#call center outsourcing cost

[jasper-pagan-witch]

The Modal Commander Servitor

An approach to a Magic: The Gathering servitor subtype. This is one of my UPG-filled personal projects.

There are many approaches to making a servitor. There are ways to advance that servitor straight to thoughtform. There are even ways to make an egregore with other magic practitioners. So that’s not what this post is about, though I will leave resources at the bottom for that [1]. This post is about using pop culture in tandem with magic to make a servitor even more powerful. I’m warning you now, we get well into the mechanical weeds of Magic: The Gathering in this one.

The thought came to me a while back in a Discord server with some magic-practicing pals. I got the idea to use my Magic: The Gathering Commander decks as modal spells (more on this term later), which then turned into ideas for making them servitors. To quote myself,

But more to the point, the idea of a Commander deck is that you have a central Guy in charge of particular Things and you typically build the deck around that, so why not treat the central Guy as a servitor empowered by the tools built into the deck (in the form of supporting cards) to accomplish a goal, and it’s empowered every time you play the deck. It’s basically outsourcing magic bullshit to eldritch monsters from between the planes, a toddler cactus person, several pirates, the gods’ most unfortunate bisexual, and a lawyer.

And then I put the idea aside for a while. Summer, my fallow period, happened. But when I came back to my practice near the start of autumn, I found myself revisiting servitor/thoughtform ideas, which prompted me to return to my old notes on Modal Commander Servitors, the Hireling Sliver Hivemind Linking Sigil System (SHILLS), and Echo Summoning. We’ll only be focusing on the first in this post.

But let’s start at the beginning. The crux of this servitor is that it is the Commander of your Commander deck, so let’s talk about the Commander format.

The Commander format (as officially known by Wizards of the Coast aka WOTC) is also called Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH. It is a casual multiplayer format with a competitive form known as cEDH. You have a deck that is 100 cards strong, and with the exception of basic lands, you can only have one copy of a card in your deck. Commander is centered around a Legendary Creature (or, more rarely, a Planeswalker) who exists in the “command zone” separate from the main deck but that still counts towards that 100-card limit. Under certain circumstances, you can have two Commanders (such as with the Partner, Partner With, Friends Forever, Choose a Background/Background, or Doctor’s Companion mechanics). You start at 40 life, and if you end up at or below 0 life, or you take 21 points of Commander damage from a single Commander, you lose the game. Your deck’s available colors are restricted only to your Commander’s color identity – every color that appears in their card, not just the ones in their initial mana cost. [2]

There’s a lot more to it than that, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll be focusing on your Commander itself rather than its format.

Depending on your approach to pop culture entities (PCEs), you may already see them as faces of existing entities (such as Karametra being a face for Demeter) or as embodiments of archetypes (such as Bertram Graywater embodying the “corrupt lawman” of the Western genre). However, these are far from the only approaches. My personal approach is “everything is already so goddamn weird, so why wouldn’t they exist”. Luckily, when creating a servitor, we’re not drawing on an existing PCE. Instead, we’re forming our energy into the shape (and sometimes personality) of one!

In the meta sense, a player of Magic: The Gathering is a planeswalker (a mortal with a spark in their soul that allows them to travel to other planes and access the magic of other planes even if they aren’t there), battles with other players are duels with other planeswalkers, and their deck represents their allies – other planeswalkers they can call in favors for aid with, creatures and allies they can summon for help, and spells and other resources they have at their disposal. [3] Therefore, your Commander is your greatest ally who can help you in this duel, one whom you can keep resummoning easier than others (as seen by the command zone being a separate zone from the graveyard). The crux of this format, in a meta sense, is that your Commander wants to help you. So why not make it into a servitor, a type of energyform, so it can help you for more than merely games?

Okay, so we’ve covered the Commander, and you presumably already read up on servitors and thoughtforms recently. But what about that other word, modal? Modal is an MTG mechanic that gives you the choice of two or more effects of a spell or ability when it’s cast or otherwise put on the stack. Modes are the different effects you may choose on a modal spell or ability. There are keywords that add onto it (escalate, entwine, and spree) that allow you to pick more or all of the options at once. [4] If you’re worried about what “the stack” is, don’t, it’s not actually relevant for what we’re doing with this servitor. Not even MTG players understand the stack. The point is, modal means options, and the only thing better than good stuff is options for good stuff.

So let’s put all of these definitions and mechanics together. A Modal Commander Servitor is an energyform stored in a Legendary Creature (or Planeswalker) card in charge of a Commander deck who uses the cards and resources in the deck (or otherwise given to them) in order to adapt to whatever you need it to do. They’re created like normal servitors and can draw on the same energy sources as normal servitors, but they can also draw power from the lands in their Commander deck. They can be empowered by both magical and in-game usage. The deck theme and archetype (such as an Otter Typal deck for Bria, Riptide Rogue or a Ninjutsu Theme deck for Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow [5]) also tie into and empower the Commander as both a Commander and a servitor. Sure, you can build a deck completely divorced from its Commander, but you’re kneecapping yourself and your Commander by doing so.

Let’s circle back to the Partner mechanic. It appears in multiple forms – Partner, Partner With, Friends Forever, Choose a Background and Background, and Doctor’s Companion. These abilities give you the ability to have two Commanders for your deck, with caveats.

Let’s start with Partner, the broadest form of this mechanic. Any Commander with Partner can team up with any other Commander with Partner. While most are monocolored (and there’s a colorless one that you get to choose the color of), there’s also quite a few that are dual-colored, meaning that your deck can have up to four colors with two Commanders. Of course, you could absolutely use two Partner Commanders with the same color identity to make a monocolored deck. There are definitely benefits to that approach, depending on which Commanders you choose. (Cough, Akroma, Vision of Ixidor partnered with literally anyone.)

“Partner With” is similar, but it restricts you to premade pairings. This was seen in the Battlebond set, the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths set, and several Universes Beyond (aka, officially licensed crossover cards) sets like the Lord of the Rings Commander decks, the Doctor Who Commander decks, and the Assassin’s Creed set. “Partner With” is just a chunk of its keyword. Part of the keyword itself is the card that the Commander is...well, partnered with. “Partner With” is not the mechanic fully, because the full mechanic is “Partner With [specific card]”.

Choose a Background and its partner, the Background Enchantment subtype, were introduced in the Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate set that came out well before Baldur’s Gate 3, leaving most of us confused about all of these named Commanders like Shadowheart and Karlach and Wyll. Backgrounds were a new way to add something to the Command zone that wasn’t necessarily a Creature or Planeswalker – instead, they’re Enchantments that boost your Commander. Even better, they work as part of the normal Commander deck, so they can still boost your Modal Commander Servitor even if they’re not in charge of it!

Friends Forever is a type of Partner originally tied to the Stranger Things Secret Lair cards that was brought in-universe with the Innistrad re-workings of those characters into more lore-accurate cards; any card with Friends Forever can team up with any other card with Friends Forever, but this one can even give you access to all five colors of mana.

