Biddy Goes to Bangalore with BT

spongebob

The Reg has this story on how conferencing setup and directory enquiries are being shifted to India by BT. 2200 jobbies in Bangalore by next year.

Have you ever tried to get a 1901 Biddy to explain the Conference Call products that Eircom have......very amusing if you have loads of time to waste. These are not products that require a load of new technology at the consumer end either ....an ordinary phone will do. Nor are they new products, its just that the Biddies are so lazy and thick that they have not bothered to read the inhouse Eircom manual.

Why do I strongly suspect that Phil knew about the article in the Reg before I did. ?

M

eth0_

Just goes to show how little companies listen to their customers and the experiences of other customers.

There's a lot of IT companies (DELL especially) who have shifted their tech support to India and I've read a lot of bad things about it.

The tech support agents are sent to elocution lessons but people from the UK still find it hard to understand their accent and vice versa, have seen countless threads on the ihatedell site about how terrible the service has become since outsourcing it to India.
They simply don't have the immediate 2nd and 3rd level back up on site. Same thing happens in Clientlogic in Swords, a major outsourcing company, their 2nd level tech support isn't even in Ireland which causes a lot of problems.

spongebob

you are absolutely right in saying that most of the training in India is in elocution. The idea is to make them sould like the Brits (to British Callers or American to american callers.

The product training is third rate ...

Hiberno English Elocution is not on the menu in Bangalore.....yet.

Has anybody spotted a group of Indians being trained in Dublin recently ..... hint! they did not seem to be doing product training and it was not in Dell.

M

ozpass

I have heard that staff in Indian call centres are taught a series of phrases intended to spoof the caller into thinking they're talking to UK call centre staff. "I hear that the Dixons on Eggham high street has closed down..." and "How about that new Maxwell House advert" and so on.

eth0_

Originally posted by Muck

Has anybody spotted a group of Indians being trained in Dublin recently ..... hint! they did not seem to be doing product training and it was not in Dell.

M

;-)

DMC

But isn't the really problem that these jobs are being taken out of the country, only because the price of labour is far cheaper in India?

Anyone who has read Michael Moore's "Downsize This!" will understand that its not only people losing their jobs, but money out of the economy, and if the company is big enough, destroy the community who depends on it.

dahamsta

But isn't the really problem that these jobs are being taken out of the country, only because the price of labour is far cheaper in India?

Yes, even in light of the fact that straight cost-cutting has been proven economically ineffective at dealing with underlying financial troubles in businesses. All this action by BT will achieve is to push more British customers /away/ from the company in the long term. In fact, the current media coverage will already have started this process. Sheer idiocy on BT's part. The planner who came up with this should be shot.

adam

spongebob

it looks good at Board meetings though.

Our biddies cost a hell of a lot more than BT biddies so if BT reckon it is worthwhile then Phil will come under pressure to accelerate the Biddy cull and to move Directory enquiries offshore.
There are some interesting phonetic implications

Skangers ringing directory enquiries will still get an Irish person who understands them using a routing system something like this

(call from) 016 send to Bangalore
(call from) 0182 send to Biddy in Blanchardstown
(call from) 0128 send to Biddy in South Africa based on phonetic matching.

Around that time we will suddenly all remember that Eircom have obligations to customers who request that their business be conducted entirely through the Irish language.

Try sending that any further offshore than the Aran Islands Phil .

If I spot any Indians in Carraroe this summer I will be sure to report back in here.

M

dahamsta

it looks good at Board meetings though.

Good to a bunch of dumbasses maybe.

adam

oneweb

Originally posted by ozpass
I have heard that staff in Indian call centres are taught a series of phrases intended to spoof the caller into thinking they're talking to UK call centre staff. "I hear that the Dixons on Eggham high street has closed down..."

And the latest UK events - many of them eat read and sleep English news/tv/media.

That'd be interesting if you called from Ireland. "Geed afteernoon ser, what aboot poor queeny eh?"

Anyways...

(Reminds me of a certain compustor shop. When you call the sales dept, you get this woman who doesn't have much of a grasp on the English language, let alone technical stuff like 120Gig 7200RPM. lol

Have to say those Eir<censored> Biddies can be great for a laugh. Asked them if I could get internet divert activated (it's on the site, and it's different to call forward - actually does anyone know how it knows you're on the net?) anyway they said there was no such thing.

Then I rang to say that 3-way-calling didn't work for me. Biddie says, "OK just hold on a minute and I'll get my call management book" (muttered->) "Eircom three way calling allows you to talk with several callers at the same time. To set up a three way call..." This was all verbatim from the phone book (which I'd re-read a few times to make sure I wasn't missing anything)

I'm surprised she even knew that she had a manual for something called "three-way-calling"!

lol

jmcc

Originally posted by dahamsta
it looks good at Board meetings though.

