Call Center In Focus

Call centers located in Colombia, Mexico, and Philippines are on AT&T’s watch list due to data breach affecting almost 280,000 US customers. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has entered a $25 million settlement with AT&T Services, Inc. to resolve an investigation into consumer privacy violations at AT&T’s call centers located in the said countries. The fine  is FCC’s largest privacy and data security enforcement action to date. The outcome of the said fine has started to take effect in call center companies. In Mexico, the incident has been investigated by the local authorities’ trough The Federal Institute for Information Access and Data Protection, or IFAI. AT&T Stress Foam source:  Title="you're a star! by Katy Warner, on Flickr According to reports, a Mexican media said the theft in Mexico was carried out by three employees of Teleperformance, a provider of call center services to AT&T, IFAI said in a statement. The M...

April is the tax month so we decided to check the latest news from BIR, what we found out is that the Bureau has released the list of “TOP 500 NON-INDIVIDUAL TAXPAYERS” which is updated as of March 6, 2015. Based on BIR’s list Citibank NA emerged as the Top Taxpayer for companies with BPO services in the Philippines. Citibank NA placed 43rd on the list paying more than 839 million pesos. Citibank is followed by Accenture which placed 114; the company paid more than 309 million pesos. Check out the list below; RANK TIN Company Name Income Tax Due Php 43 000444734-000 CITIBANK NA 839,428,977.00 114 000845543-000 ACCENTURE, INC. 309,489,217.64 177 000594807-000 DEUTSCHE REGIS PARTNERS, INC. 195,427,301.00 256 239952660-000 JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A.-PHIL GLOBAL SERVICE CTR 128,268,271.00 306 000316497-000 MACQUARIE CAPITAL SECURITIES (PHILIPPINES) INC. 103,125,708.00 311 005035491-000 HSBC SAVINGS BANK (PHILIPPINES) INC 102,370,743.00 364 226444142-000 HEWLETT-PACKARD...

The Iphone has Siri and for Windows Phone users they have Cortana, both applications can work as our personal assistant.  Aside from assisting us in setting our alarm, sending an sms, or reminding us of the next important occasion; Siri and Cortana can also search the internet to provide valuable information for us like finding a restaurant or pulling up the stats of our favorite basketball player. Now here’s another girl who's capabilities are way beyond than Siri and Cortana, meet Amelia a smart blonde girl, who works like a virtual employee she can reply to e-mail, answer phone calls, and she’s also intelligent enough to act like a human.  The question is can she replace call center employees? To answer that let’s take a closer look at Amelia’s feature and how she resolves a problem. A brief description of Amelia based on IPSoft’s website says that “Amelia is the first artificially intelligent machine to understand, learn and empathize like a human. She speak...

A Facebook page named Wag Ganyan PH voiced out its concerns against call center employees who were caught smoking beside a No Smoking sign. The photos were taken in front of SM Megamall where one of the largest BPO company is located; the photos reveal a lot of cigarette butts and used cups that was allegedly thrown by call center employees of Convergys. Photo Screengrab from Wag Ganyan PH FBpage Netizens have mixed reactions about the scenario; Last December the attention of call center employees  has been called out by a netizen due to lack of discipline in terms of proper waste disposal. To be fair, the behavior is not limited to call center employees, check out the photo below during the earth day run where plastic cups were thrown everywhere. Let this be a reminder to us because according to the Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 9211, Otherwise Known as the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003 there are sanctions for violating the No Smoking...