Brendan Read
TMC
April 2009
You are browsing the archive for April 2009.
A College Education for Contact Center Work???
April 29, 2009The other day I came across a contact center expansion story where the employer, whose name will not be revealed to save them from the embarrassment of being singled out, preferred to have applicants for its contact center agent positions to have college degrees.
My jaw dropped. A two-or four-year degree just to answer and make calls and handle chats and e-mails in a contact center? Is this overkill or what?
Then again, given too many reports about how poor the American--and to a lesser extent the Canadian--public education system is, such employers may sadly be onto something.
Yes, that company, and others who look for college educations in their applicants can get away with that in today's downturn. Yet is that a wise move? Is that not setting up such contact centers for another round of escalating turnover, higher costs, and pressure to move the work once again to offshore and more into self-service?
Once the economy turns around and higher paid openings that more closely match the responsibilities and room to grow with applicants' education, training, and aspirations college-educated individuals will be out contact centers' doors faster than one can type 'job board'.
Handling The Next Telemarketing Regulations
April 27, 2009Telemarketing is rarely in the news these days, and that's a good thing. The advent and acceptance of Do Not Call (DNC) and predictive dialer abandonment regulations in the U.S. and Canada appear to have had the intended effects. That is they have lowered--but not eliminated--annoying calls that had turned off more customers and had prompted them to spend their money elsewhere that they had attracted and revenue generated.
The Missed Lesson Of Outsourcing to India, and Ireland
April 23, 2009One more company, this time Primus Telecommunications Canada is repatriating its customer care from an unnamed outsourcer in India back home.
The company announced Tuesday that it will no longer have any of their customer service or technical support calls handled by offshore agents. This is in addition to the exclusive Canadian-based customer care that Primus' Wireless and TalkBroadband VoIP customers have received for some time.
In turn and to handle these calls Primus is expanding its Edmundston, New Brunswick contact center creating 113 new jobs, adding to over 200 employees currently in place. The provincial government will provide Primus Telecommunications Canada with a forgivable loan of $7,500 for each of the new positions.
"Every company with customer service operations that are partly outsourced, has heard some complaints from customers, for a variety of reasons, with respect to dealing with customer service representatives located overseas," says Rob Warden, VP Residential Marketing for Primus Canada. "Our customers have told us they prefer to deal with Canadian representatives and we're responding to their feedback. While we hold all our representatives - wherever they are located - to a high standard, we have also come to believe that the best way to serve our customers is to locate as much of our customer service operation as possible in this country.
"We are also delighted to be able to play a part in local job creation during these challenging economic times."
There is irony in this news.
Three Must Attend/Participate Webinars
April 13, 2009One of the highest 'time/ROI' communications products TMC has is our Webinars. I've moderated quite a few of them over the past year.
From my behind the scenes seat, preparing and giving the intros, working with the presenters and equally if not more importantly fielding the questions from the attendees/participants I've found every one worth while.
The topics and discussions have led to more than one article and have enriched many others.
Rx For Organizations and the Economy: Axe The Incompetent Managers
April 3, 2009Whenever there is a downturn either within the economy and/or within an enterprise the first people to be let go, hours reduced, and/or wages/salaries hacked are almost invariably those who produce the goods and services that enable the firm, and the economy to be in business.
Only when enough of that blood--and usually too much of that for the organization's and the economy's own good-- has been allowed to gush out only then are the supervisors and managers led to the chopping block. These are the ones who don't generate directly the goods and services.
The first supervisors/management to go are usually the ones that know what they are doing.
