Following news articles yesterday regarding the possibility that Telecom may move 250 contact centre jobs to Manila, technology journalist Peter Griffin has written about the possible effects of outsourcing in his NZ Herald blog.
In it Griffin questions whether shifting crucial telco services (in this case broadband support) offshore is a wise move before going on to slam the contact centre profession:
“I’ve never worked in a call centre but I know people who have and generally didn’t enjoy it. For the most part, you’re stuck at your desk, forced to field calls from people who have something to complain about.
It’s no wonder that staff churn rates in the call centre industry are notoriously high.
In a country with the low unemployment rate New Zealand enjoys, off shoring makes sense.
On the other hand, good call centre support is essential to customer loyalty. I get dozens of emails from people who are angry and the long waiting times and flaky service them (sic) get from call centres.”
Wow! Hardly a ringing endorsement of the profession from one of the most respected ICT journalists in the country. Is it any wonder contact centre managers find it so hard to recruit agents?
There’s no mention of the fact that entry level agents can command base salaries of around $40,000. Nothing about the training that’s available or the opportunities to advance into management. As for the job itself, I’ve spoken to plenty of agents and team leaders who get a real buzz out of their work. Sure, there are great centres to work in and there are some that are the pits, but that’s the same for any profession.
There’s an estimated 25,000 contact centre seats in New Zealand – is every one of them filled with people “stuck at your desk, forced to field calls from people who have something to complain about”? And while the recent callcentres.net survey points out staff churn has increased to 24%, the same survey also shows that the average tenure of full time agents is 28 months. I’d like to see what it is for other professions.
Finally, what’s with the “call centre” tag – the profession has long embraced other means of communicating with customers such as fax, email and SMS.
I don’t blame Griffin for his depiction of contact centres because the bad press this profession receives is widespread. I just find it galling that while expressing concern about an essential service such as broadband support being moved offshore, this respected journalist can make sweeping statements that denigrate those in New Zealand who work in customer care.