Citing improvements in customer experience as well as a lease expiration, Dish Network reports that it will close a Houston-area customer service center. The Alvin, TX, facility where some 550 employees work, will shut down in May, according to both Texas– and Colorado-based publications. (Dish is headquartered in a suburb of Denver.)

“This was a difficult decision made after careful deliberation,” John Swieringa, Dish executive vice president of operations, says in a statement given to the Houston Business Journal. “As a result of continually improving our customer experience over the past several years, our customers are calling us less. With our lease expiring in Alvin in the coming months, we are consolidating our customer service operations across our other locations in the U.S.”

Swieringa says that Dish is encouraging the Alvin, TX, employees to apply for other jobs in the company and it will also invite local companies to conduct job fairs at the site.

While the company states that improving customer experience means it needs less customer service employees, it told the Denver Post last month that it was opening a downtown office in the Colorado capital to attract approximately 100 software developers. Its pitch to tech workers in the currently tight Denver market is available here.