly reviews” store portfolios. They also plant to update investors on February 5, investor day.
The so-called retail apocalypse has hit Macy’s and other department stores particularly hard. Because of the rise of online shopping, traffic to malls has slowed to a trickle. Experts add that Macy’s also failed to create an in-store shopping experience that was enticing to customers.
In a note to clients in November, Neil Saunders, managing director of GloablData Retail, said: “Macy’s failure on the sales line comes back to one central problem: the products it sells and the environments in which it sells them are not aligned with what consumers want.”
He continued: “Admittedly, some steps have been taken to remedy this – such as the refurbishment of the menswear department at its New York flagship, the addition of concepts like Story to a handful of stores, and the focus on Growth 150 shops – but these things are drops in the ocean when set against the entirety of Macy’s business. They are not going to quickly move the needle in any meaningful way.”
Replaced!