Good to a bunch of dumbasses maybe.

And this doesn't relate to Eircom in what way?

Regards...jmcc

Dr_Teeth

You know that bit in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where they find out the universe is run by this old man and his cat in a hut in the middle of nowhere, who is visited from time to time by various galactic leaders?

I hope some day this forum fulfills the same purpose for the Irish telecoms industry. It's funny to imagine Phil and co popping in here from time to time and thinking "oh so *thats* how you run a telco!". haha!

ok, ahh carry on..

Teeth.

jd

Originally posted by Muck
it looks good at Board meetings though.

Around that time we will suddenly all remember that Eircom have obligations to customers who request that their business be conducted entirely through the Irish language.

M

do they?-didnt know about this.
I thought it only applies rto govt departments
jd

DeVore

Originally posted by Dr_Teeth
You know that bit in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where they find out the universe is run by this old man and his cat in a hut in the middle of nowhere, who is visited from time to time by various galactic leaders?

I hope some day this forum fulfills the same purpose for the Irish telecoms industry. It's funny to imagine Phil and co popping in here from time to time and thinking "oh so *thats* how you run a telco!". haha!

ok, ahh carry on..

Teeth.

You know Einstein said "if at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it". You know what, that IS absurd and it has given me an idea...

DeV.

spongebob

Originally posted by jd
do they?-didnt know about this.
I thought it only applies rto govt departments
jd

It is a strange hangover from the Telecom Eireann Act 20 years ago. This Act has not been repealed you see

If Eircom wish to be selective in its applicaton then they may well find that their wayleaves could go 'poof' . It only applies to bog standard customer service like billing and contracts. Be a hoor to find one of them in Bangalore.

I wouldnt expect Eircom to translate ISUPP codes into Irish ...... or a Cisco 2611 manual or the like .


M

Slutmonkey57b

I can't believe anyone would want to complain about shipping these jobs off to india. Ask anyone who works in a call centre and they'll tell you that it's the 21st century white-collar sweatshop. As to the point that the locals don't speak english quite as well as their english counterparts, I defy anyone to say that trying to understand a Brummie or a Corkman is any less confusing.

Why is outsourcing a good thing? Because as we all know the Biddies are fcuking useless! But they can't be sacked because the Union (how I love unions) won't allow them to be sacked simply because they're lazy and incompetant. No. Clearly, says the Biddie Union, they should get a fat pension, guaranteed wage rises, a ban on productivity targets, and access to a host of taxpayer-funded leisure facilities. All while providing utterly incompetant service. A lot of businesses have faced this problem in the Western world over the past couple of decades.

The solution? Set up an outsourcing operation, sack everyone, and tell anyone who wants their job back: "no problem, move to <insert name of favourable regime> or reapply under the new job description." Bingo bango bongo, all your incompetant employees gone, a new raft of cheap employees in, the union's dictatorial stranglehold on operational matters broken, and competant staff re-employed as contractors where you pay them a flat rate and don't have to worry about ancillary payroll costs like healthcare.

At least the people in India will WANT the jobs, rather than resenting them like the Biddies do.

BigEejit

The solution? Set up an outsourcing operation, sack everyone, and tell anyone who wants their job back: "no problem, move to <insert name of favourable regime> or reapply under the new job description." Bingo bango bongo, all your incompetant employees gone, a new raft of cheap employees in, the union's dictatorial stranglehold on operational matters broken, and competant staff re-employed as contractors where you pay them a flat rate and don't have to worry about ancillary payroll costs like healthcare.

This is exactly what my company did (not my company as in "mine", its the one I *cough* work for), when I have anything i want expensed, it goes to malaysia to be checked, another department was actually outsourced to Siemens (AFAIK) in Cork, the staff were told to reapply for a new job in Siemens (doing their old job) or get knotted.
I dont know about the people who did the expenses, but the department that was outsourced in Cork were replaced so the company could save a tiny bit of money...(tiny for this company anyway, I heard less than €100k a year)

Slutmonkey57b

Cost savings are a small proportion of the logic behind outsourcing. It also decreases management's accountability to staff, increases staff's accountability to management and ensures a nice opaque working structure meaning that people rely on information to filter downwards from those who need to censor information rather than through other channels.

spongebob

In todays Reg we hear that the BT staff whose jobs will be affected over the next few years have picketed no less than 30 Directory enquiries offices in England today .

Phil is still watching this one with interest.