Charter Communications is shuttering customer service centers in Detroit and Indianapolis, impacting the jobs of at least 140 workers.
The operator notified workers in two customer care centers on June 28, giving them two months notice of the expected Aug. 28 office closures.
Charter reps say the reorganization is part of a strategy of consolidating customer care activities into larger call centers.
Related: Charter to Shed 258 Accountants, Finance Workers in North Carolina
“An important part of Spectrum’s strategy for providing better customer service is larger call centers, where we can deliver information, training and technology to our representatives much more efficiently,” the company said in a statement. “At the same time, we know this is a difficult time for our employees in location affected by this decision. We are working directly with them to provide comprehensive severance benefits, including salary continuation, health insurance and outplacement services.”
In the Detroit suburb of Livonia, the customer support unit at 14525 Farmington Road will close, with 60 workers laid off. Charter will not, however, close the entire office.
The same strategy is being plied to Charter’s office at 3030 Roosevelt Ave. in Indianapolis, where 84 customer care workers will lose their jobs.
In Grand Rapids, 51 sales employees were impacted by a separate shuttering in June. Many of those workers have been repositioned, Charter said.
When it closed on its purchases of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016, Charter said it would repatriate approximately 20,000 customer care jobs from overseas.
“Our customers are contacting us less, which means that they're having less service issues, service disruption, less billing related calls, less retention related calls,” Charter CFO Christopher Winfrey conceded during Charter Q2 earnings call last month.
