Habla Español?

Frontier Communications is looking for more employees like Maria Alcantara, who can converse in English and Spanish with customers. 

The company, which acquired AT&T last year, is creating a bilingual call center to provide better service to its Spanish-speaking customers, particularly in Connecticut.

The call center will be part of Frontier’s existing center at 310 Orange St. The 25 employees who will ultimately staff it, will handle all the queries from the company’s Spanish-speaking customers. Frontier has already hired 11 bilingual customer service representatives and is looking to hire 14 more.

Joe Ferraiolo, Frontier area general manager for New Haven County, said that the company is working with organizations like New Haven Works to recruit for the open positions, which was good news for a city trying to drive down its unemployment rates.

Frontier has been beefing up its customer assistance efforts in the wake of widespread complaints during the transition from AT&T ownership.

Mayor Toni Harp’s chief of staff, Tomas Reyes Jr., was on hand for a tour of the call center Monday. He said that the need for bilingual employees has only gotten greater since the days of Southern New England Telecommunications.

“What [Frontier is] doing is important for the city, and important for the state,” he said.

Ken Arndt, president of Frontier’s east region, said the reason for developing a call center specifically to help those who communicate best in Spanish is about the company’s commitment to being “as close to the customer as possible. We can’t do that if we don’t understand our customer base.”

He said many other telecommunication companies have outsourced such work, but Frontier has kept its U.S.-based call centers. Frontier’s customer base in Connecticut is about 10 percent Spanish-speaking, according to Communications Manager Liz Grey Godbout.

Frontier has hired more than 300 people since the AT&T takeover, many of whom work in New Haven. In addition to having a bilingual call center, the company is rolling out a microsite called Frontier Latino that is all in Spanish. The average hourly wage for a new call center representative is $22.65, including base salary and commission. Employees are eligible for overtime and salary increases every six months.