Increased customer service call volume has forced GCI to move their customer call center overseas to the Philippines. Over the past year, the company has received upwards of 9,000 calls per day.
GCI Vice President of Corporate Communications, Heather Handyside spoke to KSRM saying that it’s unsustainable, “We need about 180 people to fully staff a call center and we’ve consistently only been able to reach around 140. At any time we have between 30 and 40 open positions at the call center. That’s because doing the call center work is a very tough job. Just with this call volume and the increases and the challenges that we’re recruiting and retaining people, we had no other choice but to explore solutions outside Alaska. We looked in the lower 48 and globally. That’s why we finally landed on with what we think is a great match in the Philippines. The reason that we selected the company in the Philippines is that they have, they’re kind of an international expert on call centers. Many companies locate their call centers in the Philippines and some of the national carriers who we compete with do as well.”
She says that everyone staffed at this GCI call center will be a college graduate with 10 years of experience in the call center and telecommunications industry. Handyside says that will improve the overall customer service experience, “We will be able to cut call times dramatically. Our goal is to have 95% of our calls answered in 5 to 10 minutes. Right now, people can wait up to 90 minutes just to get their questions answered. So we’re going to dramatically reduce our call times. Then, we’ll also be able to offer, for the first time in many years 24/7 consumer customer service. So people can get help anytime of the day or night.”
Handyside explains why the company didn’t hire more Alaskans, “We really worked hard. We offered incentives. We have a very competitive salary and compensation package. We tried to augment with temp staff. We offered promotions and bonuses and hiring bonuses. A lot of times they’ll get through the training, once they start working they find out that it’s not a good match for them. In Alaska, we only have a pool of 700,000 people to pull from. In the Philippines, it’s 100 million people who live there.”
The transition is scheduled to begin by August with a completion tentatively set for November.