bheer writes "BusinessWeek profiles a call center company called iQor which has grown revenues 40% year-on-year by (shock) treating employees as critical assets. It's done this not by nickel-and-diming, but by expanding its US operations (13 centers across the US now), giving employees universal health insurance, and paying salaries and bonuses that are nearly 50% above industry norms. The article notes that outsourcing will continue and globalization will continue to change the world's economic landscape. 'But the US is hardly helpless. With smart processes and the proper incentives, US companies can keep jobs here in America, and do so in a way that is actually better for the company and its employees.' Now if only other companies get a clue as well."
A phrase I saw in the summary almost had me sending a note to timothy from the "See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor" link, then when I RTFA I saw that it was word for word from TFA: "IQor also gives its U.S. employees universal health insurance".
A meaningless phrase, I think. The words "health insurance" suffices; universal health insurance is what Canadian and European residents get from their government. Bad writing at the least, which lead me to suspect that there were bad facts as well. However, most of the rest of it seemed well written.
Sure, some companies, such as Dell (DELL), have moved call centers back home after customer protests.
Makes it look like the customers are protesting outsourcing, when in fact what pisses most people off is that the offshore phone monkeys are completely unintelligible. If you're handling calls from Mexican customers, your call center workers should be able to speak fluent Spanish, not bad Spanish like I speak.
The best of iQor's front-line call-center workers make more than $100,000 per year.
What's the starting wage? TFA doesn't say.
And unlike many of its competitors, and an increasing number of other U.S. companies, iQor offers all its employees good health insurance and generous benefits packages.
Some time in the early 1980s, the head of one of the airlines (that ironically became a union airline later) said "any company that gets a union deserves one". Treat your employees like shit, and they will treat your customers like shit, and may even organize a union.
IQor also invests in technology designed to make its employees more efficient
Gad, there's little I hate worse than robocallers. When I say "hello" you better echo my "hello" PDQ or I'm hanging the phone up. You called me; don't put me on hold as soon as I answer without even responding.
From TFS: But the US is hardly helpless. With smart processes and the proper incentives, U.S. companies can keep jobs here in America, and do so in a way that is actually better for the company and its employees.
That assumes that today's busiesspeople aren't so greedy and stupid that they're like the monkey who has his hand stuck in the jar, too stupidly greedy to let go of the treat inside. A pretty unwarranted assumption, I think.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday August 27, @01:00PM (#29219845)
It doesn't matter what the starting wage is, as long as the ladder is there and you can work your way into a decent pay rate.
More companies should consider this, rather than designing their jobs to have a single pay rate with no possibility of advancement apart from leaving to work elsewhere.
I'm sure there are some things to nitpick in this particular case, but for all the different ways of crushing souls that corporations have come up with, there are still plenty of companies out there that see value in having happy employees, and with owners just trying to make an honest buck, rather than squeezing every possible dime out of the world.
I guess the lesson at the end of the day is that there's more than one way to run a business. Imagine that.
The words "health insurance" suffices; universal health insurance is what Canadian and European residents get from their government.
No, it makes sense. Many companies offer health insurance to salaried professionals, but not to hourly employees. Others have different plans available for workers at different levels. In the context of a business, "universal" excludes those cases.
It's not "universal" healthcare until every one in the universe is covered. Guh! Surely we can pay for that by just forcing the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, right?
Seriously, I doubt the toilet cleaner has health insurance from IQor, because he's not an iQor employee. iQor might be a great place for all I know, but many companies who proclaim "wonderful benefits for all employees" have a suspiciously low percentage of workers who are actually employees, and the others generally get treated like crap. Google is really extreme about this: I keep expecting the announcement that there are now two sets of bathrooms, one for employees and one for contractors (from the news I've seen, Google contactors can't have any of the free sodas, can't eat in the cafeteria, can't use the ping-pong tables, are beaten if they allow their shadow to touch an employee, etc, etc).
I agree, how can we even have a discussion about some mythical 'right' to healthcare? Hint: It isn't a 'right' if it requires the enslavement of someone else. Doctors and the rest of the healthcare industry are not required to serve you. You do not have a moral claim on their services.
Practically all British GP's run their own businesses. There's nothing preventing them from operating entirely privately, and many do, but most strong to receive NHS payment to take NHS patients because it's well paid and takes all the billing issues out of the equation. A large chunk of British hospital employees also offer private services. Many of them in NHS hospitals, using spare capacity that they can get access to at a low cost, benefitting both them and the public who get some of their hospital costs offset by private providers that way.
Certainly none of them are being forced or coerced, and clearly I must be misguided seeing as I don't know of any countries that force people to become doctors and then force them to work for the public. But I guess that doesn't fit with your fantasy world.
This is the problem with all of the new progressive 'rights' they kee on inventing compared to real human rights. To illustrate, free speech is a fundamental Right possessed by every human being, regardless whether they live in a hellhole that oppresses them.
All rights are human inventions. To pretend otherwise is meaningless.
And all rights are meaningless without at least the possibility of having the means and ability to make use of them. First and foremost that means actually staying alive and in good health. Any society that insists on caring about human rights that doesn't also take steps to ensure that everyone has a recent shot at good health is just plain taking the piss.
