Any the hit's just keep on coming

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DaveA

You cant get away from stereotyping, it happens in all industries, actors are always frivoulous and effusive luvvies, care workers are gentle and liberal, fast food staff, stupid, young and spotty.
Just watch Catherine Tate or Little Britain,

The only saving garce is that with time the stereotypes change - Doctors are no longer thought of as distant and uncommunicative, engineers are not exclusively male.

Adverts will always have stereotypes, comedy revels in them, top comedy subverts and parodies the stereotype to such an extent that we see it for what it is - a generalisation on a group of individuals which probably doesnt exist.

http://www.asa.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/ADB47D2B-304E-4EE9-838D-00EC2AF15322/0/BroadcastAdvertisingAdjudications14Sept05.pdf

Actual adjudication and wording can be found here.

If we want to do something about this or counter this then the forum itself perhaps needs to start having many more postive questions and debates.

Reading most of the posts one could easily be mistaken into thinking that every employer was obsessed with productivity and keen to squeeze as many calls as is humanly possible from its agents.

Correct me if I'm wrong but its mostly dialler managers wanting increased efficiency and schedulers wanting to maximise uptime. The one significant factor - the agents themselves are seldom if ever represented on the foruma. Perhaps we should consider a change to 'callcentremiddlemanagementforum'?

Reading most of the posts one could easily be mistaken into thinking that every employer was obsessed with productivity and keen to squeeze as many calls as is humanly possible from its agents.

Humm.

I think you're wrong. Yes we're interested in productivity and
SLA's / KPI's, but that's the job.

I would suggest starting THREAD LINK. For the other side.

HTH

DaveA

>>>>I think you're wrong.

No I'm not

>>>>Reading most of the posts one could easily be mistaken into thinking that every employer was obsessed with productivity and keen to squeeze as many calls as is humanly possible from its agents


Of the new topics started since 13th Sept - ie. the front page of latest post.

5 are concerned with productivity and squeezing more blood sorry calls out of agents
1 is neutral
1 contains some praise
and one is a non productivity technical call

I have justified my remarks, please do the same ;-)

I've been working for a company for the last few months, which prior to my arrival had, phone rooms - definitely not call centres. They had no MI, no performance management and pretty much no idea what to do or how to do it. Since arriving, it's been my job to put all these things in place (and turn it into a call centre), provide call forcasting/resource planning for the inbound and monitor outbound performance (manual at the mo).

My point (finally! I hear you cry) is that yes the managers like being able to see how productive etc their staff are, but the ones who really like it are the agents. They know what is expected of them. They receive feedback and development based on their productivity and results, which means that they receive recognition for their performance. Prior to putting all the counting this and that stuff (as it's known by the manager) in place, the managers and agents had no clue how anyone was doing and nothing to aim towards. Productivity has shot up, not because of pressure, but because the staff can now take pride in doing a good, because they are recognised for their efforts.

Thanks for your comments Sue,

I have difficulty with your management only understanding of what agents want - it contains no evidence from agents, plenty of intangibles and no suppoorting evidence.

If it were true for most call centres then we'd have plenty of agents subscribing and writing in to say what a great job their employers were doing, the breadth of employment opportunities provided and the committment that their bosses have to work/life balance. As it it we dont and havent ever. So where is all this pride?

I have evidenced my assertion. Please do likewise ;-)

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure you got the full meaning behind my post. The management don't just understand what the agents want. My point was that even though we (as a resource planner & MI person) seem to concentrate on stats etc - as you have pointed out, the agents do benefit from this and they are not just used to 'squeeze more blood, sorry calls' from them.

I'm not sure what evidence I need to supply here (quoting more stats like reducing attrition by 45%, sickness by 23% etc?)- I gave a point of view from my recent experiences and looking at the bigger picture of hat I do. I'm not trying to preach, just contribute a point of view that may or may not be different to that of others on this site.

I understand Sue,

Stats reducing attrition and sickness do not prove that your employees have more pride or like the stats provided - your assertion not mine.

>>>>the agents do benefit from this>>>>

How do you know this?

I'm not trying to preach either however I have backed up my assertion that most postings are concerned with squeezing more out of agents.

I'm simply asking contrary points of view to provide hard evidence, evidence that reflects agent experiences not just management experience. There is precious little on this forum to prove otherwise.

You generalised, I quibbled thats all.

As has been stated of threads since 13th Sept

'5 are concerned with productivity and squeezing more blood sorry calls out of agents
1 is neutral
1 contains some praise
and one is a non productivity technical call '

I'm not going to disagree and say that agents benefit because they are more productive due to more intense monitoring, what my point is of all the people that have an account with CCV, how many have put there job title as Agent or similar?

The reason i ask is that as a resource planner my job is to get more 'Uptime' this fits with his statement
'dialler managers wanting increased efficiency and schedulers wanting to maximise uptime'.

The reason IMO for such productivity-based threads is that the job interest lies there.
How many agents have posted a question about how they can improve their uptime?

Whilst for a resource planner this is one of my key responsibilities to the business I work for, It might be that the business is not as obsessed as me, more that I am obsessed, because they pay me to be although I feel obsessed is a bit strong a word, concerned might be more appropriate.

An agent on the other hand is probably not as concerned with their uptime or productivity, unless its commission based.

Thanks for contributing Scott,

I agree, although it doesnt help much to reverse the negative press - "we're just doing our job" desnt cut it ;-)

So, moving on, perhaps we cant change the negative press, the label has been around for 10 years, is it peeling away?

Discuss.

In fairness, I feel some people may be discouraged from participating in this discussion if they feel that their contribution is going to be attacked.

I'm all for people being able to elaborate beyond the assertion with objective and quantifiable information, however I am not sure how much detail it is reasonable to expect. I would normally only be willing to post a summary of my findings, and not the working out!

Interesting discussion though!

Zoe

I undestand Zoe, trouble is fairness doesnt come into discussion - a two way process - both sides already do have a 'fair' chance to reply. Whether each side will reply in terms stated by the other side - isnt fair.I think what you are asking for is a 'fair' discussion where both sides agree that neither will challenge each others viewpoint , will accept everything at face value and let issues lie, thats simply not realistic.

Speaking personally I prefer to deal with fact and debate not unsupported opinions, others may not - thats fair enough and their perogative. I think differently. We can all give opinions. Opinions are just that - sometimes poorly formulated, based on untruths, assumptions and prejudices. Everyone has a right to challenge opinions for the very reasons I give.Forums are created for that very reason, discussion and debate, if we want to bandy about unsupported viewpoints and chat then I'm sure we can do that as well. Doesnt seem very professional or adult if you ask me.

I think mainly you object to my style Zoe - thats ok, I might have similar reservations. All managers are asked to justify their actions and if you post on a globally accessible site you must expect to be challenged - those working in the West frequently challenge the working practices of those in the sub-continent on these very pages.

Your points are axiomatic, no one is forced to contribute and many discussions die a death as a result - thats reasonable.

While taking the risk of not being able to back up my observations, I seem to think that we had a more varied membership a number of years ago.

I can clearly remember one young man - an agent from a prominent outsourced northern UK call centre who was somewhat outspoken in his criticism of his employers new predicitive dialler!

Sadly, he wasn't around for long......

Lynne