Hiring Americans? Who ever heard of such a thing?
AT&T announced a strategic move last week that might be a win-win for US workers and AT&T home broadband customers. The telecom giant announced that it will do away with its foreign call centers that have long been ridiculed by customers and will instead create 2,000 new unionized jobs in the United States to handle customer support calls.
The new customer support positions will pay $30,000 a year and employees will receive benefits. AT&T will begin filling the new positions in mid-2007 so customers still have another 8 or 9 months to deal with the foreign call centers. Information Week reports:
But customer pressure to improve service may also have been a factor. Users of AT&T’s home DSL service frequently pillory the company on online bulletin boards and blogs. A poster on DSLreports.com complains that AT&T’s “India tech support doesn’t know anything.” AT&T’s spokesman declined to identify the vendor currently handling the company’s offshore DSL support.
