Oh, Matron

In the People's Republic of Victoria the Government has launched a new call centre where the stakes are higher than at most other centre. From Chairman Bracks:

NOW EVERY VICTORIAN FAMILY HAS A NURSE-ON-CALL - 4 June 2006

Victorian families wanting immediate health advice now have it at their fingertips, with the launch today of Victoria’s Nurse-On-Call 24-hour hotline.

Launching the service at its new Richmond call centre, Premier Steve Bracks said callers would be able to speak to an experienced nurse, discuss their illness or condition, receive advice and be directed to the care or treatment they need.

“Whether you’re a mum whose kids have come down with the flu in the middle of the night, or an elderly Victorian who wants advice about how to manage their long-term back pain, you’ll be able to get straight through to a registered nurse, without having to endure an annoying automated menu system,” Mr Bracks said.

When the idea was first canvassed, it was controversial. The theory went (with some validity) that the call centre was merely an excuse to erode funding to more conventional face-to-face medical services. The assumption implicit in this thinking is that call centres are a second best option, an assumption that is far from clear. The convenience of phone contact, plus the ability to service remote areas effectively and the chance for a second and third opinion mean that a nursing service call centre is an idea with plenty of potential.

According this this FAQ the staff on board are all registered nurses rather than coming from a call centre background - thankfully, given the woeful medical knowledge of most call centre employees. (However, they seem to know plenty about popping pills. Go figure.) It's heartening though, that work in a call centre is perceived as worthwhile and professionally fulfilling when a generation ago it's likely to have been sneered at. Given that 500,000 calls a year are estimated to be recieved by the centre (1 for every 8 Victorians), it's clearly a significant part of the government's health strategy. With a highly competitive Grade of Service of 80-20 (80% of calls answered in 20 seconds) required by the contract, it seems that the government are keen to make sure it avoids being perceived as a second-class service.

It's worth noting that the contract to manage the call centre hasn't gone to one of the big call centre outsourcers: instead it has gone to McKesson Asia-Pacific, a niche operator who specialise in medical call centres. According to their website, here's their sales pitch:

McKesson Asia-Pacific is the leading provider of high-quality telephone-based healthcare throughout Australia and New Zealand.

We employ health professionals, including nurses, social workers and psychologists, to provide health advice programs for:

State and national governments
Area Health Services and District Health Boards
Health insurers
Other private healthcare providers

Carry on.

Now that's a bonus!

From The Age today:

NEXT time you walk into the office tea room, don't be surprised to see a wanted poster offering a lucrative reward. It won't be for the colleague who stole your chocolate biscuits.

As the nation enjoys near record low unemployment, the skilled worker has become Australia's most wanted. Last week, Fitzroy web design company Reactive Media sent out an email that transformed its 25 staff from salaried cyber geeks into corporate bounty hunters.

"We've decided to start a recruitment bonus scheme here at Reactive and it could mean a cool $500 in your pocket," the message said. "Here's how it works: You refer a potential employee to Reactive. They get the job. They stay in it for at least three months. We give you a $500 bonus."

Refer-a-friend campaigns are nothing new to the call centre industry, but now it seems the stakes are getting a little higher. In my call centre, there's a long standing promise of a pair of movie tickets (total value = $30) to whoever refers a friend who ends up lasting more than a month in the job. According to The Age article, hundreds, and potentially even thousands of dollars are now on the table.

Encouraging your existing staff to recommend people to fill vacancies is a fine idea, particularly during a prolonged labour shortage like the one we're experiencing at the moment. It seems doubly useful in the call centre biz, given that the industry traditionally has a high level of turnover, with many staff coming and going within a few months.

There are considerable benefits to both employers and employees in the model. For employers, it reduces the risk associated with each new recruit: new employees who come with a recommendation from existing employees would surely be more likely to stick around than unknown candidates with only a resume and a friendly smile to back them up. It's hard not to have just a smidgeon of sympathy for employers who go to the invest in the training of staff only to see them walk out the door soon after.

And for employees, the cash is not the only benefit. You can imagine that staff are more likely to stick around if they are working amongst friends, and this style of recruiting will do just that.

So with both parties as the winners, who are the losers? Only the professional recruiting companies, who traditionally charge a significant commission for their services, and are now seeing the job done by amateurs.

Viva la labour shortage!

It really does hurt to smile

Researchers in Germany might be busy trying to score tickets to Togo versus Ecuador at the moment, but a few months back they were on the money with some interesting research into stress in the service industry:

The study tested students working in an imaginary call centre who were subject to abuse from clients.

Some of the participants were allowed to answer back, while others had to be polite and friendly all the time.

Those who stood up to clients had a rapid heartbeat for a brief period, but for those who had to remain friendly their heart was still racing long after the client had hung up.

The conclusion reached by the psychologists was that "being friendly against one's will causes nothing but stress".

So Stan Zemanek's not an arse-hole, he's just looking after his health.

Thanks for holding

Hope the wait wasn't too long and you liked the on-hold music. I'm sure you'll agree Greensleeves does sound good when it's played on a synthesiser with just three notes.

Mad_Bunyip has been overwhelmed with other things these past few months, but now that Mum's posted bail I'll be back on deck. A post every few days is my aim, give or take the occasional distraction.

Flick an email my way at mad_bunyip@hotmail.com or stick your big nose into it by leaving a comment.

Bunyip.

Government moves (slowly) on Do Not Call

One solution to flood of telemarketing calls to those people who don't want em is the establishment of a Do Not Call database. The idea is simple: an online database of phone numbers of people who have requested to not be called. The devil is in the detail, and that's what has kept it in the too-hard-basket for so long. Over the weekend, though, the government made a move on the issue:

30 October 2005

A solution for nuisance calls: Options for an Australian Do Not Call register
A discussion paper canvassing options for a national, legislated Do Not Call register was released today by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan.

“Australian consumers are increasingly frustrated by interruptions from telemarketers, particularly unsolicited calls that come from call centres overseas,” the Minister said.

“But in formulating a way to cut down on unsolicited calls there are a number of important issues to consider including how bodies such as charities and legitimate market researchers can continue to operate.

“The discussion paper I am releasing today is a vital step in formulating how a national, legislated Do Not Call register would work in Australia.”

Check out the discussion paper, which can be downloaded here.

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!

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?