The Quality Assurance role:
In many ways the role is a truly Sisyphean task – no matter how much feedback and training and support we offer, the quality of the end-product never changes. Just when we think we’ve managed to get the writers/designers to do something right, that ol’ offshore boulder rolls right back down to where it started. And then we do it over, and over, and over…
At the risk of mixing metaphors, this really does create a downward spiral leading to a poor end-product for the customer. We’re given far too little time to fix the magnitude and multitude of errors that are created when a company insists on offshoring as many products and services as possible, which results in the customer on most occasions getting something at best underwhelming, and at worst completely wrong for them.
The team is generally under-utilised and frequently threatened with redundancy, which creates an unhappy work environment – nobody likes to feel as though their contribution means nothing.
Personally, all of the above left me feeling fatigued and worn out, which is why I have found a new job elsewhere.
Yell as a whole:
Upper management in Yell is seemingly at a loss with what to do with itself most of the time. Senior management positions are swapped and changed between a small number of people with what appears to be little thought about who actually has the right experience for each job – a case of blindly smashing different shaped blocks into different shaped holes until something fits.
This disjointed approach leads to a constant stream of poor choices, with the entire senior management team working in a reactive rather than proactive manner – what’s of vital importance one month is tossed thoughtlessly aside the next when a shiny new process/product/idea comes into view.
This shouldn’t be a huge issue – Yell is, after all, a company working in the digital marketplace, where fast decisions and changes are a matter of course. The problem begins, however, when the company has an approach to rolling out anything new which can be most kindly described as shambolic. There’s far too much ‘blue-sky thinking’ as they call it, and any attempts to discuss possible difficulties which could arise are often waved away as petulant naysaying. In my mind, when introducing a new product/process etc, a company should engage with the staff who will be using it day to day to get a better idea of any potential pitfalls, in order to tackle issues BEFORE they arise, rather than after.
Speaking of the staff working in the office – there are some very talented, very savvy people working here. Yell doesn’t even know what it’s got half the time, as there are resources untapped which could honestly make the company much better than it is. However, there’s little chance of advancement of any kind for all but a select few.
For example, there’s the way that anyone choosing to become a manager or trainer or coach will be put on one secondment after another, rather than being offered a concrete role following the initial bedding-in period. It’s a genuinely awful way to treat employees who want to exceed and give more to the company.
On the plus side, at least these roles are still onshore – Yell is unnecessarily zealous about offshoring EVERYTHING they think they can get away with. Large chunks of our customer service department? Offshored. Most of HR? Offshored. PPC creation? Offshored. Website design? Offshored. Copywriting? Oh you’d better believe that’s offshored. As mentioned above, this leads to Yell’s customers receiving subpar products across the board.
This, I feel, betrays a profound and flagrant misunderstanding of how to create satisfied customers – simply harping on about ‘great customer service’ while providing disappointing products isn’t going to lead to happy clients. For example, if I were to frequent a restaurant that served nothing but wasp-stinger sandwiches and nettle-juice, the fact that the serving staff were peppy and helpful wouldn’t be enough to make me rate the establishment, not to recommend it to anyone– the quality of the product should be of paramount importance.
Ignoring the customer-facing side of things, possibly the biggest issue that Yell has (and has always had) is a real issue with accurate data management and analysis. At no point do any of the figures reported in the office match up with the work put in – at some points, they cease to even display any sense of logic at all. As an example, there was at time when the entire quality team (in preparation for an incentive) was ranked as working -0.something jobs an hour. MINUS. To do that, we’d have had to create new work for ourselves, and then not do it. When this issue was raised, we were waved away with an attitude of ‘well, that’s what the stats say’. Logic has no place here.
