LATEST NEWS

Manila agents complain of NZ backlash

Philippine agents outsourcing for New Zealand Telecom's directory assistance line have complained of a negative response to their accents by NZ callers, according to local media.

In an internal Telecom question-and-answer document, revealed by The Dominion Post, staff members reportedly pitched questions to management about the contact centre trial in Manila in the Philippines. The document had a question from a staff member who said customers were being aggressive towards them because they had an accent. "I even had one tell me off for taking a New Zealander's job," the employee said.

"I am concerned that it could get worse can you give me any ideas on how to handle these conversations please." Telecom reportedly responded: "Explain that you are based in New Zealand and that just like our nation, our contact centres have many diverse cultures and nationalities in them." Another employee asked about sensitivity of the Maori pronunciation of place names and people's names, as "this is often a problem when dealing with a foreign call centre". Telecom said all Manila staff completed two weeks of accent and conversational English training, which covered pronunciation of names and familiarisation of New Zealand culture. Telecom employs about 1000 call centre staff in New Zealand and 450 in Manila.

P&O fields record contact centre queries

Cruise company P&O says it experienced its largest ever call volume for a day as Australians returned to work after the Christmas-New Year break.

P&O's consumer contact centre received 7,000 calls on the 5th of January, an increase of 43% on its previous record in January. "To record the strongest January booking day ever during an economic downturn is amazing and underscores the strength of the business," said Ann Sherry, Carnival Australia CEO.

"In these tougher times, value becomes more important than it has ever been, [and] the appeal of a P&O Cruises' voyage is that passengers pay in Australian dollars with the cost of the ticket covering accommodation, food and entertainment and travel," added Sherry.

Vic gov't calls answered from the Philippines

The contact centre for Victorian premier John Brumby's media unit has been outsourced to the Philippines.

The Sunday Age reports it tried to call the Treasurer's media adviser last week several times and the phone was answered by operators who struggled to pronounce his name. When asked where they were located, operators stated they were "one of Telstra's industry partners and I work in the Philippines".

It is unclear if the Premier's media unit answering service has shifted permanently to the Philippines or if its calls are answered there depending on demand. A state government spokesman said Telstra was chosen as a telecommunications partner because it was Australian-owned. "The placement of their call centres is a matter for them," he said.

ATO narrows field for outsourcing contract

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has narrowed the field for its managed network services contract after eliminating Telstra and CSC from consideration.

Optus and Dimension Data are still in the running and will be negotiating contracts with the ATO for the next six months, according to a statement. The managed network services contract, worth around $55 million a year for between five and seven years, covers call centre infrastructure, the ATOs data and voice carriage services, telephone, Wide Area Network, Local Area Network and components of its security services.

The decision to narrow the field brings the ATO a step closer to completing the lengthy process of overhauling its outsourcing contracts. A 2007 review by the Boston Consulting Group resulted in the ATOs decision to break up its $1.8 billion 10-year deal with EDS, which covered its entire IT infrastructure. The contracts were separated into three bundles.

Happy New Year, Contact Centre Industry to Thrive when Rest of World in Toilet, Xmas Groping and the Dreaded Kawasaki

Happy New Year to the contact centre and outsourcing industries. At a time when the rest of the world's sectors are falling into the toilet our predictions are that the current global financial crisis (GFC) will mean that business's reliance on contact centres and outsourcing/offshoring will be stronger.

Why is this? With increased pressure to reduce costs to be financially conservative, organisations will seek low cost channels to interact with their market. In most cases these are phone and internet channels for both servicing and selling to customers. Currently in most countries in APAC, over 80% of all interactions made by customers to an organisation are handled by the contact centre. We predict this will increase to over 85% in the next 12 months. We also expect in Australia the AU$45billion of income generated by the contact centre industry in FY007/08 to increase this next year. Also, currently in Australia, and at a marginally lower level in Asian countries, the percentage of total customer contacts handled by self service technology/channels (eg IVR, speech, internet) is about 6% (the US is more than double this figure) so the GFC may be the catalyst we require in this region to boost customer use of self-service channels, which, if deployed well should provide high levels of customer happiness and cost savings for organisations.

Read the full blog entry here