This is not a *new* idea - it's an idea that is well over 160 years old, gaining ground starting with the first socialist ideologists, and one that has been penetrating further right in the political landscape ever since (i.e. look at Europe where the vast majority of conservative parties no also staunchly support the concept of a *right* to a level of basic welfare).
Of course since we don't have universal health care you can usually go to an emergency room and get to see someone before you die, unlike the routine horror stories coming out of the British press.
You must be reading different stories from the British press than what they actually publish in Britain. As it stands here, anyone can go to an emergency room and be guaranteed treatment here too, but we don't because the vast majority of us get more than good enough treatment by going to our GP and get referred.
People who are not satisfied are perfectly free to get private health insurance - it's available and *cheap* since they only provide cover above and beyond services where they know they don't stand a chance of competing with the NHS.
Even though they say that they can give you more perks, the call center jobs still sucks...
Why?
Because when a company is proud that it's turnover rate is only 45% (less than half the industry's average), it tells me that this job is something I would never want to touch with a five foot pole (as opposed to a ten foot one).
A company with 45% turnover on 11000 employees means approximately 4950 employees get churned out in a year. That still isn't very good...
A company with 45% turnover on 11000 employees means approximately 4950 employees get churned out in a year. That still isn't very good...
A call-center job, no matter how fun and rewarding it might be, is still an entry-level position. When most of your workforce is already planning on being somewhere else in a few years while you are training them in, a 45% turnover rate is OUTSTANDING.
If you're still holding the exact same position at the exact same company which you took right after graduation, that's not an "entry-level" job, but a "dead-end" job.
A call center is where you work while you take night classes in network administration, computer programming, or towards your MBA, which will prep you for whatever your REAL career will be. Nobody dreams about growing up to deal with angry customers for a living until retirement, unless you mean "deal with" them in the mafia sense of the word.
Yeah, but from what I've seen, programmers and network admins usually don't make more than $100k except in CA (where the cost of living and ridiculous taxes overwhelm the pay differential).
Even though they say that they can give you more perks, the call center jobs still sucks...
Why?
Because when a company is proud that it's turnover rate is only 45% (less than half the industry's average), it tells me that this job is something I would never want to touch with a five foot pole (as opposed to a ten foot one).
Don't judge a an entire industry by the majority of the businesses that comprise it. I work for a managed web hosting company that's doing splendidly even in the recession because we bend over backwards to please our customers. Even when it means that once in awhile we have to refund an entire month's bill to keep the account or dedicate a tech's shift to solving a particularly troublesome MySQL problem. Although there is much that I disagree with in terms of management decisions here, one thing that I stand behind is their commitment to treating every single employee like gold. The pay is not stellar, but we have full medical and dental; a theatre-style lounge complete with projectors, cable TV, Xbox, and PC gaming rigs; unlimited free soft drinks and the company pays for outings like trips to sports games, amusement parks, newly-released movies, paintball, you name it. Every job here is stressful but the perks and camaraderie make it all totally worthwhile and as a result, we have no problem going the extra mile on a daily basis for the customers.
I've co-founded a start-up or 3. My co-founders and I have never offered 'a theatre-style lounge complete with projectors, cable TV, Xbox, and PC gaming rigs; unlimited free soft drinks and the company pays for outings like trips to sports games, amusement parks, newly-released movies, paintball, you name it'. We do always make sure everyone has good hardware and a pleasant working environment. Also, we make sure our team members are well paid.
IMHO, all else being equal, good pay is a much stronger retention mechanism then toys and free drinks. It's especially critical if you're looking to recruit and retain people with families. Better for productivity too.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday August 27, @06:17PM (#29224729)
I agree. I want to get paid (well) and then go home to the people I *really* want to hang out with. When I see companies with movie theaters and free drinks, all it tells me is that they expect their work to become my life. Thanks, but no thanks.
Interestingly enough, the city I'm from had a "near-shore" call centre. I'm Canadian, and we've got the Western Pacific accent here.
They were considered an excellent bargain because the staff spoke fluent, unaccented English. The customers loved it.
It messed up our local economy in a strange way -- West paid $10 / hour to start, which meant that every store in town, from KFC to the Dollar Store, had to pay at least that or they wouldn't get staff. West employed thousands of people, and had a voracious appetite. When you can get $8 frying burgers or $10 + bus passes + tuition bonuses + entry into car draws, we had stores "closed today due to lack of staff".
When our dollar reached parity last year, it became more expensive to run West than it was to just pay for Americans to do the job. They closed.
Oh geez, West. Talk about a shit-faced company. No direct deposit unless you've worked there five years (like anyone would stay there that long), no assigned desk (rotated seating, even a bathroom break means logging out of your system and then finding a new one when you come back), systems that require running about 6-7 IE Windows and a few other network applications with only 512MB of RAM, 10 minute breaks that are cut short because you have to log back into said slow ass system about 4-5 minutes early in order to get back on the phone after the break, and team leads and senior reps that treat you like it's a damn elementary school. I have no illusion that call center jobs are great jobs, by and large, but I've worked with three different call centers and working at West by far was the worst experience of the three, no contest. The best thing about it was when I called in to tell them I was quitting, they didn't even act a tiny bit surprised. The average employee probably stays there about 2-3 months, including the training that lasts about a month and is much easier than the actual work.
Not sure how you made the leap from 'technology designed to make its employees more efficient' to robocallers.
