Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

Recent news of an earthquake near Taiwan damaged undersea cables which disrupted Internet connectivity and telephone services across Asia.

“Data traffic to Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the United States has been affected.  Data capacity has been reduced to 50 percent. Some Internet users in the region could experience congestion over the next several days.” – Hongkong (AFP)

In the Philippines, telecommunication companies PLDT, Smart, Globe and Bayantel have experienced major interruptions in their services.  Most, if not all call centers experienced outages, most especially those that had accounts in the Asia Pacific Region.  Call volume was re-routed to the main companies and spiked affecting staffing and service levels in their own sites.

Due to the lag time, it was difficult for agents to transact with customers on the phone, with limited access to knowledge management systems.  Supervisors were on the phones taking escalated calls, trying to pacify customers and offering alternative solutions.  Some phone lines were cut and transactions had to be documented manually.  Trainers had to think of alternative activities until applications were up and running.  QA personnel had to do live monitoring and sat beside agents to ensure there is minimal impact on productivity and coaching.  The data will also be useful for better planning.

This has caused strain in the business and overall customer satisfaction.