The new investment of Grupa Żywiec S.A., the Customer Service Center (Centrum Obsługi Klienta, COK), was officially presented today in Katowice. The investor decided to locate the Center in the Katowice Business Point office building at 3 Ściegiennego St. The COK’s seat will cover approximately 2 500 sq. meters.
Katowice was competing with almost 20 other Polish cities in attracting the investor. The City beat Kraków, Łodź and Poznań in a final phase. According to the investor, the most significant while making a final decision were a high workforce availability, localisation of Katowice as well as a low cost and City Hall’s operation efficiency. “We went to work on attracting the investor in mid-December last year. Finally, today we are very pleased to welcome Grupa Żywiec in Katowice” – said Mateusz Skowroński, Mayor’s Plenipotentiary for Contacts with Strategic Investors .
The company already started a labour recruitment process. An opening of the Center is planned for September 2011. It will hire about 250 specialists in the area of sales, analysis, vindication, logistic and training. A further development of COK is possible after this period.
“The Center’s creation will cost more than PLN 10 million and includes expenditures of employment, office space rent, equipment and IT infrastructure. We want to create a pioneer and large-scale Customer Service Center, probably a first of its kind in Poland” – said Mariusz Borowiak, Board Member, Head of Sales and Distribution at Grupa Żywiec.
COK will support and cooperate with the sales department to build relations with customers in the area of all sales channels: wholesale, retail and gastronomy. Within the Center, infoline, claim, consulting, vindication and control teams will be formed as well as a modern electronic sales channel including a logistic service unit. “At present, about 60 small customer service centers of Grupa Żywiec operates in the country. The company wanted to increase a quality and range of these services, thus we decided to create a one consolidated center in Katowice. Thanks to that we will be able to service between 70 and 80 thousand customers. Now, it is 55 thousand” – Mariusz Borowiak added.
Grupa Żywiec S.A. is one of the biggest beer producers in Poland and is part of Heineken Group. Annually, it sells over 12 million hectoliters of beer brewed in five breweries in Żywiec, Warka, Leżajsk, Elbląg and Cieszyn. The most important brands of the Company are: Heineken, Żywiec, Warka, Tatra, Specjal, Strong and Leżajsk. The most important brand is Żywiec – one of the biggest export beers in Poland, sold abroad for more than hundred years, now in over 20 countries in the world. The important part of the portfolio of Grupa Żywiec are the regional beers: Królewskie (the central part of Poland), Leżajsk (the southern and eastern part of Poland) and Specjal (the northern part of Poland). The company distributes also the special foreign beers (Desperados, Paulaner, Murphy’s) and Polish special beers (Kaper, Żywiec Porter). Grupa Żywiec S.A. is the biggest employer in the industry and employs nearly 6 000 persons.