Doctor’s Companion is a Partner keyword from the Doctor Who Commander decks that allows the cards with that keyword to partner with any Commander who has the subtype line “Time Lord Doctor”. My coworker, who is way more into Doctor Who than I am but knows very little about Magic: The Gathering, was absolutely giddy when she saw how that worked.

I understand that this is a lot, so let’s circle back to the primary point: using Partner Commanders means that you essentially have two Commanders to try and deal with in a Modal Commander Servitor context. I can think of a few ways to handle this, personally. One way is to just have two servitors and allow them to work together or separately to accomplish goals. Another is to treat them as two sides of the same servitor, drawing on one side at a time. A third that I can think of is to just address them as one unit, since that’s what your Commander deck is – a fusion of their two abilities to create a stronger whole.

There are also the Companions to consider. The Companion mechanic debuted in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths in 2020, and it was panned as a mechanic. Even being reworked for the Multiverse Legends in 2023 reprint didn’t help the mechanic much. Notably, Lutri, the Spellchaser was banned in Commander the moment it was previewed [6] and Yorion, Sky Nomad can’t be used in Commander because it requires your deck to have more than the 100-card limit the format has. [7] But the other eight Companions are able to function as Companions (provided you have that Rule 0 talk with your pod about allowing a sideboard) within the constraints of the Commander format [8], thus giving you a 101st card and, potentially, an additional servitor. While they may not necessarily be an additional Modal Commander Servitor, they can be crafted as an additional, lesser servitor to aid your Modal Commander Servitor.

And no, you can’t use it as both a Commander and a Companion. The “only one card” rule still applies, so you have to choose one. However, provided that both of your Commanders meet the Companion’s requirements, you can absolutely have two Commanders and a Companion.

Do you see what I mean about getting into the weeds?

So what about when you’re done with your Modal Commander Servitor? My approach is to use a built-in “kill switch” to dissolve the servitor and, since this is tied to a specific Commander deck, to dismantle the deck and cleanse the Commander card. Simple and to the point, because I like simple and to the point.

I also made it easy to activate and dismiss my Modal Commander Servitor. I build all of my energyforms with activation phrases that will pull them out of “hibernation” and dismissal phrases that send them back to it. This allows them to rest and regain energy without having to be actively used. I used this same method and theory for my own Modal Commander Servitor.

I am also in a pod that believes in using every card we own, so even if a card is officially banned in Commander by the Commander Rules Committee (before they recently disbanded) or Wizards of the Coast, we still use them. (I feel the need to mention that I primarily play against my mother, who was a Magic: The Gathering player from the early days and does not believe in mercy.) Naturally, if you play with a specific group, you can talk to them about in-pod bans and allowances, but if you play against random people, it’s probably best to listen to the existing banlist. Of course, with WOTC in charge of the bans now, there’s going to be a whole power scaling thing... Lowkey, this format is kind of a mess right now because people lost their ever-loving minds recently. [9] But this is a post about pop culture occultism, not...that mess, so let’s move on!

For the rest of this post, let’s step through a theoretical Modal Commander Servitor. We’ll pick Yorion, Sky Nomad [7] because I feel bad for it. Although it can’t be a Companion, it’s still entirely legal as a Commander! Yorion is a White and Blue Legendary Bird Serpent for five mana, getting up into the pricier side of a Commander. It has four power and five toughness, meaning it can hit your opponents decently hard and take a pretty big hit. It has the Flying keyword, meaning that it can only be blocked by creatures with the Flying and/or Reach keywords. When it enters the battlefield, you get to exile any number of other, nonland permanents that you both own and control; they then come back to the battlefield at the beginning of your next end step. This is commonly referred to in MTG as “blinking”.

So this is pretty good, at least to me. You can bring it into the battlefield and exile any number of things that also have “enters the battlefield” triggers to get them to pop off once more. And looking at Yorion’s EDHRec page, a lot of people had the same idea. As of writing this, there are over one thousand decks on EDHRec that focus around blinking with Yorion at the helm. But blinking isn’t the only thing Yorion can do. Plenty of deck themes also feature cantrips (cards that draw you cards in addition to doing something else), those damned Persistent Petitioners (who can make your opponents mill their deck until they die from running out of cards), cloning, Flying, and so on, though none of them have nearly the number of Yorion decks that blinking does. Personally, I’d build a Bird deck, because I’m predictable and like Typal decks. I would add cards like Skycat Sovereign, Watcher of the Spheres, Favorable Winds, and other cards meant to boost Birds or Flying creatures. Ultimately, I would focus on making this a functional Commander deck first and foremost, because I’m not going to keep a deck around if it sucks ass. That kind of defeats the point of the Modal Commander Servitor – in order to make it more powerful, you need to use it for both kinds of magic.

So that’s the “Commander” part figured out. Let’s shift focus to the “Servitor” section. I have a fairly quick yet simultaneously detailed approach to making servitors. [10] The important things to emphasize when building this Modal Commander Servitor are to name the servitor for the card (including any epithets or surnames on the card you’re using), to give them the ability to draw on the cards/resources in their Commander deck, and to specify that your Modal Commander Servitor is just that when you are speaking it into existence. Give them the ability to adapt and whatnot.

So now we’ve got a Modal Commander Servitor. Personally, I would focus on pouring energy into it and giving it simple tasks at first so it can get its feet under it. Being spontaneously brought into existence is disorienting, even for things that can’t think for themselves and aren’t sentient, so I give my servitors a chance to exist and hang out in their “dismissed”/hibernation state so they can get used to existing.

Now, let’s talk about potential specificity. Even though I keep my Modal Commander Servitors extremely vague and adaptable, you can outline the particular modes you need them to function in more specifically. For example, Yorion can be given different “modes” focusing on categories of magic typically aligned with White and Blue, such as protection, scouting, travel, and elemental air and water. This can help if you want the Modal Commander Servitor to be more specific than “do whatever”. If you follow the “all entities are ultimately facets of a bigger entity” approach, you could have Yorion channel parts of the Bird overspirit or the Serpent overspirit, if that’s your spiritual cup of tea.

Ultimately, the point of the Modal Commander Servitor is adaptation and flexibility. Sometimes, you just need to outsource a problem and you don’t have the time to make a more specific Guy for it, but if you already have one of these handy, you can just point them at the issue and wait to see what happens.

I hope you enjoyed this post! It got...pretty long, but I think that’s ultimately for the best, since it enabled me to pack more detail in. If you end up doing this, please let me know what you do and how it goes! I’m eager to see what other people experience with this deeply UPG-based approach to servitor creation and usage.