From my understanding of TFA, IQor does customer service type of stuff. So, sophisticated knowledge bases, good front-ends for customer service tools, flexible processes, etc. can all be examples of tech that makes a customer service group more efficient (there's much more). Robocallers wouldn't even apply (the only automated piece of the called is, sometimes, the greeting).
This is how the small business I work for operates. They treat employees as a vital resource and asset. They know they invest a lot of time and money to hire and train us so they compensate us well according to how well we help the company make money. They know that without the people doing the work the business wouldn't make money. It's how companies used to operate and imho how they should operate.
Sure in the lean times we don't get the nice bonuses we are used to but we get to keep our jobs because they don't squander away money when times are good because they know bad times are coming.
As a business owner, I try to do the same thing. It's not difficult, you just can't be greedy. Do well a couple of months? Do go by yourself a brand new $100K car. Shove that cash into reserves, for when you have lean months and don't want to let people go. Good bosses/owners make for great/secure jobs for employees. I don't need an MBA to tell me that.
Another ditto from a small business owner. What's always amazed me is that most companies, rightfully, put the customer first. Employees should come in second, not executive bonuses. After all, it's the employees who get/interact with those "precious" customers, not the executives.
It's not a simple rank, 'tho. Without employees, customers are useless. Without customers, employees are useless. Without customers and employees, executives are useless. Of the three, executives are most expendable. Or, at least, most of the executives.
And that attitude works on a large scale too... one of my company's founders said this about 80 years ago:
"When all is said and done, this business is nothing but a symbol. And when we translate this, we find that it means a great many people think well of its products, and that a great multitude has faith in the integrity of the men who make this product.
"In a very short time, the machines that are now so lively will soon become obsolete. And the big buildings, for all their solidity, must some day be replaced.
"But a business which symbolizes can live so long as there are human beings alive. For it is not built of such flimsy materials as steel and concrete; it is built of human opinions, which may be made to live forever.
"The goodwill of the people is the only enduring thing in any business. It is the sole substance... the rest is shadow."
They take care of us, and we do our best to make the company successful.
The point of capitalism is not to lift up the employees.
You are looking at this through the evil end of the prism. The point of the article is that you can make money *while* lifting up employees, possibly more than if you crush them beneath your booted heal.
Errhm...There's a reason that so many people have poor experiences with work -- it is almost guaranteed that you will make significantly more money by crushing them beneath your booted heel...
Actually that is not true. Why was Henry Ford successful? Because he paid his employees enough to be able to afford the cars he produced. Robert Heinlein called it enlightened self interest. If I run a business and treat my employees well (and make sure that they know it), they will be more likely to do everything in their power to make my business more successful. On the other hand if I work for a business and it treats me well, if I do everything in my power to make that business successful, I am more likely to have job security.
1. Call centers are in the more depressed parts of the U.S. I have a sneaking suspicion the workers are happy-ish to be there, but aren't part of a healthy middle class. 2...U.S. employees universal health insurance. What kind? PPO. I'm tired of hearing this topline chant when the details of the policies are depressing. 3....and pays salaries and bonuses that are nearly 50% above industry norms. So, are the call center workers still the working poor? 4. The best of iQor's front-line call-center workers make more than $100,000 per year The best one serving an uber-tight niche. More spam.
Quote: "But the US is hardly helpless. With smart processes and the proper incentives, U.S. companies can keep jobs here in America . Managers rarely care, and even more rarely, have the technical expertise to handle labor decisions in ways that benefit themselves and the country. Their entire focus is getting that next bonus. If they have to move 75% of their operations to lower Slobbovia to do it, they will, rather than spend the 15 minutes of googling and thinking that would allow them to do the job more efficiently and cheaply in the USA. . Unfortunately, in the USA, most managers have MBAs but nothing else, an education which seems to leave most of them with the ability to do almost anything financial except understand and run a business in real time.
An MBA is like a pilot's license where they only trained you to fly into the ground. With your grade being based on how quickly you can get to the ground.
When you hear about these compensation packages the execs are getting, it makes you wonder how far that could stretch if divided equitably amongst the workers.
The sad truth is that people don't seem to want to pay more for quality, they'll only pay more for fashion. When Macs were sold based on their utility, they eventually lost out to the up and coming Wintel systems that weren't as good but were a whole lot cheaper. The Mac CEO at the time was advised to cut the price and he said "No, people will pay for quality." No, they didn't. Not enough of them. And Mac didn't really make a comeback until Steve Jobs made them sexy again, made technology dance to the same tune as fashion. Suddenly Apple is chic and cool and people are happy to pay ridiculous gobs of money.
The widening income gap has left a huge hole in consumer items, particularly durable goods. High end goods (ie durables that actually last) are many multiples of the price of cheaper goods. Somehow luxury and utility/durability have merged. If you don't believe me go try and buy a set of knives. Your choices are: a) bendy throwaway toys at walmart/target/whatever or b) half a paycheck at some kitchen boutique.
My policy now is that if something is supposed to last (and I can afford it or afford to do without it for a while) I make sure to buy well and buy once. It sucks though that I have to do so from brands and places that have outrageous markups though.
