Sony Customer Information Service Center

Headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida, the Sony Customer Information Service Center (CISC) is a part of Sony Electronics, or SEL [1]. The CISC was started in the early 1990s and had initially been located in a warehouse in downtown Fort Myers, Florida, until completion of a two-story facility located in a Lee County community called Gateway, in 1996.

Sometime in 2004, according to speculation and unconfirmed reports, Sony HQ Tokyo and Sony America San Diego HQ began discussions regarding the company's future support needs and the role of the CISC. While there may yet be some aspects of those discussions which are confidential or otherwise proprietary or trade secret, many of those decisions began to be implemented mid-way through 2005, and with the retirement of Mrs. Maureen Reed later that year, became essentially public knowledge shortly thereafter.

In January, 2006, Sony Electronics President Daniel Wiersma held an all-hands meeting at the Holiday Inn Bell Tower conference center located in Fort Myers, Florida, at which he announced a near-total restructuring of SEL's technical support needs and a plan to gradually phase out Sony operations at the Gateway facility, with a projected phase-out period of five years. Up to this point, there were three tiers of technical support and review at the facility: Tier 1/Consumer Rep, Tier 2/Consumer Specialist, and the Escalation Group, which interfaces with both computer electronics and consumer electronics products. Under Mr. Wiersma's announced plan, Tier 1 and Consumer representative positions were to be "transitioned" to the third-party call center company Alorica, which had also agreed to sub-sub-let the top floor of the facility. The Tier 2 and Consumer Specialist positions were eliminated entirely. The Escalation Group, Business and Professional Group, National/International Customer Relations and other core support groups (IT, telco, etc.) would be retained by Sony and would all, as necessary, be re-located to the ground floor. In all, by the deadline of March 31, 2006, some 170 positions would be eliminated.

The Tier 2/Consumer Specialist positions, as well as those groups which handled the more functional parts of service logistics were all migrated to other unused sections of the San Diego headquarters campus.

Support organisations for Asia-Pacific and Europe exist as separate entities and are headquartered elsewhere, typically within the region they support.