Citations, Resources, And Further Reading

[1] “Jasper’s Servitor/Thoughtform Resource Post”, compiled on Tumblr by jasper-pagan-witch: https://jasper-pagan-witch.tumblr.com/post/762988504970100736/jaspers-servitorthoughtform-resource-post

[2] “Commander (format)” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Commander_(format)

[3] “Planeswalker” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Planeswalker

[4] “Modal” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Modal

[5] “Bria, Riptide Rogue (Commander) – Otter” and “Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow (Commander) – Ninjutsu” on EDHRec: https://edhrec.com/commanders/bria-riptide-rogue/otter and https://edhrec.com/commanders/yuriko-the-tigers-shadow/ninjutsu

[6] “Lutri” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Lutri

[7] “Yorion, Sky Nomad” on Scryfall: https://scryfall.com/card/mul/64/yorion-sky-nomad

[8] “All Companions” on EDHRec: https://edhrec.com/companions

[9] “On the Future of Commander” on the official Magic: The Gathering website, by Wizards of the Coast: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/on-the-future-of-commander

[10] “Entity Creation Worksheet” adapted on Tumblr by jasper-pagan-witch: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/763362895377694720

Condensed Chaos: an introduction to chaos magic by Phil Hine: A good beginner primer on chaos magic, with a fairly extensive chapter on servitors/thoughtforms and a willingness to explain things that I just gloss over and build red string boards about.

Magickal Servitors: Create Your Own Spirits to Attract Pleasure, Power and Prosperity by Damon Brand: A very thorough book on servitor creation, though not necessarily from a chaos magic lens. I found it very funny to read how much the author was frothing at the mouth about chaos magic. Yet, it’s still hands-down the best book dedicated entirely to servitor creation that I’ve read thus far.

EDHRec, a website for comparing Commanders and seeing the most commonly used cards in particular decks: https://edhrec.com/

Scryfall, an MTG card searching database: https://scryfall.com/

[fursasaida]

Though the Biden administration has frequently described its approach to labor policy as “worker-centered.” The African workers’ letter argues that this has not extended to them, saying “we are treated as disposable.”

“You have the power to stop our exploitation by US companies, clean up this work and give us dignity and fair working conditions,” the letter says. “You can make sure there are good jobs for Kenyans too, not just Americans."

Tech contractors in Kenya have filed lawsuits in recent years alleging that tech-outsourcing companies and their US clients such as Meta have treated workers illegally. Wednesday’s letter demands that Biden make sure that US tech companies engage with overseas tech workers, comply with local laws, and stop union-busting practices. It also suggests that tech companies “be held accountable in the US courts for their unlawful operations aboard, in particular for their human rights and labor violations.”

The letter comes just over a year after 150 workers formed the African Content Moderators Union. Meta promptly laid off all of its nearly 300 Kenya-based content moderators, workers say, effectively busting the fledgling union. The company is currently facing three lawsuits from more than 180 Kenyan workers, demanding more humane working conditions, freedom to organize, and payment of unpaid wages.

“Everyone wants to see more jobs in Kenya,” Kauna Malgwi, a member of the African Content Moderators Union steering committee, says. “But not at any cost. All we are asking for is dignified, fairly paid work that is safe and secure.”

[rjzimmerman]

The Carbon Footprint of Amazon, Google, and Facebook Is Growing. (Sierra Club)

Excerpt from this story from Sierra Club:

IN MARCH The Information reported that Microsoft was in talks with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, about spending an eye-popping $100 billion on a gargantuan data center in Wisconsin dedicated to running artificial intelligence software. Code-named “Stargate,” the data center would, at full operation, consume five gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 3.7 million homes. For comparison purposes, that’s roughly the same amount of power produced by Plant Vogtle, the big nuclear power station in Georgia that cost $30 billion to build.

Stargate is in the earliest of planning stages, but the sheer scale of the proposal reflects a truth about artificial intelligence: AI is an energy hog. That’s an embarrassing about-face for the technology industry. For at least 20 years, American electricity consumption has hardly grown at all—owing in part, say computer scientists, to steady advances in energy efficiency that have percolated out of the tech industry into the larger economy. In 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration, total electricity consumption fell slightly from 2022 levels.

But according to a report published last December by Grid Strategies, a consultancy that advises on energy policy, multiple electric utilities now predict that US energy demand will rise by up to 5 percent over the next five years. One of the chief culprits responsible for the surge, say the utilities, are new data centers designed to run AI. To meet the growing demand for power, those utilities want to build new fossil fuel power plants and to dismantle climate legislation that stands in their way.

For environmentalists, this represents a giant step backward. Artificial intelligence was supposed to help us solve problems. What good are ChatGPT and its ilk if using them worsens global warming?

This is a relatively new story—the AI gold rush is still in its infancy, ChatGPT only having debuted in fall 2022. But computing’s energy demands have been growing for decades, ever since the internet became an indispensable part of daily life. Every Zoom call, Netflix binge, Google search, YouTube video, and TikTok dance is processed in a windowless, warehouse-like building filled with thousands of pieces of computer hardware. These data centers are where the internet happens, the physical manifestation of the so-called cloud—perhaps as far away from ethereality as you can get.

In the popular mind, the cloud is often thought of in the simple sense of storage. This is where we back up our photos, our videos, our Google Docs. But that’s just a small slice of it: For the past 20 years, computation itself has increasingly been outsourced to data centers. Corporations, governments, research institutions, and others have discovered that it is cheaper and more efficient to rent computing services from Big Tech.

The crucial point, writes anthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrate in his case study The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage, is that “heat is the waste product of computation.” Data centers consume so much energy because computer chips produce large amounts of heat. Roughly 40 percent of a data center’s electricity bill is the result of just keeping things cool. And the new generation of AI software is far more processor intensive and power hungry than just about anything—with the notable exception of cryptocurrency—that has come before.

The energy cost of AI and its perverse, climate-unfriendly incentives for electric utilities are a gut check for a tech industry that likes to think of itself as changing the world for the better. Michelle Solomon, an analyst at the nonprofit think tank Energy Innovation, calls the AI power crunch “a litmus test” for a society threatened by climate change.

[meandmybigmouth]

Trump's Anti-Worker Record

At every turn Donald Trump has made increasing the power of corporations over working people his top priority. The list of the damage done to working people by the Trump Administration is long. Here are a few examples.

Trump has encouraged freeloaders, made it more difficult to enforce collective bargaining agreements, silenced workers and restricted the freedom to join unions:

During a live conversation on X with Elon Musk on August 12, Donald Trump said striking workers should be fired.1

Trump packed the courts with anti-labor judges who have made the entire public sector “right to work for less” in an attempt to financially weaken unions by increasing the number of freeloaders.2

Trump stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union appointees who side with employers in contract disputes and support companies who delay and stall union elections, misclassify workers to take away their freedom to join a union, and silence workers.3

Trump made it easier for employers to fire or penalize workers who speak up for better pay and working conditions or exercise the right to strike.4

Trump promised to veto the PRO Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, historic legislation that will reverse decades of legislation meant to crush private sector unions and shift power away from CEOs to workers.5

Trump has restricted overtime pay, opposed wage increases, and gutted health and safety protections:

Trump changed the rules about who qualifies for overtime pay, making more than 8 million workers ineligible and costing them over $1 billion per year in lost wages.6

Trump reduced the number of OSHA inspectors so that there are now fewer than at any time in history, and weakened penalties for companies that fail to report violations.7

Trump threatened to veto legislation that would raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour.8

Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia, is an anti-worker, union-busting corporate lawyer who aggressively defended Cablevision’s decision to fire 22 workers when they tried to win a contract with CWA.9