They moved their first call center out of Austin not because their employees were demanding high wages, but because they'd so pissed off everyone even remotely technical in town that they couldn't hire anyone in the first place. The great thing about following Dell is at least you know you're going to go into bankruptcy really, really slowly. I guess that's a business plan.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday August 27, @01:23PM (#29220205)
I know at IBM, most mainframe operators (including myself) made over $100k. It wasn't that hard. IBM just worked us to death, and paid us time and a half over 40. When you're working 12-hours a day 7 days a week (84 hours), the dollars add up ($27 RG, $41.50 OT). Add in the fact that I worked the night shift at the time, so I literally couldn't spend the money I was making. I left after a few years.
I imagine a call-center like this is counting those 6-figure salaries in the same way. They pay their top employees to work 70 / 80 hours a week.
Google the title. I agree that any company that gets a union deserves one.
There was a brief time when companies considered high-quality customer service to be a competitive edge. This lasted from the beginning of large-scale DP in the 1970s until sometime in the early 1990s when most industries started to see customer service as a cost to be reduced.
If you've already made a decision to provide crap customer service (an MBA would call it "minimizing service cost to the extent feasible"), it is cheaper to do this from locations with low labor costs. Most companies still prefer to provide crap customer service, and if you call almost any company selling cable, wireless, credit card, satellite, ISP service, banking, or insurance of any kind this is what you're likely to get.
I presume that iQor is working with clients in high-value segments where high-quality customer service still matters. At this point, such a market is relatively small. There's no doubt it costs more, because you have to be able to retain the good reps, which means you can't put as much pressure on them to meet quotas, and you have to pay them more, and generally put up with things like doctor visits and bathroom breaks that drive down productivity. And you have to hire managers who actually know how to manage and motivate people. Compared to low-wage offshore locations, you end up paying 10x or 20x as much per call (I'm guessing).
The wireless places and the banks and credit cards aren't, at this point, willing to do this. They model how much churn they're going to get, and what it will cost them, and decide that it isn't worth it. So it's a niche, where if you've sold someone a $20,000 injection molding machine or something, you feel more compelled to have someone on the phone who can actually figure out when it's going to ship.
I'm not convinced that that changes anything, because niches by their nature do not scale well.
And I don't think that my cell phone company is going to start having live humans making $30 an hour answer 611 calls on the second ring, either.
Even HP/Agilent have lost their way after the founders left. Back in the 50's-80's when the founders still called the shots they valued people (down to the janitors), treated them well, and fostered an environment that was aimed at excellence (i.e. you were inspired to keep up with your coworkers, not constantly dragged down to their level). Once the MBA's got in charge it has been steadily downhill.
The lure to cut costs vs. the hard to quantify benefits of nurturing employees through creating a rewarding work environement is one few business majors who have not come up through the ranks can appreciate. Sadly it feels like virtually all corporate cultures have succumb to the dark side.
I used to work 60 hour weeks happily, but having been outright screwed by too many MBA driven nickel and diming fiascos I no longer do. I work my 8 hours and go home, keeping my head down the whole time. I pour my creative juices into home projects instead of unrewarding work ones (3 industrial sewing machine actually come close to the fun of microwave IC design, who'd of thunk?).
I hope one day people will realize that most executives (in publicly-traded companies) DON'T have the companies', the investors' or the employees' interests at heart. Most of these executives gained their position due to crafty manipulation and NOT by actually, really improving a product or product line, increasing profitability or market share. But they were and will be always great at presenting their (short or very short term) results in the best light possible, and excellent at knowing and manipulating the right people.
This breed of executives will outsource to poor countries (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins), lower salaries and/or fire employees at home (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) and eliminate R&D and products/services (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) - which will look good for a short while. Long enough to get a new promotion or a job at another company, after cashing in.
Please do yourself a favor and have a glance at this book. [amazon.com]
Hate to say this, but the company I work for (pick any 3 letters), and any other IT company ends up doing the same thing as this company.
Either they get competent staff on the front lines, or your back end Sys Engineering staff ends up supporting issues they should have been handled at the front lines.
What industry finds call center work so valuable that they can pay iQor enough to pay its employees so well?
Pretty much all of them. The only difference with iQor is that they are focusing their cashflow in a different way than the traditional model.
They are paying the people who directly create wealth instead of the risk managers who indirectly create wealth. Given that risk management (capital management, the executives) is becoming a rather boring and formulaic specialty, and that we recently proved that the "best" really aren't that much better at it (the bank collapse was a direct result of poor risk management), it seems reasonable to shift cashflow toward paying the direct creators of wealth and to get by with more state school BABMs and fewer Columbia MBAs.
Over the past 40 years in particular we shifted to the point of paying risk managers compensatory wages that exceed their wealth creation, while paying labor competitive wages that are vastly below their wealth creation. Perhaps that made sense when capital/risk management was a new, complex, and poorly understood science. What this company seems to be positing, and something with which I agree, is that capital/risk management is becoming formulaic, and so now a portion of the risk management compensation cashflow can be efficiently repurposed toward improving the quality of the product (hiring better communicators in this case).
I suspect that in 10 years a computer will be the new support representative. Then I can tell it how bad I hate the company it works for while not feeling bad about it...
I suspect the fact that these people are incredibly efficient and good at their jobs means that you're less likely to be on the phone for an hour, which appears to be the point. They may get paid 4x more than the average phone jockey, but if they can handle 5x as many calls, then they are a better deal.
The only problem with that theory is that the people calling in will be just as dumb and angry as ever, so even if the guy in the call center is great he probably won't see the massive increase in productivity that you would expect.
