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JammerMan79
Premium,VIP
join:2004-05-13
Prince George, BC
| reply to fdsdff
Re: Prince George Call centre expansion
Your view is not correct from an economic or even a realistic standpoint.
This job does indeed take a lot of skill and knowledge. If it didn't we wouldn't have all the complaints about "customer service" on this board and others. When you get a skilled and knowledgeable rep on the phone I'm sure you're really happy. Just remember, you get what you pay for.
It takes at least 1-2 years to get completely comfortable with the position (customer service). There is a ton of knowledge about order processing, plans, and telecommunications information that a rep should know to do their job correctly and efficiently. Not to mention about the continuous changes that occur.
Do you really think that if Telus was to send all it's customer service overseas it would improve? Or would it degrade the customer service that you see now? If better service is provided and it's more cost effective for major corporations to have customer service overseas why have many of them, over the last couple years, brought their centres back to North America?
How do you think the economy would react to loosing a couple of thousand 18.00+/hr jobs? Do you think that it would decrease the prices for your services?
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I may work for, but do not necessarily represent the views and beliefs of TELUS Communications. | |
fdsdff
@techentrance.com
| Your view is not correct from an economic or even a realistic standpoint.
You will forgive me for not accepting the economic analysis from a unionized worker. Unions, by definition, oppose market forces. 
It takes at least 1-2 years to get completely comfortable with the position (customer service). There is a ton of knowledge about order processing, plans, and telecommunications information that a rep should know to do their job correctly and efficiently. Not to mention about the continuous changes that occur.
If the burger flipper leaves the patty on the grill too long, it burns. But if the burger isn't cooked properly the customer can get sick. There is skill in cooking hamburgers.
Ensuring the line at the drive through window moves efficiently while making sure the current batch of fries has not been over salted while keeping the pickle bowl filled is a skill. Ensuring that the customer gets what they want in a timely fashion while accurately handling money is a skill. It is true that it can take a long time to become proficient at all of this.
But this is not how we use the word "skill" in the business world.
Do you really think that if Telus was to send all it's customer service overseas it would improve? Or would it degrade the customer service that you see now?
Most people seem to divide the options available to Telus in two: (1) Using market value, foreign, 'less competent' call centre workers (perhaps the latent racism is here by assuming they are innately less competent?) and (2) Using local, 'more competent', higher cost Canadian workers.
I would suggest that it is the failure to manage and train foreign call centre workers to adequately service customers that is the real problem. There must be more than scripts to walk through. There should even be more methods of getting support like reliable email and immediate online support. These are all jobs of management and implementing systems that work to improve the customer experience. Foreign workers could work in teams. Analysis of calls could be done and focus given to recognizing trends and training workers to deal with those trends. Kaizen methods could even be introduced into the call centres so there would be a constantly evolving and improving system.
Anyway, there are plenty of articles in HBR and other publications that address what differentiates good call centers from bad ones, and what strageies should be used
to improve customer experiences.
I just want to point out that the location of the call centre or the nationality of the workers or their cost does not limit what can be accomplished or prevent them from becoming a good call centre.
Customers want good service. Period. They don't care where that service is from as long as their problems are solved.
When people say they prefer to talk to a 'Local Person', it is only because they are currently not getting the results they want from the foreign center and assume the ONLY solution is to hire locally. The real problem is in the training of the workers and system design at the foreign call centers. At first they were simply english speaking people placed in chairs paid to walk through scripts. This must evolve and improve.
It is likely that you will dig your heels in even deeper and become more defensive about your position. I don't wish to get into a discussion about your fears over globalization which most likely reflect your own concerns about your personal future.
I believe in Canadians and I believe in education. More Canadians should be continuing their education rather than settling for this type of work that could be done at much lower cost by willing foreign workers. We need a knowledge based economy in Canada, not an economy built on unskilled labourers. | |
netwerk
Premium
join:2003-02-03
BC | This topic is getting out of hand. If you are going to cut down peoples opinions you should at least post with a registered account.
This news is good for the customers of Telus.
You obviously have an agenda.
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twixt
join:2004-06-27
North Vancouver, BC
 ·TELUS
| reply to fdsdff
said by fdsdff :
I would suggest that it is the failure to manage and train foreign call centre workers to adequately service customers that is the real problem.
