Ok, so it’s a headline making, dramatic statement, intended to make us all gasp at how ludicrous it is, but the humour conceals a more important point, about what and how to assess candidates suitability for roles within the call centre

As reported here a 21 year old Scottish lady attended for what she thought was just going to be an interview, for a call centre role. As part of a wider assessment of her suitability, she was asked to take part in a team exercise during which they were to construct a house out of Lego bricks.

We are all familiar with assessment centres, and they take many forms, but a central theme of all of them is to assess a candidates behaviour, attitude, and ability to adapt and communicate, whilst outside of their comfort zone. One objective of this is to try to identify or replicate how candidates might perform in a stressful situation in their day to day role, as well as understand how they engage and work with others.

I must admit though that this report is a new one for me. I have met many call centres who do not do assessment centres at all, particularly for advisor level staff, relying on an interview alone. I advise these sites quite often to look to develop some competency based activities or assessments, even it if it basic numeracy, literacy, keyboard, and communication skills.

There are others that are assessment centre junkies, and its difficult to argue they are wrong, although often the team exercises are incorporated at team leader and management grades, and for the development and succession planning from the advisor population.

In my experience, often a role play is a far better indicator of an advisors aptitude than a team exercise, but the key message is to assess for the role you are employing and assess against the skills and attributes required for that role.

The administration and closure this week of Garlands has sent ripples, if not shock waves, through the industry. But who is really to blame, and what lessons can other outsourcers learn.

Clearly, if any company is so heavily reliant on one sector or one client, there is always an element of risk to the business, but risk management is fundamental to any business. The claim that so much of Garlands work moving overseas is the cause of their downfall is a smokescreen, and only masks other issues.

Clients began moving their work up to 18 months ago, not primarily to overseas locations, but often to other outsourcers, and back into their own in-house operations. The reasons were often down to quality, not just cost, and a growing discontentment among many large clients that some outsourcers were becoming complacent, working to their own narrow interests of filling productive hour charging models, rather than working with their clients to adapt and develop new operating models and ways of working fit for the digital age, reducing contact volumes, and improving first time resolution and customer satisfaction.

Clients across the industry are also demanding better working environments and employee engagement from their outsourcers, and to match the investments they have made in their own operations. Does an organisation that in 2010 still deducts money from staff for their own initial training really deserve to be held up as a icon of best practice? And for an organisation that has looked to champion its staff development, announcing their redundancy over the tannoy takes the industry back to dark ages.

The largest clients are very clear about their customer strategy, and know their customers very well. If outsourcers remember this and adapt to meet what their clients need for their own business and their own customers, then this should be contained as an isolated event.

There might be much navel gazing and introspection from many, and crocodile tears in ivory towers from others, but the only real losers in this sorry tale are the thousands of staff left on a full and growing dole queue.

It is so difficult to know what to expect when sitting down to watch a comedy about an Indian call centre. Any office based sitcom produced now will be compared to The Office with Ricky Gervais which captured some great characters. Call centres are very diverse, and a great source of material…so I’m hoping to see more characters develop over the coming weeks.

I’m not sure how true to life the setting really is, as for the sake of the story and the filming; the location is actually very small. In real life, most Indian centres I have been to are far larger with more desks much closer together. I’m sure we would all love that amount of space in our centres in real life!

It is certainly easy to relate to the characters involved, and even relate them to yourself. I’m sure those of you, who like me, started life on the phones, can empathise with the guy cold calling for mobile phones and having a nervous breakdown by the end of the day. And it’s certainly typical of many places I have been too where there is some kind of crisis for customers, and the managers are too busy promoting their own egos to actually do their day job or even notice. The dancing scene, reminded me of the time we held a “Vegas Day” through the whole call centre, without head office or health and safety ever finding out!

Impossible to know at this stage how the story lines will play out, but it is clearly going to revolve around the dynamic between existing (and dejected) manager Kenny, and Terri, the new manager bought in. This is spot on, and is all too familiar with the personality clashes and ego competitions seen all too frequently.

There have been many times when I have said you can only have one person running the call centre. It will be interesting to see who wins in this one.

Is there such a thing as too much customer service?

I open the debate with two examples from last week. On both occasions, I received more than 5 emails and 4 phone calls, for what is essentially a low cost, commodity product.

