Yes, it has been awhile since I posted. Things here had gotten somewhat quite and just posting the mundane lame stuff was not interesting. But here we have some new stuff.
MegaCorp moved their IT Helpdesk a couple of years ago. They moved it from their datcenter to a 3rd party provider in a major metropolitain area. Over the last year or so, surveys have been emailed out to people within MegaCorp who have had to call the helpdesk regarding a problem they were having. These surveys were analyzed and here are some (not all) of the actions MegaCorp will do to address issues brought out by the surveys
1) Apparently the turnover rate at the Help Desk is too high. To stabilize the workforce and decrease the turnover, the first level Help Desk will be moved to a rural area in the US. So, instead of training the people to better handle the calls or taking actions to mak the job better and retain skilled people, they will move the jobs to an area that is so geographically isolated, that people will have to stay because this will be the only job in the area. Imagine what sort of talent they will be able to recruit in such a location.
2) I guess too many people complained about the accents of the offshore support people we use. An "Accent Attenuation program" will be instituted to help make these offshore people more understandable. Is it really cheaper to hire these offshore people, spend money on the infrastructure needed to link them into MegaCorp, receive poor work results, and then have to spend more money on training to remove their accents, than to just hire an American?
The other action items this braintrust came up with were either weak, totally obvoius, or just otherwise lame and not worth mentioning. These are the only two that stood out.