Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Comcast To Open New Minnesota Contact Center

By Tracey E. Schelmetic
TMCnet Contributor

Cable giant Comcast (News - Alert) Corporation is bucking the current economic trend and hiring new employees. The Philadelphia-based company plans to open a new call center in Minnetonka, Minnesota this summer to handle customer inquiries from western states. The new call center will result in the hiring of about 450 new workers, reports Twin Cities Business.

Comcast spokeswoman Mary Beth Schubert said in a phone interview yesterday that the company currently employs about 1,900 people in the state of Minnesota.

The Philadelphia-based company is seeking workers with two years of experience and who are “technologically savvy or aware,” said Schubert. New workers will undergo a seven-week training period, and the company hopes to fill all 450 positions by the first quarter of 2012.

“We’re looking at a whole new way of delivering customer service through new technology and sophisticated tools to ensure that our customers reach the right agent,” Schubert said.

The company is “still determining compensation,” but the call center employees will be full-time workers with a base salary plus commission, as well as full benefits. They will also receive discounted Comcast services.

Schubert said that the company chose Minnetonka as the home of its new call center after a “rigorous selection process” that found that Minnesota was an attractive location due to its “education level, health of the economy, low unemployment rate, and talent pool.”

The call center’s employees will field calls from Comcast’s western markets, which include the Twin (News - Alert) Cities, Salt Lake City, Houston, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle, among other cities.

The new call center will be located at 9705 Data Park Drive, the current home of a Comcast facility that employs between 100 and 150 workers from across a variety of areas, including construction jobs. Some of those workers will be transferred to Comcast’s Minnesota headquarters in St. Paul—which currently employs about 700, Schubert said.

The call center will occupy about 98,000 square feet in the three-story building, which will be upgraded to accommodate the larger work force.