Firstly I arranged a courier to send some documents to the accountants. Purchased online, cost of £6.87. Received one email to confirm my order. 10 minutes later another email to confirm they had sent it, half an hour later another email to say they courier had accepted it, an hour later another email to say the courier had logged it and assigned a number, then over the course of the next day 4 more emails to remind me when the collection time was.

The 2nd time I ordered some paving online. Similar scenario, except with calls. One call to say they had my order, one to say they had sent it to the distributor, one to say when it would be delivered, and 3 more to confirm the delivery!

Can they actually afford to do that on such wafer thin margins.

Im not annoyed about it, just mildly amused.

Great service, but a bit over the top? Or can I not have it both ways?

Im astonished. Speechless… well almost

The news that calls to UK directory number 118 888 are being handled by inmates in American prisons has left me bemused. It opens up a whole can of worms, and i’d like to have a word with the execs who thought it would be a good idea.

I guess my main problem is the whole can of worms this opens, and where it may stop.

The saving grace of course is that no customer data is changing hands, but I wonder what the customers would think of it if they knew?

Could you imagine the outcry if this had been a UK bank, phone company or a credit company? Ok, so most banking execs wouldn’t be that stupid, but their recent track record isn’t good…

Staff are being paid as little as 10p an hour, and i’d be interested to see what the competitors reaction is going to be, and how many other bean counters decide to follow suit.

This desire to cut costs has plumbed new depths.

News reaches me of a call centre (who shall remain nameless) that has just built a shiny new cafe area for the staff. No more vending machines, no more mouldy sandwiches. Proper coffee, with proper milk, in proper cups.

The staff are in revolt

As you can imagine, they are not allowed to take hot drinks to their desks, so have to make sure they down their new found luxury in the breakout area.

Problem is, the coffee is now so hot they can’t drink it within their 15 minute break, so mayhem has erupted.

Who’d be a call centre manager!

Two Virgin Media customers were left feeling hard done by after their house burnt down.

The provider insisted on charging the young ladies with a cancellation fee and refused to transfer the contract to a new address following the blaze.

Complaining to the Guardian, Nicky Brindley said that Virgin Media had initially demanded £200 when it said that the pair were in breach of the contract.

Ms Brindley told the newspaper: “It’s a real slap in the face for two hard-working and hard-up young women, one of whom has just been made redundant.”

“I can’t believe they can’t bend the rules in circumstances as dire as ours, but instead we got nothing but attitude from call centre staff.”

After being shamed in the national press, Virgin Media apologised to the women and refunded the charge.

When I tell people I work in call centre’s, everyone talks about their experiences, and always start off by telling me about who has the worst call centre (in their opinon, of course!)

I’m always surprised by how many people slate Sky for their customer service. I have never personally had a problem with them…

…Until now

I called at about 7pm one saturday night as my girls wanted to watch a movie, and the handset wouldn’t let them order, and the system needed a reboot

So I called. 1st attempt, got through and was cut off. 2nd attempt, on hold 10 minutes and when I was answered in a foreign land the agent couldn’t understand my request to be talked through a manual call back. And then he cut me off

3rd attempt, on hold 7 minutes, and then got cut off

4th attempt, got through and the overseas agent could only talk about booking a movie. And then cut me off

I had clearly just had an unlucky experience. I had called a few days before and had a very pleasant and knowledgable agent talk me through the process. My fault for not writing it down, but I expected a consistent performance from Sky when I rang back.

But it wasn’t to be

So come on Sky, take a look at what is happening, and make it easy for me to defend you next time

Turbulent times for the Call Centre Industry. As companies see sales decline and some go under, what are the implications for the Call Centre market as the credit crunch and the wider economic slowdown begins to bite.

Firstly, we have now seen thousands of job losses, and we are likely to see thousands more, and call centres closing almost weekly.

Outsourcers are fairing little better, with Ventura, Garlands and Sitel all
closing sites. With many of the medium sized outsourcers all having grand ambitions for expansion, and all chasing the same limited pot of work, surely the time has come for some of them to put their egos to one side and merge, or be squeezed.

The unknown of course is the impact for offshoring. The warnings signs are there, but we must pray this is not a return to the dark days of the turn of the decade, when cost reduction was the only business imperative, and to hell with the customer experience.

We must look to clients to see beyond these troubled times, and to recognise that customer demands and expectations have moved on, and that delivering a great experience, first time, is the only long term strategy to pursue.

Lets hope all this doesn’t result in a decline in service for customers, any undue hardship for those facing redundancy, or damage to the industry’s already fragile reputation.