It seems to me that this company is the perfect "second tier" tech support line. The first tier being the guys in India who just go down the list regardless of what problem you have because 75% of the time it's the same dumb problem again and these guys get paid way too much t
At the very least, minimum wage should be decided at the state or local level. What constitutes a "fair" minimum wage in B-F-Nowhere, Ohio sure as hell isn't a "fair" wage in New York City.
Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
A phrase I saw in the summary almost had me sending a note to timothy from the "See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor" link, then when I RTFA I saw that it was word for word from TFA: "IQor also gives its U.S. employees universal health insurance".
A meaningless phrase, I think. The words "health insurance" suffices; universal health insurance is what Canadian and European residents get from their government. Bad writing at the least, which lead me to suspect that there were bad facts as well. However, most of the rest of it seemed well written.
Sure, some companies, such as Dell (DELL), have moved call centers back home after customer protests.
Makes it look like the customers are protesting outsourcing, when in fact what pisses most people off is that the offshore phone monkeys are completely unintelligible. If you're handling calls from Mexican customers, your call center workers should be able to speak fluent Spanish, not bad Spanish like I speak.
The best of iQor's front-line call-center workers make more than $100,000 per year.
What's the starting wage? TFA doesn't say.
And unlike many of its competitors, and an increasing number of other U.S. companies, iQor offers all its employees good health insurance and generous benefits packages.
Some time in the early 1980s, the head of one of the airlines (that ironically became a union airline later) said "any company that gets a union deserves one". Treat your employees like shit, and they will treat your customers like shit, and may even organize a union.
IQor also invests in technology designed to make its employees more efficient
Gad, there's little I hate worse than robocallers. When I say "hello" you better echo my "hello" PDQ or I'm hanging the phone up. You called me; don't put me on hold as soon as I answer without even responding.
From TFS: But the US is hardly helpless. With smart processes and the proper incentives, U.S. companies can keep jobs here in America, and do so in a way that is actually better for the company and its employees.
That assumes that today's busiesspeople aren't so greedy and stupid that they're like the monkey who has his hand stuck in the jar, too stupidly greedy to let go of the treat inside. A pretty unwarranted assumption, I think.
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Funny)
IQor also invests in technology designed to make its employees more efficient
Like donuts, and the possibility of more donuts.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, because donuts make cops, faster, better, stronger, more intelligent... ^^
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:4, Funny)
You should see them before the donuts....
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't matter what the starting wage is, as long as the ladder is there and you can work your way into a decent pay rate.
More companies should consider this, rather than designing their jobs to have a single pay rate with no possibility of advancement apart from leaving to work elsewhere.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there are some things to nitpick in this particular case, but for all the different ways of crushing souls that corporations have come up with, there are still plenty of companies out there that see value in having happy employees, and with owners just trying to make an honest buck, rather than squeezing every possible dime out of the world.
I guess the lesson at the end of the day is that there's more than one way to run a business. Imagine that.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
The words "health insurance" suffices; universal health insurance is what Canadian and European residents get from their government.
No, it makes sense. Many companies offer health insurance to salaried professionals, but not to hourly employees. Others have different plans available for workers at different levels. In the context of a business, "universal" excludes those cases.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "universal" healthcare until every one in the universe is covered. Guh! Surely we can pay for that by just forcing the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, right?
Seriously, I doubt the toilet cleaner has health insurance from IQor, because he's not an iQor employee. iQor might be a great place for all I know, but many companies who proclaim "wonderful benefits for all employees" have a suspiciously low percentage of workers who are actually employees, and the others generally get treated like crap. Google is really extreme about this: I keep expecting the announcement that there are now two sets of bathrooms, one for employees and one for contractors (from the news I've seen, Google contactors can't have any of the free sodas, can't eat in the cafeteria, can't use the ping-pong tables, are beaten if they allow their shadow to touch an employee, etc, etc).
Parent
Re:the 'right' to health care (Score:5, Insightful)
Practically all British GP's run their own businesses. There's nothing preventing them from operating entirely privately, and many do, but most strong to receive NHS payment to take NHS patients because it's well paid and takes all the billing issues out of the equation. A large chunk of British hospital employees also offer private services. Many of them in NHS hospitals, using spare capacity that they can get access to at a low cost, benefitting both them and the public who get some of their hospital costs offset by private providers that way.
Certainly none of them are being forced or coerced, and clearly I must be misguided seeing as I don't know of any countries that force people to become doctors and then force them to work for the public. But I guess that doesn't fit with your fantasy world.
All rights are human inventions. To pretend otherwise is meaningless.
And all rights are meaningless without at least the possibility of having the means and ability to make use of them. First and foremost that means actually staying alive and in good health. Any society that insists on caring about human rights that doesn't also take steps to ensure that everyone has a recent shot at good health is just plain taking the piss.
This is not a *new* idea - it's an idea that is well over 160 years old, gaining ground starting with the first socialist ideologists, and one that has been penetrating further right in the political landscape ever since (i.e. look at Europe where the vast majority of conservative parties no also staunchly support the concept of a *right* to a level of basic welfare).
You must be reading different stories from the British press than what they actually publish in Britain. As it stands here, anyone can go to an emergency room and be guaranteed treatment here too, but we don't because the vast majority of us get more than good enough treatment by going to our GP and get referred.
