Yesterday evening about 4:58pm, I received a call from a Washington Gas (WGL) call center alerting me about my bill. The call came from 866-501-8584, and the ID was "Unavailable". Not being prejudice, but noticed the accent of the rep. After hearing info on my account balance, I was asked for my banking info to bring my account current.
Of course I was hesitant because the call was definitely not local, and I could slightly hear others speaking in the background. I asked where he was calling me from. The response was, "from the WG Offshore Call Center." When asked specifically, he responded, "the Philippines." I kindly stated I would pay my bill here in WDC. He made another attempt and I repeated my words, the call ended.
We all have concerns about Scams. Due to other incidents of voluntarily given personal information leading to fraud, stealing of bank accounts etc, we are cautious when we receive calls from not only out of the country, but at times here in the US.
I EM'd Jean Gross-Bethel, OPC this morning and shared my experience. She did confirm through WGL that this was their Call Center. Though the US has friendly relations with the Philippines, I still have problems with it in that why are our utility payments being exported to support another country's economy during this critical time in our own economy. There are probably many of WGL's customers right here who are in need of work. Also, what safeguards are in place to protect our information, which may be on the computer it is entered, but when you verbally give the info to a rep, what's to say they are not writing it down for their own purposes later? We know of the strange debits on bank statements which are traced to an untraceable recipient.
I just want our utility customers to know that they don't have to give their banking/personal information to any out of the US call center or when you feel uncomfortable. Make the payments at authorized locations here in DC. You may have to pay a small fee for WGL or Pepco (Pepco has 2 payment centers), no fee for Verizon, but you know you have some protection if you personal information is misused. In these instances, I use Gold Spot Check Cashing.
You can also call the Office of the People's Counsel, 202-727-3701 to assure your interests are protected.
Albrette "Gigi" Ransom
Washington Gas (WG) outsourced its front office (call center) and back office work to Accenture (back in 2007); and Accenture has decided to take the work to their Manila Delivery Center (MDC). The staff doing the front and back office work is composed of Filipinos. The call center; which has been in Manila for almost six years, has an extremely high turnover rate. Accenture is continually hiring customer service representatives (CSR) for the WG account. The WG account is on its fifth year, and hiring is already on wave 26 as of October, 2012 (so that’s hiring five times a year). Since the turnover is high for this account, people from different walks of life come and go. The wise; immediately sensing that there is no future for their career when they start/stay on this account, leave immediately after training (approx. 2-4 months). The wiser, well...they leave after a few weeks. Accenture hopes to prevent this high turnover rate by slapping a bond amounting to Php 100,000.00 (around US$2,400.00) to all new hires if they do not stay with Accenture for a year; which is illegal, but don’t worry, they don’t chase you for that when you quit. The unfortunate but wise ones (who; through just sheer bad luck got assigned to this god-forsaken WG account by Accenture's ignorant HR) choose to ignore this bond, choose to quit fast rather than die young, and then go on hating Accenture for the rest of their lives.
ReplyDeleteOffice politics, incompetent management and favoritism have ravaged the working environment at the WG account at Accenture's MDC. It is toxic and more putrid than an open cesspool. On your first day, your team leader will say, “Oh, office politics, which company doesn’t have one?” So there. If you kiss ass and agree with the team leaders and managers then you will become their favorite, and you will become like them. Inappropriate sexual relations among the team leaders, managers and CSRs are rampant. Some CSRs have managed to get out of the account and even got promoted by providing sexual favors. If you do not participate in the inane activities planned by the managers then you will be ostracized and this will affect your performance review.
Oddly enough, team leaders have been emphasizing customer service, but customer service is not a metric used to assess the performance of the CSRs. Accenture and WG have decided that their performance will be assessed every month using the three measurable metrics: average handling time (AHT), call quality and service order accuracy. So, the CSRs just focus on meeting the required scores every month so that they can keep their job. If they fail to pass the required scores for the three metrics, they will get fired. The AHT target every month is 300 seconds/call. How the fuck can you do anything for the customer in five minutes? The performance assessment of call quality is a joke, out of the more than 1,700 calls you take every month, they just listen to three calls. The only reasonable performance metric is service order accuracy. Customer service is not part of the training the newly-hired employees receive. Instead, they train the CSRs to be tough on their customers. To compensate for long calls (to lower the AHT), the CSRs sometimes drop their calls; or not help the customer to limit their calls to 2-3 mins., even though some issues would definitely require a much longer time to resolve. The CSR is more concerned with his/her performance as an employee. Customer service is the last thing on the CSRs mind when he/she is taking calls.
"Washington Gas is a corrupt utility company that outsourced its front and back office operations to Accenture to save money so that they can raise dividends and keep the profits for management. By outsourcing to the Philippines, they got rid of 300 positions (that's 300 jobs for US citizens), and 50 of those jobs were open (hiring). They have a 10-year contract w/ Accenture and Accenture; instead of outsourcing them to Canada for example, where the people living there would have a better grasp of how the weather conditions (i.e. winter) really are and how heating is a matter of life and death for people living in that area of the United States, outsourced the operations to their delivery center in Manila, in order to squeeze out more profits from the Washington Gas account. That is Accenture. Cold. Calculating. Heartless.
ReplyDeleteThe work ethic of the employees over there in Manila are terrible; they are just there for the money because the salary is higher than average. Because you're living in the Philippines which has third-world standards of living, the salary of a single call center agent working in the US can hire six Filipino call center agents. But of course, Accenture will NOT hire six agents. They will only hire one, and pay him standard, third-world paycheck. In the end, you get what you pay for. Third-world paycheck means third-world service."