For the second time in a month, Verizon has announced plans to cut its customer-facing staff. This time, the telecom giant is consolidating call centers nationwide, which means closures in five states and thousands of call center employees on the chopping block.
The AP confirmed the news with Verizon this morning that the company will close call centers in New York, California, Connecticut, Nebraska, and Maine. Additionally, some employees from an Alabama call center are being relocated to Maryland.
The closings and shifts impact around 3,200 employees, with more than 2,600 of them losing their jobs. The biggest impact — in terms of total jobs lost — will be felt in Verizon’s home state of New York, where a total of 850 workers will be let go from two shuttered call centers. In California, around 700 employees will find themselves out of work, while 300 will be moved to another center.
While the number of jobs lost could have significant impact on local communities, they only represent less than 2% of Verizon’s total workforce.
As the AP notes, the call center news comes on the heels of Verizon’s decision to reduce headcount in its retail stores by having customer service employees also stock stores’ inventories.
While Verizon is still the largest wireless provider in the U.S., it continues to face competition from the other three national players in the market. And now that the overwhelming majority of cellphone customers have transitioned to smartphones, Verizon and the others are not seeing the the increases in revenue that they had enjoyed for several years as consumers switched from low-cost voice plans to more expensive data.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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