DirecTV (News - Alert) will hire more than 600 customer service representatives by the end of the year for its newly christened contact center in Missoula, Montana, which will provide technical support as the satellite television provider expands into new products and advanced services including hundreds of local and national high-definition channels next year.

 

In a press release, DirecTV said its Missoula Customer Contact Center is its fourth owned-and-operated facility and will have the capacity to employ up to 1,000 customer service professionals dedicated to providing technical support to DIRECTV's more than 15.5 million customers.

 

DirecTV will be among the largest employers in the state. The new 74,000-square foot call center was officially opened today at a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by company, state and local officials.

 

 “With DirecTV on the threshold of an exponential growth in capacity, products and services, the technical support provided by the Missoula call center is critical to maintaining customers' satisfaction and ensuring they're able to take advantage of the full array of our industry-leading technology and services,” said John Suranyi, president, DirecTV Sales and Service.

 

In addition to providing support for DirecTV HD customers, Missoula customer call center representatives will provide technical help for new DirecTV products and advanced television services, such as standard-definition and HD digital video recorders (DVRs) and interactive services. For example, its newest set-top box, DirecTV Plus HD DVR, will have the ability to record up to 200 hours of standard-definition content or up to 50 hours of HD (MPEG4) programming. The receiver also enables customers to access HD interactive content via the company’s NFL Sunday Ticket SuperFan subscription.

 

“"Along with our professional service and installation technicians in the field, our call center agents are on the front lines of an increasingly competitive battle among video providers,” Suranyi said in his prepared remarks.

 

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.