US Call-Center Jobs — That Pay $100K a Year

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."

Re:Dress up a pig

[abigor]

They do outsourced customer service, ie support calls, not telemarketing. They also do collections, which I guess is pretty shitty work.

Re:Um, I'm doubtful

[Ethanol-fueled]

And unlike Indians, Americans bathe regularly.

Hygenic employees are happy, productive employees. Even American military manuals state that bathing is linked to morale.

Re:This...

[TooMuchToDo]

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.

Nickel chasing scumbags, IMHO

[Obstin8]

Our cable company (Rogers) decided to bill us for a non-existent mobile phone account, apparently because the phone subscriber's last name and ours were similar. Spent months talking/fighting/threatening Rogers to get them to cease attributing these bills to us, and we finally succeeded.

Fast forward 6 months, and all of a sudden we're swamped with 5-6 automated voice messages daily (!) from Iqor. They'd obviously bought the bad paper and were trying to collect. I called them back and explained the situation, and the nice, reasonable, well-paid agent said they would clear it up internally and stop contacting us.

Fast forward another year, and we've only recently stopped being harrassed by these dirtbags. It was an unending litany of lies from their agents, off-hour calls, up to a dozen automated calls per day, etc., etc. Only when I asked them for all documentation pertaining to the alleged debt, their legal Canadian address where they could be served, and declared my intent to file suit and/or lodge complaints with every authority I could contemplate did they finally manage to stop the calls.

Rogers and Iqor - a fucking scumbag match made in heaven!

Re:Um, I'm doubtful

[pcolaman]

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.

Re:Um, I'm doubtful

[fprintf]

I didn't see anything in the article that said hourly employees or employees who worked less than a full-time role got health insurance. However I did find in the following application to Fast Company a statement from the founder/CEO that he used the term "health benefits to all agents". http://www.fastcompany.com/fast-50-2008-application/fast-50-2008-application-76 [fastcompany.com]

I must admit, I too was about to discount the article based on the terminology they used. As it turns out, a little searching transformed my instinctive distaste into a little respect.

Re: This post is also offtopic.

[rjstanford]

At the risk of losing karma...

Offtopic is actually correct in this case. If it was a Troll, it would be attempting to incite people to disagree with vitriol. That's clearly not the case. Just as clearly, it has nothing whatsoever to do with call center jobs (at least I hope it doesn't). Thus, offtopic.

Re:Um, I'm doubtful

[jamstar7]

It's not fluent English or Spanish or whatever that I need. Many of these off shore call centers speak English fluently enough. It's that they don't understand the words they are speaking nor do they understand the concepts or customers. Irony is lost on them. Detecting frustration in the voice is also lost. You don't need to understand frustration in the voice when you are told "Look I've been on the phone for 56 minutes now and this really is just a simple problem that should have been solved 50 minutes ago!!!". Parsing that sentence into "Fuck I'm pissed off" does not take rocket science! And spare me the apologies - I don't want apologies - At this point I WANT SOLUTIONS!!!

I spent a couple years on the fones at a call center here in the States, and I can tell you that we had a script we were required to follow, no matter how irate the customer got. Failure to follow the script could lead to immediate termination. Could be, those Filipino call centers are scripted the exact same way, and to go outside the script means they get fired.

Re:Why can't I do that outside the US?

[jabuzz]

Britain is only called England by ignoramuses. While the full details are complex (see ) the basics are that Britain is the combination of at least England, Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland. [alt-usage-english.org]

To equate Britain to England demonstrates that your "public" education (because in the U.K. that means something entirely different) was/is considerably lacking in geography.

Re:Um, I'm doubtful

[JuzzFunky]

It turns out that the old carrot and stick isn't the best motivator for jobs that involve any level of cognitive processing. Check out Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation [ted.com] at Ted.com.