People who are not satisfied are perfectly free to get private health insurance - it's available and *cheap* since they only provide cover above and beyond services where they know they don't stand a chance of competing with the NHS.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though they say that they can give you more perks, the call center jobs still sucks...
Why?
Because when a company is proud that it's turnover rate is only 45% (less than half the industry's average), it tells me that this job is something I would never want to touch with a five foot pole (as opposed to a ten foot one).
A company with 45% turnover on 11000 employees means approximately 4950 employees get churned out in a year. That still isn't very good...
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
A company with 45% turnover on 11000 employees means approximately 4950 employees get churned out in a year. That still isn't very good...
A call-center job, no matter how fun and rewarding it might be, is still an entry-level position. When most of your workforce is already planning on being somewhere else in a few years while you are training them in, a 45% turnover rate is OUTSTANDING.
If you're still holding the exact same position at the exact same company which you took right after graduation, that's not an "entry-level" job, but a "dead-end" job.
A call center is where you work while you take night classes in network administration, computer programming, or towards your MBA, which will prep you for whatever your REAL career will be. Nobody dreams about growing up to deal with angry customers for a living until retirement, unless you mean "deal with" them in the mafia sense of the word.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but from what I've seen, programmers and network admins usually don't make more than $100k except in CA (where the cost of living and ridiculous taxes overwhelm the pay differential).
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't judge a an entire industry by the majority of the businesses that comprise it. I work for a managed web hosting company that's doing splendidly even in the recession because we bend over backwards to please our customers. Even when it means that once in awhile we have to refund an entire month's bill to keep the account or dedicate a tech's shift to solving a particularly troublesome MySQL problem. Although there is much that I disagree with in terms of management decisions here, one thing that I stand behind is their commitment to treating every single employee like gold. The pay is not stellar, but we have full medical and dental; a theatre-style lounge complete with projectors, cable TV, Xbox, and PC gaming rigs; unlimited free soft drinks and the company pays for outings like trips to sports games, amusement parks, newly-released movies, paintball, you name it. Every job here is stressful but the perks and camaraderie make it all totally worthwhile and as a result, we have no problem going the extra mile on a daily basis for the customers.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:4, Interesting)
I've co-founded a start-up or 3. My co-founders and I have never offered 'a theatre-style lounge complete with projectors, cable TV, Xbox, and PC gaming rigs; unlimited free soft drinks and the company pays for outings like trips to sports games, amusement parks, newly-released movies, paintball, you name it'. We do always make sure everyone has good hardware and a pleasant working environment. Also, we make sure our team members are well paid.
IMHO, all else being equal, good pay is a much stronger retention mechanism then toys and free drinks. It's especially critical if you're looking to recruit and retain people with families. Better for productivity too.
]{
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. I want to get paid (well) and then go home to the people I *really* want to hang out with. When I see companies with movie theaters and free drinks, all it tells me is that they expect their work to become my life. Thanks, but no thanks.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, the city I'm from had a "near-shore" call centre. I'm Canadian, and we've got the Western Pacific accent here.
They were considered an excellent bargain because the staff spoke fluent, unaccented English. The customers loved it.
It messed up our local economy in a strange way -- West paid $10 / hour to start, which meant that every store in town, from KFC to the Dollar Store, had to pay at least that or they wouldn't get staff. West employed thousands of people, and had a voracious appetite. When you can get $8 frying burgers or $10 + bus passes + tuition bonuses + entry into car draws, we had stores "closed today due to lack of staff".
When our dollar reached parity last year, it became more expensive to run West than it was to just pay for Americans to do the job. They closed.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:4, Informative)
Oh geez, West. Talk about a shit-faced company. No direct deposit unless you've worked there five years (like anyone would stay there that long), no assigned desk (rotated seating, even a bathroom break means logging out of your system and then finding a new one when you come back), systems that require running about 6-7 IE Windows and a few other network applications with only 512MB of RAM, 10 minute breaks that are cut short because you have to log back into said slow ass system about 4-5 minutes early in order to get back on the phone after the break, and team leads and senior reps that treat you like it's a damn elementary school. I have no illusion that call center jobs are great jobs, by and large, but I've worked with three different call centers and working at West by far was the worst experience of the three, no contest. The best thing about it was when I called in to tell them I was quitting, they didn't even act a tiny bit surprised. The average employee probably stays there about 2-3 months, including the training that lasts about a month and is much easier than the actual work.
Parent
Re:Um, I'm doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
From my understanding of TFA, IQor does customer service type of stuff. So, sophisticated knowledge bases, good front-ends for customer service tools, flexible processes, etc. can all be examples of tech that makes a customer service group more efficient (there's much more). Robocallers wouldn't even apply (the only automated piece of the called is, sometimes, the greeting).
Did I miss something?
Parent
This... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure in the lean times we don't get the nice bonuses we are used to but we get to keep our jobs because they don't squander away money when times are good because they know bad times are coming.
Common sense that seems lost in this day and age.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a simple rank, 'tho. Without employees, customers are useless. Without customers, employees are useless. Without customers and employees, executives are useless. Of the three, executives are most expendable. Or, at least, most of the executives.
