03.28.08
AT&T Thinks U.S. Workers Lack Skills
AT&T CEO says hard to find skilled U.S. workers - Yahoo! News
This is pretty rich. I’m sure you, like I, have dealt with telephone support before. Normally, company policies are so strict that they have to follow a script, even if you’ve already eliminated the causes on their list.
I was in a hotel, calling the support line for their ISP. I knew what the problem was–they were doing some construction and one of the building’s access points was no longer working–but they had me step through the whole process. The thing was, I was doing support myself, so naturally, I had already done all that they listed. Finally, after going through the whole process multiple times, the rep agreed to have someone physically check the access point after he had logged into the local system and found that he could not “see” the access point.
“We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with
the skills that are required to do these jobs,” AT&T Chief
Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San
Antonio, where the company’s headquarters is located.
So, Mr. CEO, do you really want to tell me that you cannot find people who can follow a script? If so, I suggest you run right down to the Golden Arches and hire the whole counter crew. Those employees, like yours, are given a script that must be followed, sometimes even down to specific wording. They can read and they can operate often-antiquated computer terminals. They speak English or any of a variety of other languages. They already work for low wages and few benefits, with widely varying schedules that depend primarily on the needs of the company.
Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs. Business needed to help, such as
AT&T’s repatriation of service positions and education grants,
he added.
You see, this is part of the problem with large corporations. That man behind the desk did not get his job because he already knew how to do the job. They had to train him, even if he already had education and experience, because every business and every industry is a little different and no skills are fully transferable from one to another. And even though he knows this to be true, he will swear to the day he dies that he got his position because of merit, that he was effective from day one. In other words, neither the corporation nor the people running the corporation practice reciprocity.
Corporations will take all you can do for them, while giving you the absolute minimum they can get away with, until they find someone who will accept less. At that point, they will unceremoniously dump you like yesterday’s garbage.
This is what is wrong with the American economy. Domination by self-centered corporations and by officers and investors in those corporations means that every town and city and their workforces are merely tools to be used up and then discarded to help big companies fill their essentially unlimited appetites for money, power, fame, and reputation. Through pervasive advertising, they continue to drive consumers to buy the big name product from the big name store, when the best interests of individuals and their communities is served from purchases of locally-produced goods and services through locally-owned outlets.
When I buy tools at Big Blue, the world’s largest retail chain, I am depriving my community of the money that flies out of California and over to the chain’s headquarters city in Arkansas. If those tools are made outside of my area, then funds which could have gone to support locally-owned tool producers now goes somewhere else to support their companies and residents.
And when I support politicians that allowed SBC to buy AT&T (keeping the AT&T name) and Southern Bell, I am by extension supporting self-absorbed CEOs that cannot see a skilled worker even if they bumped into one.
Do not misunderstand me. Our schools are in desperate need of improvement, and our colleges as well. But the jobs people actually get do not even use the skills of a normal high school graduate. A superabundance of managers decrees every detail of what to do and how to do it, so that a worker of average intelligence is stymied in his attempts to do a better job.
Who knows more about customer service? Some guy in corporate who never even deals with customers or the people on the front lines dealing with customers every day? I’d say it is the professionals that actually do the work, not someone who talks to a consultant or reads a book and decides that he knows how to serve customers better. Which one do you think wrote this script?
Hi, welcome to <company name>. My name is <employee first name>. May I take your order?
Or how about this one:
Hi, welcome to <company name>. Would you like to try our new <product name>? It's my favorite!
That garbage was certainly not written by anyone who actually works with customers. Yes, those were actual scripts that were used at one company I worked for years ago.
So, Mr. CEO, if you want quality customer service, hire people who actually deal with customers, and then let them hire their co-workers. Get your legions of managers and send them to a desert island without a way back. Or even better, contract the job out to small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs) with fewer than one hundred people apiece and give them the freedom to experiment with ways to improve your service (this means you absolutely CANNOT try to squeeze them on pricing).
Maybe that outlook was the reason that AT&T consistently had the worst mobile service in every state where I’ve worked except New Jersey. You cannot find quality people? Maybe you aren’t paying enough or offering enough benefits in order to attract quality people. Maybe a lot of quality people are those who’ve seen their jobs slashed over the past decade at one of the AT&T predecessor companies (such as Pacific Telesis in California and Nevada). Or maybe your hiring process drives away anyone that has a choice about what job to accept. All I can say is that anyone who feels that there are no quality employees in the U.S. is seriously incompetent.
