The Associated Press recently reported, following a story carried by Forbes, that AT&T will be opening a new customer technical support contact center in Little Rock costing $7 million, which may be a sign of further development to come.
The plans for the facility has been ongoing for two years and is due to be fully open by summer of 2009, when it will provide subscribers in 13 states with broadband support and will employ 189 agent, managers and various other staff.
The wired service said that in “part of an effort by the telecom giant to shift 5,000 positions from overseas back to the United States” the six other centres in AT&T’s network that currently employ 2000 people will now be joined by the Little Rock contact centre.
Mike Beebe, the Governor of Arkansas said that the timing for the opening of the new contact centre is a good one as it will compensate in part the loss of jobs that will be caused by the acquisition of Alltel by Verizon Wireless. The Alltel headquarters in Little Rock had almost 3000 employees.
Due to the economic stimulus plan from US President Barack Obama, which will see underserved and rural areas having over $7 billion spent on them to implement new broadband connectivity, it would appear that this new facility will probably not be the last of its kind.
With a total of over 14.8 million customers using a range of products including high-speed internet access, satellite broadband services and AT&T U-verse TV, it is reported that AT&T is the largest broadband provider in the country. Since 2006 AT&T has expanded its broadband service area in order to reach smaller communities within the state costing it $525 million already, according to the AP/Forbes story.
Terms like state of the art and well-designed have been used to describe the new contact centre, with the AP article saying “exposed supports and shiny ductwork overhead [that] gives way to carefully lit, curved black and wood-grain work stations that give a flow to the setting.” The article also mentioned that staff would able to keep informed of daily events with a combination of news of the day and in-house information being shown on wide-screen TV’s saying “When a hurricane is moving toward the coast or when snow or ice is affecting an area, workers need to understand the larger issues behind customers’ concerns, officials said. Also, each service center can add its own content.”