AOL, trying to put a positive spin on its recent call-center closing and layoffs, citing the fact that customers are becoming more savvy in dealing with their own problems:

AOL, the internet arm of Time Warner, is to sack 1,300 of its US call centre staff because, it said, customers are now better equipped to help themselves.

It is closing its Jacksonville, Florida centre and making further cuts in Ogden, Utah and Tucson, Arizona.

The volume of calls to its centres has halved since 2004, AOL said.

Customers have become more internet “savvy” and had better tools to resolve their own technical problems, said spokesman Nicholas Graham.

“That’s a remarkable success in terms of customer care,” he said.

“It requires us to balance our work force.”

However, the BBC calls Bravo-Sierra immediately on that claim in the very next section:

The number of callers has also slipped because subscriptions are on the slide.

AOL had 26.7 million customers in September 2002, but this had fallen by more than 25% by last December.

It is offering more features on its free website to try and tempt users and advertisers.

The job cuts amount to about 7% of its global workforce.

It follows 700 posts being lost in the final quarter of last year when a call centre in Orlando was closed.

I’m sure all those people who were laid off are sitting there secure in their knowledge that customers are better at helping themselves now. At the same time, they’re not blaming it at all on the plummeting subscriber numbers, something that’s obvious to the rest of the universe outside the AOL bubble.

No one in their right mind uses AOL anyway.

BBC via Techdirt

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