| reply to Dogfather
Re: Blame the system... Wrong answer. The real problem is that few people with enough education to handle tech support are willing to work for $8.00/hr.
If AT&T wants quality employees, they have to be willing to pay for them. |
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| The answer lies in-between. The educational system needs to be overhauled to allow for more real world OS and Application training, and keep up with what Corporate America is looking for like familiarity with basic windows/msoffice/outlook, basic troubleshooting skills, basic network and pc skills. At the same time, AT&T needs to understand, that helpdesk technicians need more support like empowering them with ability to tap accounting/provision while the customer is on the line, so whatever issue he has (billing/technical) it can be solved right away. Also allow the tech to do this unscripted and without pressure of meeting some person's metrics. Quality support should not have useless metrics (time spent on call/etc) other than satisfaction survey given to customers at the end of the support call. |
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Reviews:
 ·Comcast
 ·Comcast Digital ..
| reply to ISurfTooMuch
said by ISurfTooMuch:If AT&T wants quality employees, they have to be willing to pay for them. Oh no, you can't do that because companies will then say "in order to pay them better wages, we have to lower executive compensation and better manage our greed increase the cost to the consumers and decrease the quality of our products.
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Satan is always busy. He makes bad things look good and good things look bad! Watch that Devil. |
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Reviews:
·Comcast
·Comcast Digital ..
| reply to inbeetweeeen
said by inbeetweeeen :
The answer lies in-between. The educational system needs to be overhauled to allow for more real world OS and Application training, and keep up with what Corporate America is looking for like familiarity with basic windows/msoffice/outlook, basic troubleshooting skills, basic network and pc skills. At the same time, AT&T needs to understand, that helpdesk technicians need more support like empowering them with ability to tap accounting/provision while the customer is on the line, so whatever issue he has (billing/technical) it can be solved right away. Also allow the tech to do this unscripted and without pressure of meeting some person's metrics. Quality support should not have useless metrics (time spent on call/etc) other than satisfaction survey given to customers at the end of the support call.
I was in help desk at a major corporation and it was a pressure cooker. Even if I knew how to resolve the issue, my manager would not allow us to be on the phone for more than 10 minutes. If it went over 10 minutes, we had to escalate the issue to the next level (Desktop Support).
I believe metrics have their place but when quality is sacrificed just so you could meet metrics numbers, problems become rampant.
Corporate America itself is generally screwed up.
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Satan is always busy. He makes bad things look good and good things look bad! Watch that Devil. |
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| When I worked in ISP support, we didn't live and die by the numbers, but they were there, and I knew techs who loved to get their names at the top of the list each day. Yes, some were good enough and fast enough to really earn those numbers, but others did it by offering "fixes" that they knew good and well wouldn't work just to be able to get the customer off the phone so they could close the ticket. I knew this because I'd be getting that customer the next day and fixing the problem the other tech knew damn well how to fix but didn't because it would take too much time and lower their numbers. |
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Cod
join:2000-07-05
Kernersville, NC Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
4 edits | reply to ISurfTooMuch
said by ISurfTooMuch:Wrong answer. The real problem is that few people with enough education to handle tech support are willing to work for $8.00/hr. If AT&T wants quality employees, they have to be willing to pay for them. Nice assumption. The call center employees make roughly twice your mythical $8/hr figure at AT&T (plus health insurance, pension & 401k). |
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| If that's the case, then they could open a call center in Alabama and get it staffed almost immediately. Cost of living here is low, so a $30k salary would be fine for many young people just getting out of college.
But my guess is that AT&T wouldn't want to pay that much; otherwise, they wouldn't have outsourced those jobs in the first place. I've seen plenty of other companies offering much less for CSR's, so my guess is that AT&T is having trouble filling positions because they want to lowball salaries and/or hire workers from temp agencies with no benefits. |
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| said by ISurfTooMuch:If that's the case, then they could open a call center in Alabama and get it staffed almost immediately. They did. It's here in downtown Birmingham |
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fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | reply to ISurfTooMuch
said by ISurfTooMuch:If AT&T wants quality employees, they have to be willing to pay for them. And how much are you willing to pay for the service, in addition to what you do now, so that those few times you call for support, you'll get these employees that are better educated?
To be honest, the CEO of AT&T was absolutely correct, yet many American's don't like to hear it. For one, we are NOT better than those in other countries.. we're not more educated, we're not harder workers, and we don't always turn out a better product. American's like to be told that we're the best becuase it's a patriotic thing to do. The cold hard fact is that there are many Americans in this country that have a HS diploma that is worth about as much as the paper its printed on, and that's it. For some of these workers, $8.00 is being nice.
Before people jump on me.. for one, be realistic and not quick to jump becuase, well.. there are a lot of idiots out there. And two.. I never said EVERYONE was stupid.. |
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| reply to fatmanskinny
The most amusing part is that..well...they did that. They cut all management raises for the year, and Stephenson rejected his own compensation as well. Now, I'm not claiming the company I work for is a saint..I have to talk to these people on a daily basis....but I just found your comment amusing. |
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Reviews:
·Optimum Online
 ·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Cod
said by Cod:said by ISurfTooMuch:Wrong answer. The real problem is that few people with enough education to handle tech support are willing to work for $8.00/hr. If AT&T wants quality employees, they have to be willing to pay for them. Nice assumption. The call center employees make roughly twice your mythical $8/hr figure at AT&T (plus health insurance, pension & 401k). Show me that help wanted ad, and I'll show you well over 200,000 people who just got laid off whom are probably even overqualified for that job at $16/hr. Many times these human resource people who do the hiring want putty employees they can mold to do the worst job in the least amount of time as said in other replies. If you are seriously a graduate with an IT degree.. you will not work (and they will NOT HIRE) as a help desk rep for AT&T, plain and simple. More than likely, your job will be much lower down the food chain like best buy, or a cashier at the local grocery store (The completing a degree to be a movie producer only to get a job ripping ticket stubs the local cinema syndrome). Employers have a jaded sense of hiring inadequate staff who do a terrible job and wonder why those trained for the job don't apply and aren't hired.. maybe they stopped looking for those kinds of jobs which they are emminently qualified for, but just can't get because the hiring managers are such scumbags taking orders from even more incompetent scumbags on how to do their job. Micromanagement bureaucracy at it's finest. Though I will give AT&T a partial pass on this one, this is not just the workforce hiring process for them, this is EVERYWHERE-- government, education, military, corporate america, both large and small businesses. Until our worforce culture changes, expect the worst.. don't even think about hoping for the best.
Anyhow, AT&T is notorious for cutting costs the old fashioned Walmart way.. that is treat your employees at the bottom like crap and get away with anything and everything even if it means a fine/penalties down the road or lost revenue. Save less now to spend more later.
If you buy services from AT&T knowing this is what there is when you pull the curtain up.. you may want to reconsider buying that Iphone knowing who does the wireless... or U-Verse, or anything else AT&T sells or puts their branding on.
Some others to consider:
Sprint
Comcast
Qwest
Allstate
Chase
Bank of America
Walmart
Circuit City(cross this one out, they're gone!)
Time Warner
General Motors
Ford
Chrysler
DHL
All airline carriers
Target
Sears
Sleepys
Dish Network |
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