Indian call centre employee punished for harassing British woman

British Telecom (BT) has taken disciplinary action against an Indian employee at its India-based call centre services team after a woman complained of receiving amorous text messages from him.

The unidentified woman, from Portsmouth, England, told BT the person had identified himself as Hemant when she rang the company to send over an engineer to set up a landline at her new house.

She soon started receiving text messages from him.

From this example he obviously needs help with his chat up lines....

"Hello, Hemant this side with whom you spoke two hours ago regarding ur BT order. U must be thinking dat why I called u up second time without any reason of the call but to be honest I got attracted towards u and ur wonderful voice. Can I be ur friend?"
Has this ever happened in the UK...let us know and we will publish it.

Exclusive B.T and Maygenta WebCast -sign up today!

Join us for an exclusive webcast: "the contact centre comes home"

Q: Can you offer better quality customer
services, lower costs while reducing your carbon footprint?

A: Of course and it ' s happening now...

Visit: www.maygenta.com/-webinar-with-us to register


Maygenta - 'the contact centre comes home'
28th November, 11.30am 12.00 GMT

Dominic Crowther, Maygenta Business Development Director and Tony Golding,
BT Head of Homeshoring will discuss how 'homeshoring' has already begun to be
a major part of customer service and will be the future for client contact management.


Topics include

How homeshoring works
Why are increasing numbers of UK businesses choosing homeshoring?
How the technology works
What are the cost savings offered by homeshoring?
How homeshoring allows for the recruitment of quality agents nationwide
Why absenteeism and staff turnover is significantly lower
How homeshoring can make significant contribution to your carbon footprint plan
How homeshoring can make a significant contribution to your corporate social responsibility plan
How simple it is to begin a pilot scheme of homeshoring


Visit: www.maygenta.com/-webinar-with-us to register

See you there,

Sam Delano

Homeshoring Jobs for the Disabled...

Homshoring opens up a lot of opportunities for Disabled People to share their skills whilst finding rewarding and enriching job roles:

The following is according to the UK's Office for National Statistics' Labour Force Survey, Sept - Dec 2006, for people of working age only.

• Nearly one in five people of working age (6.9 million, or 19%) in Great Britain are disabled
• Only about half of disabled people of working age are in work (50%), compared with 80% of non disabled people of working age
• Almost half (45%) of the disabled population of working age in Britain are economically inactive i.e. outside of the labour force. Only 16% of non-disabled people of working age are economically inactive- homeshoring information
  
• There are currently 1.2 million disabled people in the UK who are available for and want to work.
• Employment rates vary greatly according to the type of impairment a person has. Disabled people with mental health problems have the lowest employment rates of all impairment categories at only 21%. The employment rate for people with learning disabilities is 26%.
• Disabled people are more than twice as likely as non-disabled people to have no qualifications (26% as opposed to 10%)
• The average gross hourly pay for disabled employees is £10.31 compared to £11.39 for non disabled employees.

Main impairment	% in employment
Diabetes	67
Difficulty in hearing	59
Skin conditions, allergies	63.3
Chest/breathing problems	62.8
Heart, blood pressure/circulation problems	58.7
Difficulty in seeing	48.5
Stomach, liver, kidney or digestive problems	59.7
Other health problems or disabilities	53.5
Arms or hands	52
Back or neck	48.7
Legs or feet	45.4
Epilepsy	43.6
Speech impediment	19.2
Progressive illness not included elsewhere	42.1
Learning difficulties	25.7
Depression, bad nerves or anxiety	25.8
Mental illness, phobias, panics or other nervous disorders	13.3

Are you disabled? Would you like to know about homshoring? Click here for more info.....Homeshoring Jobs for the Disabled.

Exclusive homeshoring interview with Martin Shields

As promised, an exclusive interview with Martin Shields of Maygenta - ' the UK's leading homeshoring experts '

HSe: "Martin, you've been in this business for a while and have seen the changing faces of the UK call centre. We've been off-shore -we've come back and it looks like were staying- why do you think homeshoring is set to be next big thing in call centre outsourcing?"

