he move follows almost a year of trials and research which looked at the impact on customers’ experiences from offshoring several Telecom contact centres, including 123 and several back office functions.
“We always said we would not make proposals until after the exhaustive trials were complete, and we’ve stuck to that promise,” said Alan Gourdie, CEO Telecom Retail.
“Put simply, if the customer experience offshore could not be proven to match the experience provided by New Zealand-based call centres, we did not proceed.
“In the case of 123 and *123 the trial data did not show us the consistent performance we needed to see in order to be comfortable with a large-scale offshoring of that operation, in which a detailed knowledge of an extremely varied set of products and services is all-important.
“If confirmed, today’s proposals would therefore retain the vast majority of our 123 and *123 contact centre positions in Hamilton.
“In other areas, where specific, technical knowledge was particularly important, offshore staff have delivered strong results for the New Zealand customers they dealt with.”
“Today’s proposals will not change the fact that Telecom still has more contact centre reps in New Zealand, answering more calls from more New Zealanders, than any of our competitors. It gives us a good blend of domestic and offshore coverage, assisting our 1.4 million customers with a range of often complex product and service inquiries,” Mr Gourdie said.
“If the proposal is confirmed, this re-balancing of contact centre positions will be carefully managed to ensure our people are treated fairly and wherever possible given other opportunities within Telecom, along with maintaining the customer experience in those impacted areas.”
Mr Gourdie acknowledged that the past year had been a time of uncertainty for staff in our New Zealand-based call centres, particularly those at the company’s Hamilton operation.
“We have communicated openly and regularly with staff throughout the trials. Feedback on the proposed structure will now be sought over the next two weeks, with a final contact centre structure to be confirmed by early March.”
Mr Gourdie said if the proposed model were confirmed then Telecom would work hard to ensure affected staff would be redeployed within the company or offered support to find other roles, with redundancies to be kept to a minimum.
“Due to the long timeframe for the migration, we expect the total number of redundancies to be very limited,” Mr Gourdie said.
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