Trump has helped insurers reduce coverage and made it easier for pharmaceutical companies to inflate drug prices:

Trump supports an ongoing lawsuit that would eliminate protections that ensure that health insurers can't discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.10

Trump threatened to veto legislation to reduce prescription drug costs, even though last year the prices of over 3,000 drugs increased by an average of 10.5%.11

Trump’s made protecting the profits of pharmaceutical companies a priority in NAFTA renegotiations.12

Trump's proposed FY2021 budget would cut funding for Medicare.13

Trump has encouraged outsourcing and offshoring:

Instead of supporting CWA’s bipartisan legislation to help save call center jobs, Trump pushed for a corporate tax cut bill that gives companies a 50% tax break on their foreign profits - making it financially rewarding for them to move our jobs overseas.14

On two separate occasions, a group of Senators wrote Trump asking him to issue an executive order preventing federal contracts from going to companies that send call center jobs overseas, and CWA President Chris Shelton even asked him to do so during an in person during a meeting in the Oval Office. He never responded.15

Trump has broken his campaign promise to take on companies that move good jobs overseas—instead, he's given over $115 billion in federal contracts to companies that are offshoring jobs.16

Trump failed to prepare the nation for the COVID-19 pandemic, opposes hazard pay for essential workers, and has given employers a free pass to lower safety standards:

Trump failed to secure enough Personal Protective Equipment for essential workers during the COVID-19 crisis and has weakened protections for workers who are concerned about working in unsafe environments.17

Trump refused to use the Defense Production Act to get our IUE-CWA manufacturing members back to work producing ventilators or PPE and instead used it to force meatpacking plants to open despite thousands of workers getting infected on the job in unsafe working conditions.18

Trump promised to veto the Heroes Act, which would give essential workers premium “hazard” pay and expand paid leave and unemployment insurance for those impacted by the Coronavirus.19

Trump opposed providing aid to help state and local governments continue providing services and keep workers on payroll—he suggested instead that it might make sense to allow states to declare bankruptcy.20

Trump’s OSHA has lowered standards meant to protect workers from getting sick at work and given employers a free pass if they fail to follow even those minimal requirements.21

[smsprovider]

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[mariacallous]

Amazon deliveries could be headed for some turbulence in the new year. Pilots for US-based Air Transport International, a cargo airline that ferries Amazon packages from its fulfillment centers to airports nearer to its customers, voted to authorize a strike last month. During the three and a half years the union has been negotiating with ATI, wages in the industry have soared, and ATI’s pilots complain that their pay has fallen behind. Meanwhile, they say ATI is facing record attrition as pilots jump ship to better-paying carriers.

A strike could throw a wrench in Amazon’s logistics network. ATI, owned by holding company ATSG, operates half of the 80 US aircraft currently in service for Amazon, according to an estimate by Planespotters. But the pilots, who are represented by the Air Line Pilots Association union, can’t walk out until at least next year.

Federal law requires airline labor disputes to be mediated by the US government’s National Mediation Board, which will implement a 30-day cooling-off period if it determines the parties have reached an impasse and they refuse arbitration. If a resolution isn’t reached during that time, the pilots can walk off the job or the airline can lock them out. Some 98 percent of ATI’s 640 pilots participated in the vote and only one didn’t vote to authorize the strike.

Amazon outsources the operation of its air service, which it calls Amazon Air, to a small network of cargo airlines whose pilots fly Amazon-branded planes. In the US alone, they collectively operate more than 330 daily flights for Amazon between more than 50 airports, according to the logistics consultancy MWPVL International.

Most airlines that work with Amazon also devote a large share of their businesses to transporting cargo for other customers, including DHL and the US military. In recent years, ATI has gone all-in on the retailer, however. Amazon deliveries now comprise 94 percent of ATI’s flying hours, according to the pilots’ union, making the company and its workers dependent on the ecommerce giant.

ATI’s pilots’ union says that more than a third of the airline’s pilots have left so far this year, after 27 percent of them departed last year. The union says 42 percent of its pilots are currently on probation, meaning they’re in their first year of service. “We’re watching our carrier disintegrate,” says Mike Sterling, chair of the ATI pilots’ union.

The pilots’ union says they have delivered a 98 percent on-time performance rate, but the rapid turnover and declining experience levels are threatening that. “This market is highly competitive, and ATSG is diminishing its ability to provide quality service to Amazon,” says Sterling. “We think this is a conversation that needs to be had between all three parties.” Amazon and ATI did not respond to requests for comment. During an earnings call in May, ATSG’s former CEO said that ATI’s service quality remained outstanding, but acknowledged that training replacements for departing pilots had raised costs for the airline.

When the pilots’ union negotiated a contract with the company in 2018, pilots’ pay, benefits, and schedules were competitive with similar airlines, says Josh Hoy, a captain who started at the airline seven years ago. He initially looked at the job as just a stepping stone but decided to stick around when ATI’s relationship with Amazon took off. “It was a really exciting time, being on the ground floor of that kind of growth,” he says. “I started to have the conversation with my wife and said, ‘I think this might be the place to stay.’”

However, “as time went on, we’ve fallen far behind,” Hoy says. ATI’s union says its pilots are paid less on an hourly basis than those at all of Amazon’s seven other carriers. “We operate under the same rules, in the same airspace, on the exact same routes. The airplanes cost the exact same to operate,” says Hoy. “Everything is exactly the same, except for our pay.”

No Fondness for Labor

Amazon generally goes to great lengths to avoid engaging with unions and to deter its employees or those who work for its contractors from joining them. The company spent the last year and a half unsuccessfully challenging the first and only union victory at a US Amazon warehouse. When employees of a delivery contractor in Southern California unionized earlier this year, Amazon refused to jointly bargain with the workers and terminated its agreement with the contractor. “Amazon has not demonstrated a real fondness for labor,” Sterling acknowledges. “I would love to change that narrative with them.”

The last and only time Amazon faced a strike by one of its air carriers was in 2016, during the early days of its air cargo operation, when 250 pilots for ABX Air walked off the job. A judge deemed the strike illegal, however, and ordered the pilots back to work the following day. Nonetheless, a former Amazon Air employee told WIRED last year that Amazon suspended its business with ABX for several weeks after the strike ended to demonstrate the relative power it held in the relationship, which soon soured.

ATI’s pilots are taking a less antagonistic tone in hopes of bringing Amazon to the negotiating table. “What we don’t want to do is affect our customers,” says Sterling. “We’ve done a lot to protect our obsession with Amazon.” However, he says the intransigence of ATSG’s management has left the pilots with no choice but to call a strike.

“This side of Amazon’s network is the most vulnerable to labor strikes,” says Marc Wulfraat, president of logistics consultancy MWPVL. If drivers or warehouse workers strike, the company can shift the flow of products and packages to one of its many nearby warehouses, but airports are fewer in number and farther apart.

