BT providing free meals to coax its healthy customer support staff back into office as calls rocket amid pandemic
- Reference: 1585582211
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/30/bt_free_meals_call_centre_staff/
- Source link:
Marc Allera, CEO of BT's consumer branch, tweeted:
We're doing all we can [1]@bt_uk , [2]@EE and [3]@Plusnethelp to keep serving our customers and keep our people safe at this difficult time.
This is why we’re asking our people to come into our contact centres, if they’re healthy and able – so our customers can get the help they need. 1/5 [4]pic.twitter.com/xcr8O775UV — Marc Allera (@MarcAllera) [5]March 27, 2020
An image attached to Allera's tweet outlined the precautionary measures BT has taken to protect employees by enforcing social distancing and increasing the amount of clearing.
BT has also said it will provide employees with free meals and continue paying those that are forced to self-isolate in order to protect themselves and others.
Contact centre staff across the BT, EE and Plusnet brands are regarded as key workers due to their role in ensuring the continuing functionality of the telecommunications sector. Across the board, calls to BT's support lines have grown 16 per cent.
Calls to the firm's various sales line have increased by 27 per cent -one factor is the growth in customers moving from "dumb" feature phones to smartphones in order to use WhatsApp and other messaging platforms. BT said that its PAYG phone lines have received 70 per cent more traffic in this past week.
It also noted that one in 10 EE customers are requesting second lines, presumably for other members of their household. Calls to EE's home broadband sales team are up 30 per cent, while for BT they've grown 45 per cent.
It's a touch ironic that BT doesn't have remote-working facilities in place for its contact centre workers given the deluge of Zoom calls it's currently facilitating, although that is not particularly surprising.
As anyone who has worked in corporate IT knows, building and deploying the infrastructure required to support remote working is an expensive, time-consuming process – particularly when you're working at the kind of scale as the BT Group, which has over 17,500 contact centre employees across the UK and Ireland.
This comes after rival Virgin Media announced it would [6]hire an additional 500 UK contact centre staff to try to compensate for the abrupt closure of call centres in India and the Philippines.
The FT stated interviews would take place over video calls, and prospective candidates would have to work on site at Virgin Media's existing call centres in Teesside, Sheffield, Greater Manchester and Birmingham.
The Register has asked BT to comment. If we hear back, we'll update this story. ®
[1] https://twitter.com/bt_uk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[2] https://twitter.com/EE?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[3] https://twitter.com/plusnethelp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[4] https://t.co/xcr8O775UV
[5] https://twitter.com/MarcAllera/status/1243596606181695488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[6] https://www.ft.com/content/75d22f10-6e00-11ea-89df-41bea055720b
I've long ago given up trying to figure out which bit of BT is related to which, but the deskies up North I've been talking to on the BT Retail and BT Converged lines have been attempting to work from home for a week or so.
Not always successfully, but the thought is there.
Infrastructure
Yes, the ones I know are all blaming the telephone/broadband infrastructure for their inability to work reliably and at a normal speed. "Ironic" can hardly express it!
A long time ago I remember seeing a news item on TV which showed some BT people working from home - it could even have been directory enquires, so, technology has moved on a quite a bit since then
They say they are maintaining social distancing however as with many companies it is not possible due standard layouts of offices and especially call centres. There are bottlenecks all over the place. Only 1 person in a lift at one time, 2 meters on the stairs and hope no one joins while you are walking past a floor, one person in the toilets at a time and no passing in corridors as they won't be 2 metres. I would have thought this would be obvious.
One mistake, and the infection will start spreading again. Some carriers are asymptotic while others won’t have symptoms for up to a week. Issuing basic face masks would help contain the spread, but they must also be used when travelling in public. However face masks would make telephone operators harder to understand ... unless their mic can be worn inside the mask?
Perhaps a solve it on the first call philosophy would help, inztead of endless "ill just escalate that"
Escalate? There's escalation? The only escalation I've come across was me walking to the village to find a couple of guys the operator didn't know about in manholes* redoing all the connections to the cabinets. The alternative escalation offered was an engineer visit for which I'd have been charge if no fault had been found - which there wouldn't have been as the maintenance would have been finished by then.
But only "not particularly surprised"? I doubt BT management has changed much in the last qusrter century or so** so not in the least surprised.
* Personholes if you prefer.
** Is it really that long? Nearly. Wow!
So BT....
...leading by example once again.
The call centre staff (1000+) I designed the phone system for were able to work from home in a DR over a 15 years ago, thats even before decent VoIP came along.
Am I the only one ...
... who wondered what co-ax had to do with it? *facepalm*
I wonder why telephone support cannot be done from home with a suitable headset and VPN into the work office.
Or would that require BT to provide their staff with laptops, rather than coming in to use a decade old PC?