Re:This... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep-
And that attitude works on a large scale too... one of my company's founders said this about 80 years ago:
"When all is said and done, this business is nothing but a symbol. And when we translate this, we find that it means a great many people think well of its products, and that a great multitude has faith in the integrity of the men who make this product.
"In a very short time, the machines that are now so lively will soon become obsolete. And the big buildings, for all their solidity, must some day be replaced.
"But a business which symbolizes can live so long as there are human beings alive. For it is not built of such flimsy materials as steel and concrete; it is built of human opinions, which may be made to live forever.
"The goodwill of the people is the only enduring thing in any business. It is the sole substance... the rest is shadow."
They take care of us, and we do our best to make the company successful.
Parent
Re:This... (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of capitalism is not to lift up the employees.
You are looking at this through the evil end of the prism. The point of the article is that you can make money *while* lifting up employees, possibly more than if you crush them beneath your booted heal.
Parent
Re:This... (Score:5, Insightful)
Errhm...There's a reason that so many people have poor experiences with work -- it is almost guaranteed that you will make significantly more money by crushing them beneath your booted heel...
Actually that is not true. Why was Henry Ford successful? Because he paid his employees enough to be able to afford the cars he produced. Robert Heinlein called it enlightened self interest. If I run a business and treat my employees well (and make sure that they know it), they will be more likely to do everything in their power to make my business more successful. On the other hand if I work for a business and it treats me well, if I do everything in my power to make that business successful, I am more likely to have job security.
Parent
Wishful Thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Call centers are in the more depressed parts of the U.S. I have a sneaking suspicion the workers are happy-ish to be there, but aren't part of a healthy middle class.
2...U.S. employees universal health insurance. What kind? PPO. I'm tired of hearing this topline chant when the details of the policies are depressing.
3....and pays salaries and bonuses that are nearly 50% above industry norms. So, are the call center workers still the working poor?
4. The best of iQor's front-line call-center workers make more than $100,000 per year The best one serving an uber-tight niche. More spam.
That's Ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
The CEO of this company was born in India!
I think it says something very nasty about U.S. corporate culture that it takes an immigrant the see value in hiring Americans.
Re:That's Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Immigrants have always been key innovators in American business. Nothing ironic about that.
Parent
Re:That's Ironic (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Not helpless, but uninterested and clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
Quote: "But the US is hardly helpless. With smart processes and the proper incentives, U.S. companies can keep jobs here in America
.
Managers rarely care, and even more rarely, have the technical expertise to handle labor decisions in ways that benefit themselves and the country. Their entire focus is getting that next bonus. If they have to move 75% of their operations to lower Slobbovia to do it, they will, rather than spend the 15 minutes of googling and thinking that would allow them to do the job more efficiently and cheaply in the USA.
.
Unfortunately, in the USA, most managers have MBAs but nothing else, an education which seems to leave most of them with the ability to do almost anything financial except understand and run a business in real time.
Re:Not helpless, but uninterested and clueless (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
wealth generation by industry (Score:5, Interesting)
When you hear about these compensation packages the execs are getting, it makes you wonder how far that could stretch if divided equitably amongst the workers.
The sad truth is that people don't seem to want to pay more for quality, they'll only pay more for fashion. When Macs were sold based on their utility, they eventually lost out to the up and coming Wintel systems that weren't as good but were a whole lot cheaper. The Mac CEO at the time was advised to cut the price and he said "No, people will pay for quality." No, they didn't. Not enough of them. And Mac didn't really make a comeback until Steve Jobs made them sexy again, made technology dance to the same tune as fashion. Suddenly Apple is chic and cool and people are happy to pay ridiculous gobs of money.
Go figure.
Re:wealth generation by industry (Score:4, Insightful)
The widening income gap has left a huge hole in consumer items, particularly durable goods. High end goods (ie durables that actually last) are many multiples of the price of cheaper goods. Somehow luxury and utility/durability have merged. If you don't believe me go try and buy a set of knives. Your choices are: a) bendy throwaway toys at walmart/target/whatever or b) half a paycheck at some kitchen boutique.
My policy now is that if something is supposed to last (and I can afford it or afford to do without it for a while) I make sure to buy well and buy once. It sucks though that I have to do so from brands and places that have outrageous markups though.
Parent
Dell's a great example. (Score:5, Interesting)
They moved their first call center out of Austin not because their employees were demanding high wages, but because they'd so pissed off everyone even remotely technical in town that they couldn't hire anyone in the first place.
The great thing about following Dell is at least you know you're going to go into bankruptcy really, really slowly. I guess that's a business plan.
Universal health insurance (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition to these benefits, the company also offers world peace, satellite launches, and ponies.
CWA 1701 (Score:4, Interesting)
I know at IBM, most mainframe operators (including myself) made over $100k. It wasn't that hard. IBM just worked us to death, and paid us time and a half over 40. When you're working 12-hours a day 7 days a week (84 hours), the dollars add up ($27 RG, $41.50 OT). Add in the fact that I worked the night shift at the time, so I literally couldn't spend the money I was making. I left after a few years.
I imagine a call-center like this is counting those 6-figure salaries in the same way. They pay their top employees to work 70 / 80 hours a week.
Google the title. I agree that any company that gets a union deserves one.
Only works when customer service actually matters (Score:5, Insightful)
If you've already made a decision to provide crap customer service (an MBA would call it "minimizing service cost to the extent feasible"), it is cheaper to do this from locations with low labor costs. Most companies still prefer to provide crap customer service, and if you call almost any company selling cable, wireless, credit card, satellite, ISP service, banking, or insurance of any kind this is what you're likely to get.
