4 ms·
> Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency, our phone lines are currently closed. Never realized they were contactable by phone until now but in any case wh
by 4cao 6y ago
> Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency, our phone lines are currently closed.
Never realized they were contactable by phone until now but in any case why are the phone lines closed because of the virus? Does it spread by phone too?
- HarryHirsch 6y agoCall centers are a most excellent environment for spreading coronaplague. The work takes place indoors, in a crowded enviromnent, with people talking. Of course health authorities would close them down.
- thefounder 6y agoWho said anything about call "centers" ?
- bigiain 6y agoIf they aren't staffing/closing call centres, then the upthread question "why are the phone lines closed because of the virus?" is even more inexplicable...
- thefounder 6y agoPeople can take phone calls from home just like they handle email tickets
- skookum-skuad 6y agoExactly. It seems like corporations are using the pandemic to ostensibly "protect workers" as an excuse in order to save money on paying workers. If customers blindly accept this sort of BS when there is no risk, then they're fools.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoMost call centers have gone remote, including Costco customer service, Chase bank, and major medical system billing departments. PayPal just threw their hands up and gave up it appears.
- edgefield0 6y agoExcept companies have been staffing call centers from work at home for years. For instance, Jet Blue staffs most or all customer service through work at home and even has a clever method for handling surge capacity through part time staff available on call.
- bigiain 6y agoAnd more importantly, call centre management are pretty much the greatest source of truth in the "nothing ever gets done unless all our staff are absurdly over micro managed" management style stereotype. There is very little technical difference between a bunch of call center workers crammed into a poorly air conditioned windowless cube farm, and those same workers safe at home at their kitchen table with their laptop and voip headset. But you can't stand behind them and publicly berate them for taking 3.5minutes for a toilet break if they're all at home... (Hmmm, startup idea: A service that provides a live video window that allows managers to humiliate WFH staff - that pops up in a non dismissible dialog box over the top of every other window on non-management employee laptops. VCs please form an orderly queue in my email inbox...)