Martin: "
Every idea needs external factors to go in its favor in order to gain acceptance and succeed . But when not only the market and the economy are on your side, but also technology is working in your favor it opens up more opportunities to simply improve the way we do things .

Look at the UK today, Petrol and Diesel are sky high raising the basic cost of living, the economy is in crisis and we're most likely going into a recession. - Everybody needs to cut their costs , some to retain profit and some just to survive - businesses and ordinary people alike.

The fact is that, Homeshoring provides cost benefits by reducing the need for physical buildings. Working form home is not an easy way out - if managed correctly for the right people it can be very rewarding. I know because I've done it for the last 6 years!"



HSe: "What do you feel is the problem with call centres today?"

Martin:"Having spent some 20 years in the call centre business both in the UK and overseas, it seems to me that many of the current difficulties which the call centre industry experiences such as finding quality staff and maintaining quality - whilst controlling costs, could be solved by opening up access to people at home who are currently an untapped resource.


Existing call centers find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain competent staff. A large factor in this is the working environment and routine. India and other off shore locations are now not seen as the answer to all the UK problems in communicating with customers and suppliers .They may be fundamentally cheaper, but not necessarily effective for a wide spectrum of applications.

By employing people at home we have access to a very large untapped workforce which is generally very intelligent , wise and keen to earn a living. Maygenta offers its clients a range of solutions which the typical “bricks and mortar “ call centre cannot do . Very flexible working practices including 24/7 can be delivered much more cost effectively than with existing offerings


Many thanks to Martin Shields for his time. If you would like to visit the Maygenta site or recruitment portal where you can leave your details, CV, take a basic aptitude test or make an enquiry you can visit them at maygenta homeshoring jobs "

Ofcom fines barclays

The call centre regulator OFCOM has fined Barclaycard the maximum amount possible (£50,000) for breaching its rules on silent and abandoned calls.

Silent calls are a significant cause of inconvenience and anxiety for thousands of people every month. Most silent calls are not generated with malicious intent but occur when using automated calling mechanisms to generate more calls than their available agents can deal with. When the person called answers the telephone, there is no agent available, resulting in silence on the line.

Ofcom published its rules on silent calls in 2006 including three key requirements:
> Abandoned call rates must be no more than 3 per cent of all live calls made in any 24 hour period for each campaign.
> All abandoned calls must carry a short recorded information message identifying the source of the call.

> Calling line identification (CLI) must be included on all outbound calls generated by automated calling systems. CLI allows people to dial 1471 and access the telephone number of the person or organisation calling them.

Ofcom investigated Barclaycard from 1 October 2006 to 10 May 2007 and found that it had made an extremely high number of silent calls where the people receiving the calls had no method of knowing who had made them. The investigation also found that some of Barclaycard’s call centres had no procedures in place to prevent people receiving repeated abandoned calls over a short period of time.

Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards said: “Taken as a whole this is the most serious case of persistent misuse by making silent and abandoned calls that Ofcom has ever investigated. Had we not been limited by the statutory maximum, we would have imposed a larger penalty to reflect this misuse”.

Ofcom has previously fined Abbey National, Complete , Space Kitchens, Bracken Bay Kitchens, Carphone Warehouse and Toucan for breaches of its rules on silent and abandoned calls.

Announcement - RE: Martin Shields Homeshoring Interview:

This interview will take place tomorrow and be published on Friday. Sorry its late!

Quite Amusing....Its a friday after all

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.
They rub it and a Genie comes out.

The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.'
'Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk. 'I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.'

Puff! She's gone.

'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep. 'I want to be in Hawaii , relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.'
Puff! He's gone.
'OK, you're up,' the Genie says to the manager.
The manager says, 'I want those two back in the office after lunch.'

Moral of the story:
Always let your boss have the first say.