While Charter Communications has pledged to hire 20,000 U.S. workers and pull back its call center positions from outsourced overseas firms, Comcast has told FierceCable that it plans to keep its overseas call centers.
“We’re constantly evaluating what the mix should be, but I feel like we’re on a really good path,” said Tom Karinshak, head of customer service for Comcast. “Our partners do play an important role in supplementing our work force based on factors like seasonal volumes.”
Karinshak didn’t say how much of Comcast’s call-center activity is outsourced to overseas firms. On its first-quarter earnings call in April, Charter said that 90 percent of its calls are now handled by U.S.-based workers.
Karinshak said Comcast is ahead of schedule on its plan to hire 5,500 U.S. workers and invest $300 million on new customer service resources, including call centers. The company has added around 2,500 new workers so far, he said, specifically in areas such as social media outreach.
He said the MSO has also revised its training programs for customer-facing personnel.
Comcast is seeing some results. A consumer survey released in June by the American Customer Satisfaction Index showed Comcast finishing in the middle of the pack, moving above operators like Charter and Mediacom.
“We still have a lot of work to do, but we’re seeing significant progress across all of our metrics,” Karinshak said.
Separately, meanwhile, Comcast announced today that its customers can pay their bills at 7,700 participating 7-Eleven stores.
For more:
- read this Comcast press release
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