(Photo courtesy of the Home Depot Twitter)

Home Depot opened an 111,000 square-foot service center in Tempe last Fall to provide customer service support for products bought online. Its goal was to hire 800 employees. So far, 500 have come on board. Starting in August, the company is looking for 100 more. 

Home Depot picked Tempe as a call-center location because of its proximity to ASU as a good recruiting base for employees.

“Tempe is a mecca of call centers, and that’s not really widely known, but there’s actually many, many, many call centers within a five mile radius of where our center is,” said Kera Fresquez, Senior Human Resources Manager of the Tempe Contact Center.

Home Depot, along with Target, JPMorgan Chase, State Farm Insurance, Macy’s, Xerox, Dish Network, and GoDaddy all list service center employment opportunities in Tempe.

Fresquez said online sales are a growing portion of total sales for companies. For Home Depot, online sales make up 5 percent of total sales and she is looking to increase that.

Home Depot’s online store has over one million products online, including home electronics, home decor, plus items typical of a Home Depot store.

Two Home Depot Contact Centers opened in 2012: in Kennesaw, Georgia and Ogden, Utah. The center in Tempe provides support through phone help only, while the other two centers provide email and online chat.