7 weeks working in this crazy city...

Businesses are trying to save a buck wherever they can these days, and outsourced call centres are prime prey for cutbacks. Call centre offshoring happens to just about every company sooner or later, and now its our turn. 20% of our calls are being shifted out of Australia to Manila. I was sent to train these Filipino folks for 7 weeks. The following posts tell the story.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Day 4: The fun bit

Today was product training, a schedule packed with creative learning activites. Thank fuck. For an entire day I was able to relax, forget the fact that systems don't work and may very well not work when we absolutely need them tomorrow. And what a day it was!

I nearly tore my hair out trying to explain the intricacies of tolling products to a group of people who had never seen nor heard of an e-tag before. I'd never had a training group ask so many questions before! Once we got into the activities though, their creativity really shone through. Part of product training involves designing a billboard advertisement on each of the products. Normally, my groups grab a sheet of butchers paper and a couple of markers, slap together a bit of a doodle and off they go. The works of art that this group created were beyond description! With crayons, textas, intricate pictures and brightly coloured text, my Filipino group put all my previous training groups to shame.

Same story with another learning activity later in the day. Trainees have to create a TV commerical complete with jingle. These are then performed in front of management. In Sydney these usually involve a group of agents shuffling nervously, looking at the ground and generally putting in a half-arsed effort. But this afternoon's performances were world class. We had a boy band dance routine, an attempt at line dancing, and even a simulated talk show. So on the whole, the day was a great success.

I'm really starting to settle in here. I'm getting to know the trainees, and enjoying the company of the team leader and trainer. They spent a good part of our afternoon break telling us all the places they are going to take us to visit while we're here. I think I've earnt their respect by promising to try Balut. If you haven't heard of it, do a google image search.

This afternoon I had a quick chat with home, which was really nice and made me smile for the rest of the evening. I managed to get off my arse long enough to go to the gym too. So I'm lying here in bed with that nice warm tired feeling, utterly content and catching up on True Blood.

Now time for some shut-eye before heading back into battle with the incompetent IT departments :p

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