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AOL Cutting Customer Service Jobs

AOL-Time Warner has announced plans to fire as many as 5,000 employees within six months from their AOL-specific jobs as part of a restructuring of its business interests to draw in more advertising dollars. The announcement followed a previous one last week in which AOL-Time Warner announced that it would no longer charge high-speed customers for e-mail and other services related to high-speed internet access. This means, basically, that the company is going to stop actively marketing its dial-up services in the United States and reduce customer-support centers related to such services.

AOL is making the move in an effort to stop what is seen as a steady decline in the company?s internet subscriptions as more and more people get high-speed service directly through a cable or phone company. Worldwide, AOL employs about 19,000 people in sales and customer-retention, with call-centers or teams located in call centers in places throughout India and in Jerusalem, Israel as well.

In addition to the internet subscriptions offered by AOL, the company has partnered in recent years with XM Satellite radio to bring free broadcasts over the internet of certain channels on the XM network. AOL-Time Warner also has well-known subsidiaries such as CNN that it can lay claim to. Notifications for the expected layoffs will likely be handed out this coming October. This past May, 1,300 customer service jobs were terminated by AOL.