Amazon could compensate for a walkout at ATI by shifting volume to other air carriers under the Amazon Air umbrella, but only if they have the capacity to handle the influx at all of the airports. It could also transport some of its packages by truck instead, which it did during the brief 2016 strike. However, this could result in slower shipping times and reduced service, says Wulfraat, which flies in the face of Amazon’s mantra of customer obsession.

Pilots also have the advantage of being generally in a strong position across the airline industry. “It’s still a very, very hot job market” for pilots, says Geoff Murray, a partner who works on aerospace at management consultancy Oliver Wyman. Plummeting demand for passenger pilots during the pandemic sent many into early retirement, worsening an existing pilot shortage that got more acute as the industry bounced back. Wages have soared. Oliver Wyman estimates that captains’ pay at the US mainline carriers, such as Delta and UPS, has increased 46 percent since 2020, while regional carriers have increased pay by 86 percent.

Pilot Drew Patterson came to ATI in 2021, attracted by the work-life balance the airline offered, but as the carrier lost pilots, he has seen his workload creep up and his schedule become more unpredictable. With fewer crews to operate the same number of flights, “everybody else's schedule gets compressed,” he says. “Sometimes you can be away from home for a long time.”

Long-term, he thinks Amazon’s continued growth should be a good thing for ATI and its employees, so he’s been willing to stick it out. But he’s not so sure all of his colleagues will feel the same about current conditions at the company.

“All of this has a real house-of-cards feeling to it,” says Sterling. “We just can’t sustain what we’re doing.”

[soror--mystica]

An Aptly Roundabout Archetypal Amplification of Type 9's Connection with the 'Abyss'

The 'Abyss' in the Enneagram symbol represents the psychic underbelly, the collective unconscious, or the archetype of Hell, cognition of which gives way to the 4 and the 5's existential alienation.

This Abyss is represented by the largest gap in the Enneagram symbol, flanked by 4 and 5, with 9 aptly floating above, given that it is as yet unborn, that is, uncoagulated into a definite ego-self, unlike the other two.

This alienation arises only because the 4 and the 5, unlike the average 9, already has a developed 'solar' ego-consciousness to closely juxtapose with the 'lunar' unconscious, hence psychic polarization, or a tension of opposites naturally felt to be an irreconcilable contradiction or disconnection by the ego, therefore being archetypally analagous to the Fall from Grace or the experience of Exile.

9, on the other hand, has yet to be necessarily banished from paradise or Eden; therefore, it lives a pleromatic existence in which the opposites have yet to be cognized as such, and are instead experienced as a unity, hence its feeling of connectedness with All.

Unlike 4 and 5, Type 9 is able, best of all, to perceive the paradox that undergirds seeming contradiction (being a Withdrawn-Body type – the most primal and pre-rational center); in other words, it is able to contain the opposites (being an Attachment-Body type and therefore representing a receptive-holding environment), for its ego is 'lunar' (quasi-unconscious) as opposed to 'solar', which tends to insist on 'cutting' over-differentiation, so much so that it can get blinded by too much light, at the cost of perceiving any underlying, mystifying (non-differentiated) unity.

The 9's ego can be called a quasi-unconscious (or potential) ego, for it is still attached to the realm of eternal forms or potentialities, and is therefore lacking in its ability to sharply demarcate between and among things. It has not yet entered into the necessarily dismembering life process which requires one to suffer the tension of opposites. So, despite the fact that this gives 9 an advantage in the way of mystical perception, attachment to such realm stunts the 9's development as it reinforces its condition of being nothing but potentiality, thus blocking the way to actualization. Hence, despite its apparent natural fulfillment in nature, to the average 9 belongs the provisional life (Sloth/Self-Forgetting).

For like can only mate with unlike; likewise, the depths of the unconscious can only be actualized by the heights of consciousness. Without this polarization, there can only be suspension (9 dissociation) and drowning (9 overwhelm) as opposed to swimming (submission to the limitations of ego) to the point of sinking (necessary ego-dismemberment/-sacrifice) which is required of transcendence or actualization (resolution of contradiction into paradox, or reunion).

The 9 is at a distance from the Abyss, despite fulfilling the essential condition of withdrawn-ness, because of this insistence on suspension.

This suspension manifests as projection of its center of gravity onto inner and outer objects – mystical participation as a way to avoid separation or the experience of a subject-object duality, which, unbeknownst to the 9, is the essential condition for self-connection. Thus it has been said that "the only type the 9 is not like is the 9 itself."

Accordingly, Type 9 must and can access the Abyss only by, after having done what an average 9 is bound to do, ceasing to transfer its center of gravity either internally (this includes its two other centers) or onto external circumstances, and so rise above psychic contamination and return to its Self.

In other words, the 9 has to stay in the uncontaminated aloneness of the withdrawn body after inevitably and sufficiently outsourcing its center of gravity in order to experience the greater tension that is needed for an aptly embodied and therefore deeper plunge into the bottom.

Only in this way can it come through (as opposed to merely get around via outsourcing) and find the only genuine solidity, that is, self-connection, exactly as what Jung said: "You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you cannot support yourself (that is, with projections and introjections). Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation (to touch bottom with the Body center in particular, as it is the foundation or ground of Being – the beginning and the end, the essential and the ultimate – connection with which being what 9 ultimately but unconsciously longs for, in unprojected form)."

[hi-ma-ni]

BPO Companies: How to Choose the Best BPO Company in India?

Today, business process outsourcing has become a growing trend. With so much data and consumers to manage, corporate confidence in Best BPO Company has grown over the years. India's IT and BPO services sector has grown rapidly since its inception in the mid-1990s and today has a turnover of US$37.6 billion. The Indian BPO market has grown due to economies of scale, reduced business risk, cost advantages, improved utilization, and superior experience. Among competitors such as Australia, China, the Philippines, and Ireland, India is now the world's leading hub for the consumption of BPO services. India's immense popularity as a global outsourcing destination is due to the country's low labor costs and a large pool of skilled and skilled workers gave an opportunity to companies like Ascent BPO to provide better services at reasonable prices.

But since many organizations in India offer quality data entry services, companies only need to choose the best ones after they have done their homework. Look on our website to learn how to choose the Best BPO Company like us.

What is business process deploying or outsourcing (BPO)?

Before we get started, we want to give our audience an overview of what a BPO is. Business process outsourcing companies provide services that allow companies to focus on their core business. Let us consider this problem in detail. You may not have the time or resources for a separate organization that you can trust to handle other aspects of your business. These other aspects can be anything from call center operations, marketing, SEO, finance to human resource activities. The sky is the limit. Now that business process outsourcing has sparked some interest, let's explain what to look for in the Best BPO company.

Some Best BPO company are given below:

Tata Consulting Services:

Tata Consulting Services (TCS) is the second-best outsourcing firm in India. TCS is an organization based in Mumbai in Bangalore. TCS provides trading services, platform solutions, analytics, information services, and more. TCS has more than 400,000 employees in India and thousands of employees in other parts of the world. Tata Advisory Services will generate revenue of approximately $23 billion in 2020.

Wipro:

Wipro is a leading multinational company providing IT services, consulting, and business operations. They serve their clients by applying their expertise in cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics, and emerging technologies.

