Don’t listen to the cynical naysayers who pooh-pooh plans for yet another call center here. 

Comcast Corp.’s recently announced intention to open a customer-support facility that will bring 675 jobs to the Spokane area is major, uplifting news for anyone who’s eager to see more new employment created locally. Economic-development promoters are right to feel enthused about it.

This area needs jobs across a spectrum of wage levels—not just the higher-paying ones in, say, aerospace, high-tech, manufacturing, and health care. Separate from how much the Comcast jobs might pay, the sheer number of new jobs is significant. Also important to note is the context of the announcement.

Comcast said its plans to open three new customer-support centers in all—the one here and others in Albuquerque, N.M., and Tucson, Ariz.—are part of a much larger multiyear initiative to improve customer service, which has been a weak spot for the company.

To help it fulfill that laudable commitment, Comcast says it will create more than 5,500 new jobs, including more than 2,000 at the three customer-support centers.  

The company expects to decide on an interim location for the center here soon, and has estimated it ultimately will invest more than $7 million to construct an 80,000-square-foot facility that will include such employee amenities as a cafeteria and a fitness center.

The majority of representatives hired here initially will assist Comcast customers from across the country who call it to order service or to ask questions about their bills. The company says the new hires also will include positions in management and human resources. It says it expects to invest more than $27 million a year in employee salaries and benefits here—a sizable sum by any measure.

Company investments in the added workforce appropriately will include paid training and tuition reimbursement, as well as opportunities for promotion and relocation.

Comcast says the center will have an overall estimated economic impact of $40 million, which will be a welcome infusion to the economy here.

The customer-support center will expand an already sizable Comcast presence here. The company says it currently has 170 employees serving 100,000 customers in Spokane and Spokane Valley, including hundreds of businesses. 

Separately, the company last year opened an Xfinity store on north Division Street and moved its Spokane customer service center there from its longtime location at 1717 E. Buckeye. As part of its recent announcement to upgrade customer service, it says it will hire 250 more employees to serve in its Xfinity stores across the country and will triple the size of its “social care team” to serve customers more quickly on Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms.

Time will tell whether Comcast’s initiative will fix some of its perceived customer-service shortcomings, but the Spokane area certainly will benefit by being included in that corporate strategy.