Prioritizing the Customer Experience: Workforce Quality Matters

A recent news column outlined the disappointment of “customer disservice” often experienced when service companies rely on call centers outside the U.S., noting that “if you can’t understand the person who’s supposed to help you — or they can’t even begin to help you because they’re obviously limited to a script they’re reading — that’s customer disservice.” 

We agree. Charter is committed to delivering prioritized, personalized customer service across all aspects of our business, which requires quality talent. That’s why we’ve invested in an insourced, U.S.-based workforce and why we continue to invest in our workforce and encourage them to build long-term careers with us.

Investing in Our Employees for the Long Term

Charter’s workforce includes approximately 75,000 in-house, on-shored sales and service employees. That means our customers interact with Charter employees, which our experience has shown drives consistency and higher-quality services. To encourage employees to build long-term careers with us, we deliver tangible investments in them:

• Highly Competitive Pay: Every Charter employee earns at least $20 per hour – nearly three times the federal minimum wage. Nearly 85% of our employees are eligible for additional variable compensation based on their performance, including annual bonus eligibility for all frontline supervisors and other salaried employees not already on a sales commission or bonus plan.
• Robust Benefits: We provide high-quality, comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for all full-time and part-time employees. It is our priority to keep this coverage affordable for our employees and their families, and so for the last eleven years, we have absorbed the full premium cost increase for medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Market-Leading Retirement Plan: We provide competitive financial benefits to all employees, such as a 401(k) Plan with a dollar-for-dollar company match up to 6% of their eligible pay. In addition, most of our employees are also eligible to receive an additional contribution equal to 3% of their eligible pay to a Retirement Accumulation Plan.
• Free and/or Discounted Products: Employees are offered free and/or discounted Spectrum products, including Spectrum Mobile, TV, and Internet.
• Continuing Education and Tuition Reimbursement: Employees can continue their education through a catalog of tuition-free undergraduate degree and certificate programs via flexible online learning. For graduate programs, employees have the option to receive traditional tuition reimbursement of up to $10,000 each year.
• On-the-Job Training and Enhanced Career Progression: We offer thousands of learning experiences spanning leadership development, new hire, and professional skills training both online and in the classroom as well as formal development programs, like a highly-regarded, Department of Labor-certified Broadband Field Technician Apprenticeship program. The vast majority of our customer-facing roles have the opportunity for upward advancement, including through supervisory and leadership roles. Our Field Operations organization has a formalized self-progression structure where employees who maintain exceptional levels of performance can complete online coursework to advance to next level within their job family and increase their pay.
  
   

Skilled and Experienced Workforce Providing Quality Customer Interactions

Because of our investments in our workforce, our employees know they are valued, leading them to stay with the company longer and serve customers at an even higher level. Our knowledgeable and experienced workforce results in better initial product and service quality in addition to offering efficient solutions to problems when they do arise. These quality interactions with us drive customer satisfaction with Spectrum – and happy customers mean more satisfied employees, which drives even more tenure and quality for our workforce.  

 

Delivering Connections that Transform Our Customers’ Lives

We invest in US-based workers because quality matters. We invest in our employees because they are crucial to delivering the connections that transform our customers’ lives. We’ll continue to empower all our employees – from our Field Technicians to Sales, Customer Service to Technology teams – to give our customers and the communities where we live and work the excellence and service they deserve.

“When I was transitioning out of the military, I had none of these skills. Charter provided all of the schooling to be able to do the job.” 

Tristan S. | Field Technician | Willow Springs, NC