Ascent BPO

Ascent BPO manages multiple streams such as data entry services, data entry projects, data entry processing, web research, financial accounting, and call center services. Get the best outsourcing service at the lowest possible price here. Wide access to major Indian metropolitan areas such as Delhi and Mumbai, as well as other major cities in India such as Bangalore, Chennai, and Kolkata.

First source solution:

Firstsource Solution is a leading provider of customized Business Process Management (BPM) services to the banking and financial, customer service, telecom, media, and health industries. It is headquartered in Mumbai, and also has operations in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Philippines. In addition, Firstsource Solutions recently won Gold and Silver Awards at the UK Complaint Management Awards 2020.

UrbanTimer:

UrbanTimer is a VA company based in Kolkata. Believing that your experience will be "the best in your business," the company offers administrative support, customer service, content creation, graphic design, project management, QuickBooks services, startups, and more.

Professional BPO Qualifications: What To Look For?

Companies considering working with a BPO company should know what to look for in potential partners. If you're wondering how to find the most qualified BPO company like Ascent BPO, a few key qualifications are good indicators that you're doing business with experienced professionals:

1.    Proven experience:

Your business processes should not be executed by ordinary people. One of the most important qualifications for Best BPO company is proven experience in the industry. Excellent customer testimonials show that your business has been treated similarly.

2.    Specialized Services:

We offer a variety of functions and processes, and specialized services demonstrate expertise. If you're wondering how to find the most qualified BPO company, it's a good sign to find a company that specializes in a field similar to yours.

3.    Reliability and Security:

Because Ascent BPO handles confidential and proprietary company information, you want to ensure that your BPO company's data security measures are in place. If you can tell that a BPO company values ??reliability and security, you know your data is safe.

4.    Focus on Metrics:

Being data-driven is one of the most important skills a BPO company should look for. A metrics-driven BPO company tests and shows clients how it is performing.

5.    Transparency:

Transparency is an important factor if you want to know how to find the most qualified BPO company. If a BPO company doesn't seem honest or transparent, you won't be satisfied with their work.

You should browse through the above-given details about BPO companies to find the most qualified BPO company. These elements will help you determine which BPO company is the best fit for your business.

Resource:https://www.ascentbpo.com/bpo-companies

Useful Links:

[thesaleswhisperer]

How a Pandemic Pivot Made $5,000,000 a Month—Adam Pisk

https://blog.thesaleswhisperer.com/p/adam-pisk

Market like you mean it.

Now go sell something.

  SUBSCRIBE to sell more, faster, at higher margins, with less stress, and more fun!

https://www.youtube.com/@TheSalesWhispererWes

  Takeaways

Pivoting during a crisis can lead to unexpected opportunities and growth.

Outsourcing and global employment can be effective solutions for businesses looking to scale and save costs.

Maintaining authenticity and human connection is crucial in a world increasingly driven by AI and automation.

Hiring globally can provide access to a talented workforce at a more affordable rate. Bruntwork.co supports over 1,500 companies globally in various industries and offers a wide range of roles.

Clear communication and understanding the business are crucial when hiring outsourced sales agents.

Personalized training and avoiding the use of auto-dialers can ensure authenticity and effectiveness in sales calls.

Treating outsourced workers as part of the team and providing a good work-life balance is important for success.

  Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Background

03:04 The Pivot to Outsourcing and Global Employment

07:09 Navigating the Challenges of AI and Automation

13:05 The Importance of Authenticity and Human Connection

27:51 Affordability of Outsourcing

29:27 Language and Education Requirements

30:44 Different Types of Sales Roles

33:28 Outsourcing with Existing Processes

35:56 The Importance of Authenticity in Sales

37:52 Avoiding Call Center Stereotypes

39:34 Accents and Communication

41:45 Outsourcing to a Distributed Workforce

44:31 Demand for Global Work

48:21 Treating Outsourced Workers as Part of the Team

-----

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Check out The Sales Podcast's latest episode

[beardedmrbean]

Frustrated by endless wait times for out of stock uniforms, police in the southern German state of Bavaria have taken an unusual step to draw attention to their plight.

In a video released on YouTube and Instagram by the state chapter of the German Police Union (DPolG), two officers seated in a police cruiser ask one another, "How long have you been waiting?" replying four and six months respectively, before exiting their BMW to reveal that they are pantless.

Jürgen Köhnlein, chairman of the Bavarian DPolG then addresses the problem head on, saying that what seems like a bad April Fool's joke is anything but, and nothing to laugh about, equating a chronic shortage of uniforms with lack of respect for officers.

"Bavaria's police are 'stripping bare' and could literally be left standing without trousers," says K��hlein, who highlights the fact that wait times for as many as 21 different uniform items — such as caps, jackets and pants — can take months if they are available at all.

The union is calling on the state Interior Ministry to rectify the problem immediately even if that means additional costs, noting that, "Since 2020, we have hardly been talking about shortcomings in the quality of uniforms, but rather a shortage in the availability of uniforms."

Interior Ministry acknowledges problem, says fix is coming

An Interior Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday acknowledged the problem, pointing to supply chain disruptions. "The supply bottlenecks for uniform parts are a major annoyance for us."

State officials say they will now take over delivery logistics themselves after procurement had been outsourced. Supply bottlenecks, said the Interior Ministry, had affected specialty trousers such as multi-purpose summer pants in particular.

Interior Ministry representatives pointed to the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine as further factors negatively impacting supply and delivery and claimed that a new logistics center would be operational in Bavaria by 2030, making the force less dependent on outside procurers.   

Despite the problem, the Ministry said State Police are in no way being kept from carrying out their duties, adding that other uniform elements could be used when specific pieces were unavailable.

Union Chairman Jürgen Köhnlein was less nonchalant, saying, "Right now it remains unclear whether the situation will improve or continue to deteriorate," asking, "What impression must new recruits get when they are forced to complete their training in 'civilian clothing' rather than being provided with a uniform."

[247callcenterservice]

In the United States, call center companies play a pivotal role in providing customer support, sales assistance, technical troubleshooting, and various other services for businesses across a multitude of industries. These companies employ thousands of individuals nationwide and operate through various models, including in-house, outsourced, and virtual call centers. Let's delve into the landscape of call center companies in the USA.

1. Overview of the Call Center Industry:

The call center industry in the USA has witnessed significant growth over the years, driven by the increasing demand for cost-effective customer service solutions and the globalization of businesses. Today, call centers cater to diverse sectors such as telecommunications, banking and finance, healthcare, retail, technology, and e-commerce.

2. Major Players:

Several major call center companies dominate the industry, including:

Teleperformance: One of the largest call center companies globally, Teleperformance operates numerous centers across the USA, offering multilingual customer support, technical assistance, and sales services.

Concentrix: Concentrix is another key player, known for its innovative customer engagement solutions. It provides a wide range of services, including customer care, technical support, and digital marketing services.

Alorica: Alorica specializes in customer experience outsourcing solutions, serving clients in various industries. It offers services such as customer support, sales, and back-office support.

