Call Centres: efficient but unhelpful?

An interesting clip from an interesting article by economics guru Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald during the week. From "An efficient ride up the garden path":

One example of means supplanting ends that always springs to my mind is the way we have to put up with talking to the companies we deal with via call centres.

We all hate them, yet we've had them thrust on us. Why? Because, if you ignore all the time-wasting, frustration and misinformation to customers, the introduction of call centres has greatly increased the efficiency and productivity of our big companies.

Part of the productivity improvement of which the Howard Government so frequently boasts has come from the move to call centres. And most of us - not just the rich, but most of us - have shared in the fruits of that productivity improvement, in the form of the higher real wages the Government also keeps reminding us of.

Trouble is, though our incomes are higher as a result of call centres, our quality of life is lower - lower than when we were poorer. Why is this a good deal?

[The worst thing about call centres is the misinformation. The goods and services we buy have become more complex - which is why we have to keep ringing up about them - but, at a time when access to specialist advice has become more necessary, companies fob us off with generalists, phone-answerers who know surprisingly little about the product.]

More on WorkChoices

Looks like Waiting on Hold has cracked it for a mention on Crikey.

Also in that edition is another similar report to the one published on Waiting on Hold yesterday:

3. Promoting IR: Where those taxpayer dollars are going...

An anonymous tipster writes:

Curious to see Beazley and Co complaining about $100 million of taxpayer money going to the advertising and associated costs to promote the Government's new IR reforms, definitely valid as it appears.

I work for a Private Call Centre Operator in Melbourne – on Thursday there was a staff email sent out asking for volunteers to work in a new campaign on our days off or work back late/start early for a couple of hours. The incentive was above the standard rate of pay to work on the campaign – what it was at the time was a mystery and we wouldn't find out until the day of training (also the same day that we "hit the phones").

The rates were $22.50 p/hr for Monday to Friday, $28 p/hr for Saturday and a whopping $37 p/hr for Sunday. (Normal rates are approx $15 p/hr during the week for perms and $19 p/hr for casuals).

But here is where it gets interesting. First shift for this campaign was today (Sun. 09/10) – started at 10am for two hours of paid training and then do a four hour shift from 12-4pm, with another group starting training at 2pm to take over from 4-10pm. Training consisted of telling us that the campaign was the WorkChoice Hotline (inbound call centre) and we would be responsible for answering very basic questions regarding the "proposed" legislation that has not yet been finalised.

We were told the advertising campaign would start that day... I sat on the phone waiting for a call from 12pm right through to 4pm, as did approximately another 150-160 operators, shock/horror – NO CALLS. The advertising hadn't even begun!!! No-one knew the hotline number to call in the first place!

So there we sat for four hours with not one call for four hours, at a rate of $37 p/hr. When I got home later in the day I took notice that the advertising didn't even start till halfway through the 6pm news.

So approximately $35,000 in wages is what was paid out to our group (not including Supervisors and Trainers) to sit there and do nothing! And that is what we were getting paid – God knows what the company was actually pulling from them. Only regret? I wished I had taken along The Latham Diaries to ease the boredom.

To top it off, it was mentioned that the Government had originally asked for a 300 seat call centre to be operated at the start.

Any other reports?

WorkChoices hotline

Day One of the Government's new Workplace Reforms hotline, and word has reached Waiting On Hold that things were remarkably quiet on the phones. According to a source who was on the front line, the government is using three call centres - one in Canberra one in Sydney and one down in Melbourne - to handle the calls, but on the first day there was barely a trickle, let alone a flood.

The government launched the information campaign on the next round of workplace reforms with the PM and the Minister at a press conference in Canberra, followed up by a TV ad campaign blitz on Sunday media, directing people to both the hotline and the new website, WorkChoices.

Such was the woeful lack of calls to the hotline that some employees reported not taking a single call in a shift. Given the generous pay for work on a Sunday - $37 an hour - it amounts to an embarassment for the government and a shameful waste of taxpayer dollars. Considering that the government has designated long hours for the hotline (at 8am-10pm seven days a week it keeps longer hours than most government hotlines) the massive expense seems likely to grow.

Much as those of us in the industry dream of good pay with few calls, it's hard not to wonder about just how ineffective and poorly planned this campaign seems to be. No real objective for the hotline beyond selling the government's message, no detail on the legislation available yet, and a decent website keeping most punters happy. Just what is the point? Still, nice work if you can get it!