Agreed. However, and this is the crux of the matter - you DO NOT replace a working system with a broken one - simply because the newer system is cheaper.
You ESPECIALLY do not impose that broken system on your customers - if resolving an incompetent or an invalid response from the new system is awkward, time-wasting and inconvenient. Customers remember that unfavourably.
You may RETAIN the working system while developing a substitute IN PARALLEL with the working system. The working system remains functional while the inevitable development problems are dealt with and the bugs are removed from the new system.
However, that's not what occurs. What actually happens is that things are endlessly and stupidly mishandled. This happens because development and implementation of a competent type takes more money than most companies are willing to spend - as well as a level of management competence that most North American companies simply do not display.
This is the error that North American management have been making for the past 30 years. It is creating a society so filled with incompetence - on both a local and global level - that it is difficult to find competent workers even in first-world countries.
There must be more than scripts to walk through. There should even be more methods of getting support like reliable email and immediate online support. These are all jobs of management and implementing systems that work to improve the customer experience. Foreign workers could work in teams. Analysis of calls could be done and focus given to recognizing trends and training workers to deal with those trends. Kaizen methods could even be introduced into the call centres so there would be a constantly evolving and improving system.
Agreed. All this is possible. And it isn't being done. And as long as it isn't being done, the work performed by foreign call centres will be performed by incompetents.
And as long as North American management considers this consequence of their decisions (and the customer annoyance which is the inevitable result) to be "not my problem" - the companies that practice this policy will be driven into the ground by economic forces demanding competence and reliability.
Because even a nation of consumers is intelligent enough to realize when things don't work. And to retaliate with their wallets when excuses don't wash anymore.
Welcome to the new globalization reality.
twixt | |
CheteBrown
join:2008-01-06
| reply to fdsdff
Most people seem to divide the options available to Telus in two: (1) Using market value, foreign, 'less competent' call center workers (perhaps the latent racism is here by assuming they are innately less competent?) and (2) Using local, 'more competent', higher cost Canadian workers.
I would suggest that it is the failure to manage and train foreign call center workers to adequately service customers that is the real problem. Following that train of thought, it would seem the problem stems from the lack of managerial education that Canadian universities are giving to our MBA's. The reality you do not seem to want to face, fdsdff, is that call center jobs are more complex than you depict them. Regardless of cultural background, an efficient helpdesk agent needs:
- to be computer literate, much more than your average individual
- to be able to receive, analyze, filter a rapid amount of information and then make decisions that are cost efficient and that will ensure client satisfaction
- be able to start with "my internet don't work" and find out that the firewall settings are incorrect, with the other person on the other line referring to their monitor as the modem and complaining that "why don't it work, it waz working fine yestirday" (no the spelling mistakes here are intentional...)
- seriously I could go on...
The reality is that call center jobs are not "low level" jobs by far, but I will not pretend that they are as complex as the tasks a financial analyst, accountant or doctor performs, not even close.
It is noble to want to push Canadians to strive to pursue their full academic potential but you need to remember that not everyone has the same potential, not everyone wants to study another 5 years (+) after high school and that these individuals might be very well suited for such jobs.
From an profit perspective it would make sense for TELUS or any company to offshore ALL it's services but it is false that customers just want GOOD customer service. Do you speak to said customers ? Did you know that their most common question is "where are you located" and that anything that isn't in Canada actually vexes them ? fdsdff do not confuse your personal satisfaction with GOOD customer service with that of the average Canadian... And no it doesn't know have anything to do with the end result of the service they have been receiving, it has to do with basic nationalistic pride.
Furthermore, these individuals that are working call center, without these jobs, where else would they earn 18$/H ? Again, not everyone wants to pursue higher education.
I'm guessing it will be individuals like you that in the end will push for automated services at restaurants, robotic janitors, trucks that drive themselves, and machines that will replace doctors since they scan your body and diagnose you right away...
Yes it will decrease costs for companies, but it will reduce taxations, starve entire families, deprive us of basic social contacts...
Oh yeah and since people are you are so profit driven, it is likely that consumer price won't fall by much, why would they, why not maximize your profit margin ? | |
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