Sitel Group: Sitel Group is renowned for its customer experience management solutions. With a global presence, Sitel operates call centers in multiple locations across the USA, providing tailored customer support services.

TTEC: Formerly known as TeleTech, TTEC offers customer experience solutions, digital services, and technology-enabled customer care. It focuses on delivering personalized customer interactions through its contact centers.

3. Industry Trends:

The call center industry is continually evolving, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer preferences. Some notable trends include:

Digital Transformation: Call centers are increasingly integrating digital channels such as chat, email, and social media to enhance customer engagement and support omnichannel experiences.

AI and Automation: Automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots, are being adopted to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and provide faster resolutions to customer queries.

Remote Workforce: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift towards remote work in the call center industry. Many companies have embraced remote workforce models, allowing agents to work from home while maintaining productivity and efficiency.

Data Analytics: Call centers are leveraging data analytics tools to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. This data-driven approach enables them to personalize interactions and optimize service delivery.

4. Challenges and Opportunities:

Despite its growth, the call center industry faces several challenges, including:

Staffing Issues: Recruiting and retaining skilled agents remains a challenge for many call center companies, particularly amid competition for talent and high turnover rates.

Security Concerns: With the increasing prevalence of cyber threats, call centers must prioritize data security and compliance to protect sensitive customer information.

However, the industry also presents numerous opportunities for growth and innovation:

Expansion of Services: Call center companies can diversify their service offerings to meet the evolving needs of clients, such as expanding into digital customer engagement, analytics, and consulting services.

Focus on Customer Experience: By prioritizing customer experience and investing in training and technology, call centers can differentiate themselves and gain a competitive edge in the market.

Globalization: With advancements in technology and communication infrastructure, call center companies can explore opportunities for global expansion and tap into new markets.

5. Future Outlook:

Looking ahead, the call center industry is poised for further growth and transformation. As businesses increasingly prioritize customer-centric strategies, call center companies will play a crucial role in delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving business success.

In conclusion, call center companies in the USA form a vital component of the customer service ecosystem, serving a wide range of industries and helping businesses enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. With ongoing technological innovations and evolving customer expectations, the industry is poised for continued growth and innovation in the years to come.

[callcentermasters]

Outsourced Call Center Services: Enhancing Customer Experience and Business Efficiency

In today's fast-paced business landscape, customer satisfaction and efficient operations are crucial for success. With the rise of globalization and technological advancements, many companies are turning to outsourced call center services as a means to achieve these goals. Outsourcing call center operations has become a popular strategy for businesses of all sizes, allowing them to focus on their core competencies while leveraging the expertise of specialized service providers. This article explores the benefits and considerations of outsourced call center services and how they contribute to enhancing customer experience and business efficiency.

Improved Customer Experience

One of the primary objectives of any business is to provide exceptional customer service. Outsourced call center services play a pivotal role in this regard by offering several advantages that contribute to an improved customer experience. First and foremost, call centers specialize in handling customer interactions, employing trained professionals who are skilled in communication and problem-solving. These agents are dedicated to resolving customer queries, addressing concerns, and providing personalized assistance. By outsourcing these services, businesses can tap into a pool of experienced professionals, ensuring that customers receive prompt and efficient support.

Additionally, outsourced call center services often operate on a 24/7 basis, allowing businesses to provide round-the-clock support to their customers. This flexibility is particularly valuable for organizations serving customers across different time zones or dealing with urgent inquiries. A well-managed outsourced call center can handle high call volumes, reducing wait times and ensuring that customers are promptly attended to. The availability of multilingual support further enhances the customer experience by enabling communication with a diverse customer base.

Cost Efficiency and Scalability

Outsourcing call center operations also offers cost advantages and scalability for businesses. Setting up an in-house call center requires significant investments in infrastructure, technology, recruitment, and training. By outsourcing these services, businesses can avoid these upfront expenses and instead opt for a predictable cost structure based on agreed-upon service levels. Outsourced call center providers are equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including advanced telephony systems, CRM software, and call analytics tools. These resources enable efficient call handling, data management, and performance monitoring, ensuring that businesses receive optimal value for their investment.

Furthermore, outsourcing call center services allows businesses to scale their operations rapidly and cost-effectively. During peak periods or business expansions, call volumes may surge, making it challenging for in-house teams to handle the increased workload. With an outsourced call center, businesses can easily scale up or down as needed, ensuring that customer service levels remain consistent. Service providers have the flexibility to allocate resources according to demand, ensuring that businesses never miss out on potential opportunities or risk losing customers due to long wait times or inadequate support.

Focus on Core Competencies

Outsourcing call center services allows businesses to concentrate on their core competencies and strategic initiatives. By offloading the responsibility of customer support to a specialized service provider, organizations can redirect their resources and energy towards activities that drive revenue and innovation. Outsourced call centers handle the day-to-day operations, allowing businesses to free up internal staff and management from mundane tasks, such as call handling and administrative duties. This newfound focus can lead to enhanced productivity, improved product development, and better overall business performance.

Considerations for Successful Outsourcing

While the benefits of outsourced call center services are evident, businesses must approach outsourcing with careful consideration. Choosing the right service provider is crucial to ensure a successful partnership. It is essential to evaluate the provider's industry experience, track record, technology capabilities, and cultural compatibility. Additionally, clear communication and collaboration between the business and the outsourced call center are vital for aligning goals, setting expectations, and maintaining transparency.

Data security and privacy are other critical considerations when outsourcing call center services. Businesses must ensure that the service provider adheres to strict data protection regulations and industry best practices. Confidential customer information should be handled securely, and robust protocols must be in place to prevent data breaches or unauthorized access.

Conclusion

Outsourced call center services offer businesses a competitive edge by providing enhanced customer experiences, cost efficiencies, scalability, and the opportunity to focus on core competencies. The strategic decision to outsource call center operations can enable businesses to streamline their customer support processes, achieve operational excellence, and ultimately drive growth. However, careful selection of a reliable and experienced service provider, coupled with effective communication and data security measures, is crucial for a successful outsourcing venture. By leveraging the expertise and resources of outsourced call center services, businesses can deliver exceptional customer service, increase customer loyalty, and stay ahead in today's highly competitive marketplace.

Click here to know more about our Services on Fiverr

Source:

[nullconvention]

If you want an idea about WHY and HOW we're all fucked economically right now, let me give one anecdote. It's one part of a more complex puzzle but it should put things in perspective.

A little less than 15 years ago, I lived in the pacific northwest doing call center work for a large company for 15 an hour. I found a cheap apartment in a working class area of the city for about 600 something and with utilities it came to about 800 something a month. With the amount I made, I was far from comfortable or successful but I was getting by in a one bedroom apartment I had splurged on. I could (barely) afford a car and the internet. I went out to eat maybe every other week. A pretty bare bones existence but not a terrible one.

