Why Did Sykes Close Its Contact Center?
I was surprised this week when I read that Tampa, FL-based Sykes Enterprises, an $819 million business process outsourcing company, decided to close its 12-year-old Minot, North Dakota contact center because of a lack of applicants for job openings.
With the economy reporting a loss of 651,000 jobs in February alone, this news grabbed my attention. The report that I read stated that a year ago, management wanted to increase the number of contact center employees to 450 (there are currently 200 employees). Over the past year, so few people applied, that the company decided to close the contact center on May 10.
Given that Minot is sparsely populated and the unemployment rate stands at 5.1 percent, why wouldn't Sykes advertise for applicants in cities with high unemployment and pay for relocation costs? Wouldn't that have been a more viable option than closing a call center that is experiencing significant growth?
So maybe the weather and demographics would keep out-of-state residents from applying. Then how about deploying a strategic blend of remote and at-home agents to fill the vacant spots?
I'm sure the woman I saw on the news this morning riding her horses from Florida out West to look for work, or the man who moved his family into a tent in California would have welcomed the opportunity to stay employed and work from home.
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Top call center companies are hiring a huge number of employee in next quarter. It seems a positive tend will start again .I like your post.
Thanks again!
Alex
I just returned from Saudi Arabia, and one of the companies I visited with there is exploring a "distributed" call center approach that would allow reps to handle calls from their homes for a completely different and very good reason: Because this would allow many more women, who are still not permitted to drive in this country, to be employed from their own homes.
I think no matter how you cut it, remote working is not only more economically productive, but it is personally liberating, as well!
I think there is a mentality that says "Customer Service can not be done by home workers", a mentality that is usually ingrained in mediocre middle managers. It is that grade of hidebound manager that needs to be fearful over job cuts.
Unfortunately that level of manager also attends meetings during the working day, often at the expense of real work, and makes plans that prevent home working.
Yet home working brings huge efficiencies and is totally controllable. The same metrics can be deployed, the same goals for service level attainment, the same culture. Especially with VoIP and visual contact through webcams, the home worker can be embraced as part of the team, not isolated as a risk to productivity.
Job sharing is far easier to organise, too, shift patterns can be broken around school delivery and collection times, and morale is consequently high, high, high.
And the poor workers, those who don;t attain targets?
Those you re-educate, and then, if necessary, fire.
Now let's link this to my guest post of yesterday On Being a Customer. The strongest argument deployed against homeworking is that the customer service suffers.
I challenge anyone to show me how managing the areas I highlighted is different in any real sense with a homeworker.
I've a background in creating home positions for staff. It costs money, but less than an office desk. It requires the same processes and policies that the office based staff member does.
So I wonder. is it jealousy that prevents mediocre middle management from deploying home workers? Don't they realise they can manage homeworkers from home too?