Verdict on the #Shaw outsourcing story? People kinda seem to care. #custserv

I don't know who posted the discovery of the Gurgaon Guys blog on Reddit and DSLReports, but it sure seems to have driven a lot of discussion, and a lot of hits back to my original post. The comments seem to react to a lot of sore spots in the current customer service environment, not just with Shaw, but with Cable and Telcos as a whole.

• Outsourcing, for whatever purpose, is not okay with Canadian customers. Not so much about language barriers, cultural difference or other xenophobia, but because these jobs could easily go to Canadian employees.
• Many employees and former employees see this as the beginning of a larger Outsourcing initiative, and anticipate more layoffs in the near future, despite the fact that Shaw is actively hiring in several markets.
• The personality and business habits of CEO Brad Shaw, whether real or imagined, is not flattering in the least. Distrust of the family is compounded by knowledge of retired father JR Shaw's incredible pension, and the ousted brother Jim Shaw's public shenannigans.

One recurring theme is that the company has had several watch words and slogans over the years that don't appear to line up with their behaviours. These are often brought up during the comments thread in a sarcastic manner:

 

People Powered

• After the layoffs, the customer service team is sorely understaffed, resulting in incredible hold times. Complaints on Twitter are more often about the hold times than the service itself. The remaining Canadian agents are still good at what they do, but that's assuming you can get to them.

Customer Focus

• While I was there, Shaw had a history of making bottom-line based desicions first, then responding to customer complaints afterwards. This went for little things like making the Fireplace channel paid-only during the holidays, up to Usage Based Billing, and now with the idea of outsourcing call centres.

Together is Amazing

• This slogan, and the now defunct website, was a PR move to make the company look like part of the community. They ran food drives and attempted to solicit fundraiser ideas from customers. The response from this wasn't exactly rainbows and butterflies, and the whole campaign fell flat pretty quickly. You can't buy community approval with a couple cans of soup.

Inventing a New Model of Customer Service

• Shortly after Brad took the reigns of the company, he introduced a "new direction", and this phrase was one of the buckets in which employees were encouraged to submit ideas for improvement. Some good did come out of this, like my buddies on the Twitter team. Otherwise, the "Our Voice" forum was a laundry list of complaints that never got addressed. I don't think the idea of laying off hundreds of employees and outsourcing call centres came from the front lines.

 

While I worked at Shaw, I submittedt the idea time and again that the first Cable or Telco to truly differentiate with stellar Customer Service would be able to run away with the ball, since every other company in the sector is doing the least that they can. All over the industry front line employees are left out of the loop, paid the least, and then forced to face the angry public on behalf of the company. This results in high turnover, either from disengaged employees quitting, or others scrambling to get promoted up and out of the department.

I had aspirations to turn this entire situation on its ear while I was with the company, and I kinda stuck out because of that. People locally saw me as a bit of a geek for it, but others a little further up the chain seemed to like what I was going for. Either way, that didn't count for much when the axe came down on the entire Saskatoon office. Yeah I'm bitter, but yeah I still care too. For now, I'm just hoping that a little bit of sentiment analysis can help the people up top get their heads out of their asses and invest in joining the present century of Customer Service. It doesn't matter if this particular call centre stands or falls, or if it even exists. There are other problems happening right now that really need to be addressed in order to win back some goodwill.

I have a standing invitation to chat with one of my buddies on the inside, and will probably lock in a time later this week. I look forward to seeing what kind of response the company's been brewing up over the weekend.