Hola!

From the US comes Eastern Research Services, Inc:

Founded in 1992, Eastern Research Services LLC is one of the nation's largest independent telephone data collection companies, and the country's largest bilingual (English and Spanish) market research call center company.

With over 600 dually fluent telephone interviewers all located in the United States, ERS’s Bilingual Research Services (BRS) division provides its clients with the only accurate way to collect data via telephone with the fastest growing population segment in the United States.

As always, market research telephone data collection is our only business.

The company calls it "Language of Choice" interviewing, and given the rapidly growing Spanish-speaking hispanic population in the US, it makes a lot of sense. Surely there's some potential for an idea like this to take off in Australia. Plenty of call centre employees speak are fluent speakers of a second language, and it's rare that these skills get put to good use. True, there's no 'obvious' second language to offer, but speakers of Greek, Vietnamese, Italian and Chinese languages are likely to be kept pretty busy.

What's the difference?

One call centre is much like the next, right? With so much employee churn in an industry that is built on casualisation, it is tempting to lump them all together.

Just a few weeks back, the results to find the leading employer in Australia and New Zealand were released:

Hewitt Associates Announces Australia and New Zealand's Best Employers

SalesForce named overall Hewitt Best Employer for 2nd consecutive year

Sydney -- Hewitt Associates (NYSE:HEW), a global human resources services firm, today announced the 2005 Hewitt Best Employers in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). The following organisations were honoured in the study:

2005 Hewitt Best Employers in ANZ

Winner
SalesForce

Best New Entrant
ING Direct

Special Commendation for Consistent Improvement (in alphabetical order)
seek.com.au
Swiss Re

Hewitt Best Employers (in alphabetical order)
American Express
Bain & Company
Bayer Healthcare ANZ
Blackmores
British American Tobacco
Carson Group
Dell
Golder Associates
Medtronic
Nokia
Select Australasia
Westaff

Now in its fifth year, the Hewitt Best Employers in ANZ study is jointly managed by Hewitt Associates, The Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) and AFR BOSS magazine, and aims to better understand the link between people practices and business performance. With over 160 organisations and 40,000 employees taking part this year, it is the largest employee research project and market practice audit in the Australia and New Zealand region.

So there you have it - SalesForce it is. Given that the study was not limited to call centres, but covered businesses of all kinds, it is surprising to see a call centre at the top of the list. For a start, many call centres have turned to outsourced labour to fill their seats rather than hiring their staff directly. Sure, this gives them plenty of flexiblity in hiring and firing, but it does create a big barrier to becoming an employer of choice.

This isn't the first time SalesForce has featured prominantly in this survey. According to their website, they made the top ten list in both 2001 and 2003, and in 2004 and again this year has won the 'Best Employer' award.



Here's what SalesForce say about employee satisfaction:

Why being a top 10 employer is crucial

It’s common knowledge that many outsource call centre and field sales operators treat their employees in ways that deter great conversational performances – inadequate training, draconian conditions, workhouse environments that fail to stimulate. Such circumstances breed dissatisfied, de-motivated employees with negative attitudes that are reflected in every conversation.

Attracting and retaining career-minded individuals is the key to delivering extraordinary conversations hour after hour, day after day.

So that's the official line at SalesForce, but what do these satisftied, motivated well-trained, well-stimulated employees think of their working conditions?

Call Centre Comedy

This lobbed into the Mad Bunyip's pouch this morning (lame? yep):

This year's Melbourne Fringe Festival features a comic play called "Call Girls". It's about the lives, loves & hang-ups of a busy call centre

Written and performed by two of Melbourne's favourite comedians (Janelle Koenig & Vanessa Bennett), the show highlights the amusing side of life on the phones and what we all do to keep a sense of humour about working 9 to 5. The show promises to not only be a fun night out, but would give your social club members a chance to have a good laugh about the people and situations they often face.

When: Weds-Sat throughout Fringe (Sept 21-Oct 8) at 9pm

Where: Glitch Bar & Cinema, 318 St George's Rd, North Fitzroy

Cost: $12 for groups of 5 or more

How: Fringe Ticketing 8417 8777 or www.melbournefringe.com.au


Call Girls

Janelle Koenig & Vanessa Bennett

Looks kinda fun.

Telemarketing rant

There is nothing more pleasing than being at home of an evening watching a movie or having dinner with the family or soaking in a well-earned bubble bath or alphabetising your pet rock collection and being interrupted at 7.15pm by a phone call from some guy in India who wants to offer you a 40 per cent discount on a set of gold-plated metal posts suitable for fences and for gates and for inserting up the wazoo of some guy in India. Or possibly not.

Make no mistake: the telemarketing industry is a highly organised, highly regulated, highly respected entity - with "highly respected" being used here in its strictest possible sense so as not to be confused with terms such as "deeply despised", "universally resented" or "immeasurably annoying".

Still, when telemarketers are at parties they don't tell anyone they're telemarketers. They tell them they're ... signwriters, astronauts, hookers, professional sandblasters - anything - just to get people off the subject. This isn't because they are liars, but because they don't want to find themselves with a swizzle-stick up each nostril and a bowl of eggplant dip on their head.

Jim Schembri writing in The Age on Friday has done his best to give telemarketers as almighty wallop. Whilst the message might hurt a bit, the piece is funny as all hell. It's true that telemarketers do have a pretty low public standing, and it makes life tough for those who do it day in and day out. Everyone seems to have a telemarketing horror story, and it doesn't seem to be a perception that will change easily. Maybe it's time for a more public defence of telemarketing rather than simply allowing the sales staff on the front-line to cop all the abuse.

(Note to self: do not attend party with Jim Schembri and eggplant dip.)

Welcome!

Welcome to Waiting on Hold. This is intended as a place for people who work in call centres to talk about the things that are important to them. There are about 150,000 people working in the call centre industry in Ausralia, yet there are few opportunities to share stories, swap gossip and get to know what is happening with others in the industry. This is a chance to change that.

Speak up, anonymously if you like, and tell the world what life is like in your call centre workplace. Post a comment, or email the Mad Bunyip (mad_bunyip@hotmail.com) if you want to become a contributer, and tell the world what you think.