I presume that iQor is working with clients in high-value segments where high-quality customer service still matters. At this point, such a market is relatively small. There's no doubt it costs more, because you have to be able to retain the good reps, which means you can't put as much pressure on them to meet quotas, and you have to pay them more, and generally put up with things like doctor visits and bathroom breaks that drive down productivity. And you have to hire managers who actually know how to manage and motivate people. Compared to low-wage offshore locations, you end up paying 10x or 20x as much per call (I'm guessing).
The wireless places and the banks and credit cards aren't, at this point, willing to do this. They model how much churn they're going to get, and what it will cost them, and decide that it isn't worth it. So it's a niche, where if you've sold someone a $20,000 injection molding machine or something, you feel more compelled to have someone on the phone who can actually figure out when it's going to ship.
I'm not convinced that that changes anything, because niches by their nature do not scale well.
And I don't think that my cell phone company is going to start having live humans making $30 an hour answer 611 calls on the second ring, either.
HP Way (Score:3, Interesting)
Even HP/Agilent have lost their way after the founders left. Back in the 50's-80's when the founders still called the shots they valued people (down to the janitors), treated them well, and fostered an environment that was aimed at excellence (i.e. you were inspired to keep up with your coworkers, not constantly dragged down to their level). Once the MBA's got in charge it has been steadily downhill.
The lure to cut costs vs. the hard to quantify benefits of nurturing employees through creating a rewarding work environement is one few business majors who have not come up through the ranks can appreciate. Sadly it feels like virtually all corporate cultures have succumb to the dark side.
I used to work 60 hour weeks happily, but having been outright screwed by too many MBA driven nickel and diming fiascos I no longer do. I work my 8 hours and go home, keeping my head down the whole time. I pour my creative juices into home projects instead of unrewarding work ones (3 industrial sewing machine actually come close to the fun of microwave IC design, who'd of thunk?).
"companies" may get a clue - executives won't. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope one day people will realize that most executives (in publicly-traded companies) DON'T have the companies', the investors' or the employees' interests at heart. Most of these executives gained their position due to crafty manipulation and NOT by actually, really improving a product or product line, increasing profitability or market share. But they were and will be always great at presenting their (short or very short term) results in the best light possible, and excellent at knowing and manipulating the right people.
This breed of executives will outsource to poor countries (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins), lower salaries and/or fire employees at home (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) and eliminate R&D and products/services (thus providing a short-term, fleeting increase in margins) - which will look good for a short while. Long enough to get a new promotion or a job at another company, after cashing in.
Please do yourself a favor and have a glance at this book. [amazon.com]
If it doesn't make sense, there's a reason. (Score:5, Insightful)
These $100k phone jobs aren't, "How do I plug in the VCR?" support.
As somebody else pointed out, It's collections and sales. That's a totally different beast from what most geeks think of as call-center.
These 6-figure people collect or sell 7-figures. They are not informing you that the router is down, or giving you the IP address for the mail server.
Re:Who pays for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to say this, but the company I work for (pick any 3 letters), and any other IT company ends up doing the same thing as this company.
Either they get competent staff on the front lines, or your back end Sys Engineering staff ends up supporting issues they should have been handled at the front lines.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
pick any 3 letters
Are 'POO' and 'ASS' already taken?
Re:Who pays for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
What industry finds call center work so valuable that they can pay iQor enough to pay its employees so well?
Pretty much all of them. The only difference with iQor is that they are focusing their cashflow in a different way than the traditional model.
They are paying the people who directly create wealth instead of the risk managers who indirectly create wealth. Given that risk management (capital management, the executives) is becoming a rather boring and formulaic specialty, and that we recently proved that the "best" really aren't that much better at it (the bank collapse was a direct result of poor risk management), it seems reasonable to shift cashflow toward paying the direct creators of wealth and to get by with more state school BABMs and fewer Columbia MBAs.
Over the past 40 years in particular we shifted to the point of paying risk managers compensatory wages that exceed their wealth creation, while paying labor competitive wages that are vastly below their wealth creation. Perhaps that made sense when capital/risk management was a new, complex, and poorly understood science. What this company seems to be positing, and something with which I agree, is that capital/risk management is becoming formulaic, and so now a portion of the risk management compensation cashflow can be efficiently repurposed toward improving the quality of the product (hiring better communicators in this case).
Parent
Re:Dress up a pig (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They do outsourced customer service, ie support calls, not telemarketing. They also do collections, which I guess is pretty shitty work.
Re:What a load of crap... (Score:4, Funny)
I suspect that in 10 years a computer will be the new support representative. Then I can tell it how bad I hate the company it works for while not feeling bad about it...
Just don't tell it how you feel about Windows 8 :P
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that this company is the perfect "second tier" tech support line. The first tier being the guys in India who just go down the list regardless of what problem you have because 75% of the time it's the same dumb problem again and these guys get paid way too much t
Re:Keeping jobs in the US is easy... (Score:4, Insightful)
At the very least, minimum wage should be decided at the state or local level. What constitutes a "fair" minimum wage in B-F-Nowhere, Ohio sure as hell isn't a "fair" wage in New York City.
Parent