Transcom’s ‘Night at the Oscars’
Call Centre and Collections agency Transcom has initiated a new motivation scheme that rewards its employees in celebrity style.
As part of a larger incentives campaign that offers regular rewards for team and individual excellent performance, Transcom held an Oscars evening where staff were hailed as celebrities and rewarded Oscars for their performance. Winners were given a trophy, a certificate and a cash prize in front of an audience of their peers. Glamorous frocks and Black tie complemented the evening.
Nominations were voted for in advance via a company-wide poll with the winners announced on the evening. Each nomination was put forward with a justification regarding why they should win, in a similar format to the industry awards. Their peers then voted and a shortlist selected with the winners being announced on the evening.
Winners included:
Best Newcomer 2007 - Jeffery Archer
Best Female 2007 - Leanne Collard
Best Male 2007 - Jon Nash
Best Litigator 2007 - Lamley Lamptey
Best Support Role 2007 - Michelle Bland
Most Improved 2007 - Daniel Burr
Outstanding Achievement 2007 - Philip Crawford
Andy Thomas, Director of Operations, Transcom said: “We think our people are stars. A celebrity-style Oscars ceremony seemed the appropriate way to thank them for their hard work and diligence. We have a challenging year ahead, and we know our team will step up to this challenge. Innovative motivation schemes such as this reflect our company culture and values, and they work. Our team is focused, their performance is excellent and they take pride in their achievements. Plus, it was a great evening.”
Philip Crawford who won the Outstanding Achievement award said: “It’s a great company to work for. They make us feel really special and make sure we know when we’ve done a good job. The evening was great and I’m thrilled I won.”
Transcom believes you should show thanks to your team in practical terms so it offers regular cash incentives for good work. It has found that individual and team incentives help motivate employees, build the team and keep a friendly competition within and across teams that helps drive excellence and motivates them to do well. Within each category, the team is rewarded for their professionalism coupled with sensitivity and politeness when dealing with collections. Without this prerequisite the candidate would not even get to shortlist stage.
Picture - Mike Purvis (left) and Teresa Callaghan presenting an award.
I am glad to hear all at Transcom are having a fantastic time.
It would make me really proud to work for this company. Unfortunately, I work for Pipex, a company that Tiscali bought. Tiscali then planned to outsource all of the Pipex base overseas, obviously to save themselves some cash. Transcom have given all former Pipex employees many and repeated assurances that they were working on bringing in new accounts in order to minimise the need for redundancy.
Despite our repeated feedback over concerns about the way the entire episode has been handled, and our proof that Pipex customers are starting to leave in their droves, Transcom have remained mute.
All assurances have come from [senior management], and I am just very glad to see that their best efforts have been rewarded with a night out, all expenses paid nonetheless.
Comment by Lee Hitchen — April 17, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
If transcom believe that the best way to ensure good customer service is to outsource to foreign call centres they are sorely mistaken. The number of complaints coming in to pipex have rocketed in the past few weeks. Agents are putting the phone down on customers, queries are not being resolved and then they are redirecting the queries back to the uk. As someone who is being made redundant tomorrow, I am not sure where the customers will get assistance from next week.
Comment by xxx — April 17, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
It is nice to see that Transcom award their staff for their hard work, its just a pity they dont appreciate the hard work their new staff they inherited from Tiscali/Pipex have done for them. The Director of Operations said they think their staff are stars but what about all the promises they made to the staff at Credit Control in Minton Hollins Building Stoke on Trent. [Senior Management] said they were doing all in their powers to locate new work to save jobs, “What Happened” obviously this was just a hollow promise so the staff wouldn’t leave until they had all the plans in place to move the work abroad. I just hope their staff in Lithuania are not hoping to have a long term job because at the rate the customers are leaving they too will be made redundant in about 6 months. When will companies realise the British people are sick and tired of foreign call centres. Bring back John Caudwell at least he appreciated his staff and looked after them.
Comment by Anon — April 17, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
With call centres being outsourced and making british jobs “redundant” to save a few quid over a couple of years it’s hard to find alternative work unless you’re willing to take a massive pay dive or work very far from home.
Thanks to this wonderful company, I, and a few people i would now class as close friends are being left out in the cold. Now, the call centre in manila that’s going to be handling pipex + homecall may look swanky and have 700 agents, but i can tell you first hand this means nothing.
40 or less agents handled the same call volume more efficiently and proficiently than these filipino “graduates”. All it would have taken to keep the support BRITISH is a few bright ideas and a little bit of faith but instead pipex employees and the customers are getting the boot.
Tiscali will have no customers by 2009.
You want british support? get yourselves a line off zen
Comment by rofl @ transcom — May 7, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
Companies eager to pursue the cost advantages of offshore customer management must
take an important lesson to heart; customers – not accountants – will be the final arbiters
of success. If disappointed by the service experience delivered they’ll vote with their feet.
That means poorly handled deployments that aggressively pursue cost savings, but fail to
deliver consistency and quality, are destined to fail.
…now who said that?
Comment by Anon — May 7, 2008 @ 2:16 pm