30 July 2005  CSAT, Quality Assurance

I don’t claim to be an expert on customer surveys but I work daily to understand the behavior of customers with regards to a product, buying, or service experience. Quality in the call center industry is now synonymous to Customer Experience.

30 July 2005  Lifestyle

Coffee – sales have sky rocketed and one of the major markets of Starbucks, Seattle’s Best Coffee or Gloria Jean’s have been call center employees. What’s disappointing though is that they close early (for us night crawlers). They are not 24 hours…YET.

20 July 2005  Quality Assurance

The Quality team has been known as a separate group in call centers but still very much into operations. But, is it really autonomous?

17 July 2005  Lifestyle

It’s your day off and it happens to be a Sunday. You work at night (if you outsource to the Asia Pacific) so you’re wide awake. Unfortunately, you have nowhere to go…almost.

15 July 2005  Lifestyle

It is each employee’s dream to be flown to another country, state or any city other than the place they currently live in, all expenses paid. This industry definitely offers it. If you gain upper management’s trust and the client pays for the trip, then off you go. Benefits, benefits! Oh yes, it is wonderful to be picked.

10 July 2005  People, Work Environment

Most, if not all call center employees go through stress. Some would say it’s nothing compared to other industries but I doubt that. Advertising, publishing and broadcasting companies are stressful as well. It is as fast paced as well.

2 July 2005  People

Being in a stressful environment, you clamor for a big break with your colleagues. The best thing about it is you get it for free! Oh yes! The company pays for it. It could either be a prize, an incentive or a benefit for accepting the demands of the workload. On all the call centers I’ve joined, there is one thing people love – going out of town especially the BEACH!

18 June 2005  Work Environment

The work environment is critical to any employee. One particular thing that should be important in any call center are the chairs and tables, widely known as stations. An agent is expected to sit on this chair for hours on end until the shift is over or when it’s time for a break.

12 June 2005  Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance has once only been monitoring and evaluation of agent’s calls in order to determine areas of opportunity for improvement and best practices to be fed to the floor.  It’s approach was to also “watch” for compliance and ensure all policies and processes of the client are met.  It …

21 March 2005  People

Since call centers sprouted in the industry, everyone wanted to join the band wagon. 
Everybody wanted to get in because it pays more than the industry standard.  An agent for example can earn a basic salary of P11,000 per month. Wow! That’s pretty good.  A bank teller might only earn 9,000 …

11 March 2005  Work Environment

There is one basic rule that everyone who enters in the call center must remember. SPEAK IN ENGLISH. I’ve been to several call centers and each and every one of them had this basic rule. This doesn’t mean we have to forget our native language but it is required because of the job.

6 March 2005  Lifestyle, Training, Work Environment

Day 1 in the call center industry started about 4 years ago for me. The industry was starting to boom and companies in the U.S. were starting to see the potential of the Philippines to outsource their day to day operations.