On May 5th we announced a new multi-year plan to reinvent the customer experience. That plan includes everything from additional training for our employees, to hiring more than 5,500 people, to developing new tools and technology, to new and improved stores, to a new commitment to always be on time.

We said we’d be moving quickly on these initiatives and we are.  Today we announced the hiring of more than 1,100 of these employees at our newest customer support center in Tucson, Arizona.

The call center will be designed to support these new employees and equip them with everything they need to deliver an excellent customer experience. These representatives will assist customers with billing and repair questions as well as sales and customer service.  Specialized teams will handle more complex customer needs. The center will also be home to our new Spanish speaking employees specializing in social media.

When the building renovation is complete, the 100,000 square-foot center will include product training labs, training rooms, video conference facilities, a cafeteria and a fitness center.

To celebrate this milestone in Tucson, we held a press conference today with Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona.  We also announced that 15 percent of the hires at the Tucson center will be reservists, veterans and their spouses or domestic partners -  part of our commitment to 10,000 military hires by the end of 2017.

The Tucson center is just one piece of this story. Between now and early 2016 we will open three new customer support centers and hire more than 2,000 of the 5,500 total new employees. We already announced the opening of our center in Albuquerque, New Mexico and details about our center in Spokane, Washington are coming soon.

So far, the response from the communities where these centers will be located has been great. We have received over 2,000 applications so far for the 450 jobs we are filling in Albuquerque, which has given us a chance to evaluate a lot of great candidates and put together the very best team (approximately 100 new employees have been hired to date). Hiring for the Tucson center is off to a running start as well, with thousands of applications already coming in.  If you’re interested, please let us know!

These new hires will help us bring our customers, in Arizona and across the country, the support they need.  These additional hires will be an important step towards our goal of making call wait times shorter and helping customers get their service or billing issues resolved faster. 

We’ll keep you posted as the hiring continues and additional centers open.