That job doesn't exist anymore. It was liquidated and the role was outsourced to a company that then paid a subcontractor to do the work for 7.50 an hour. All the jobs moved from the area to OKC and the southeast where there were no unions and people would do the job from scripts offsite. Those jobs, if I had to guess, probably pay between 10-12 out of strict need, but I don't know. All I know is that a little more than 10 years ago the jobs disappeared and were replaced by something half as much. The subcontractor took their cut and the contractor took theirs as well, so the value of the work was clearly more but the primary company clearly saw savings in exchange for turning the work from skilled tech labor to unskilled phone tree reading.

That apartment now costs 2400 before utilities. There is a 40 dollar fee to apply, and you would need first and last month's pay before moving in plus whatever deposit. I moved in for free by getting a deal the apartment complex offered. It would cost me more money to apply than I spent to get the apartment back then, PLUS 4800 dollars and a deposit before I could even move in - on maybe, optimistically, less money than I would have made 15 years ago if I were working the same job.

So that's part of why we're fucked.

[ghofrana]

Why does your business need contact center outsourcing?

As businesses expand, their demands for customer service also increase. Handling customer inquiries, complaints, and support requests can be time-consuming and overwhelming, taking valuable time and resources away from core business operations. This is where contact center outsourcing comes in, providing businesses with a cost-effective solution to their customer service needs. In this blog article, we will discuss why your business needs contact center outsourcing.

Cost savings

Outsourcing your contact center operations can save your business money. Setting up and maintaining an in-house contact center can be expensive, with costs such as salaries, benefits, infrastructure, and technology. Outsourcing allows businesses to pay only for the services they need, reducing overhead costs and improving profit margins.

Scalability

Contact center outsourcing provides businesses with the ability to scale up or down quickly based on their customer service needs. During peak seasons, such as holidays or sales events, businesses can increase their outsourcing services to handle the influx of customer inquiries. Conversely, during slow periods, businesses can reduce their outsourcing services, saving money on unnecessary expenses.

Access to specialized expertise

Outsourcing contact center services provide businesses with access to specialized expertise. Contact center outsourcing companies employ customer service professionals who are trained in handling various types of customer inquiries, complaints, and support requests. They also have the technology and infrastructure necessary to handle high volumes of calls and emails, ensuring that customers receive prompt and efficient service.

Improved customer experience

Providing exceptional customer service is critical to the success of any business. Contact center outsourcing companies prioritize providing exceptional customer service, often employing customer satisfaction metrics to ensure that their services meet or exceed customer expectations. By outsourcing contact center operations, businesses can ensure that their customers receive the best possible support, leading to increased customer loyalty and satisfaction.

24/7 availability

In today's global economy, businesses operate around the clock, and customers expect support to be available 24/7. Contact center outsourcing companies offer round-the-clock support, ensuring that customers can reach out for help at any time, even outside of regular business hours. This provides businesses with a competitive advantage, as customers are more likely to choose a company that offers 24/7 support.

Focus on core business operations

Outsourcing contact center operations allows businesses to focus on their core operations, such as product development, marketing, and sales. By outsourcing customer service, businesses can reduce the time and resources spent on handling inquiries, complaints, and support requests, allowing them to focus on what they do best.

In conclusion, contact center outsourcing can provide numerous benefits to businesses, including cost savings, scalability, access to specialized expertise, improved customer experience, 24/7 availability, and the ability to focus on core operations. By partnering with a reputable contact center outsourcing company, businesses can ensure that their customers receive exceptional support while saving time and resources to focus on their core business operations. If you need help from a call center, please contact REACH 3C.

[kennethcarson82]

Why Votiko is the Top Choice for Outsourcing Call Center Services in India?

“Leverage Votiko's unmatched expertise in delivering world-class customer service and support solutions from India.”

Offering exceptional customer service is the major aim of a call center provider company whether they focus on inbound calls, outbound calls, or any other way of interacting and helping customers. Utilizing the latest technologies and following trends of the specific industries completely depend upon the requirement that the organization has. Businesses no longer want to continue with the traditional strategies for assisting or interacting with the customer. Hiring the best call center provider will provide assurance of keeping up with the latest methods used for offering inbound and outbound call center services.

What makes Votiko the Best Call Center Company?

Votiko is a cost-effective call center company for clients across a wide range of industries. With our services, organizations can stay connected with their customers 24*7 to address all kinds of technical and non-technical incoming and outgoing calls. We have been trusted partners of leading brands across the industries. Whether it is SMEs or MNCs our team of professionals is dedicated to working to ensure the smooth functioning of these organizations.

Get both inbound and outbound call center services under one umbrella and acquire perfection with Votiko

Receiving incoming calls from customers and resolving their queries and offering them the required information is the core role of any inbound call center. Some of the major inbound call center services offered by our experts are:

Product or/and tech support

Payment and order processing

Upgrade and renewal inquiries

Our experts are also best in making outgoing calls and running cold calls as the requirement of the organization to their potential customers about their products. Thus, Volans is the best name to settle down with when you require outbound call center services. Some of the major outbound call center services that are offered by our experts are:

Appointment setting

Lead generation

Telemarketing

Advantages of Hiring Votiko for Call Center Services

Be it inbound calls or outbound calls the services here at Votiko will never disappoint you. Here are the perks that you can bag when you say yes to us:

Our experts are well trained and have technical skills which help them in operating the support offering tools and technologies in a smooth way.

We understand that customer interaction requires the best communication skills booths in both written and verbal modes. 

Votiko has bilingual or multilingual call center representatives which supports the expansion of your business globally.

Votiko understands that both inbound and outbound call center services create a plethora of opportunities for any company to offer a wide range of benefits to customers. It is the reason why you must partner with Votiko for your call center services.

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Side note: I think this is exactly why the generative AI bubble is going to burst and take a lot of non-related companies with it.

Having a chat bot replace your call center for customer service and tech support seems like a really good deal for a lot of companies right now. Pay a reasonable fee and get rid of a whole department of people's paychecks? Glorious!

But the Gen AI companies providing the chat bots are very much in the "under charge to encourage mass adoption" phase of their business plan.

Sooner than anyone expects, the market for customer service chat bots will become saturated. Every industry that could possibly use it will have adopted it. And the next phase is... raise the price.

The Gen AI company spent the first few years in the red just trying to get mass adoption of their product. Now they need to turn profits and keep their investors from cutting and running. So they set a price that they think the market will bear.

Companies will have laid off all their customer service and tech support employees and possibly gotten rid of the infrastructure to support in-house call centers, and the specialized outsource call centers will already have gone out of business.

So trying to backpedal on relying on the chat bot is going to be expensive. So they'll pay a bit more. It's worth it, right?

But the Gen AI companies will not stop there.

Now that they've gotten themselves onto the positive side of the ledger, the investors (and possibly now stockholders) really enjoyed that steep increase in profits. It gave everybody warm fuzzies in their bank accounts.

But since the market is already saturated, there's not really any new business to be had. So the only way to keep the line going up is to crank up the price.

They'll probably do it little by little, and a lot of the companies using the AI will grimace but keep paying. Because at this point there aren't any customer service or tech support people left to hire. They all had to change careers because nobody was hiring.

There may still be a few specialists to handle customers who insist they have to speak to a human, but people are mostly giving up on actually Getting Help when they call or chat or email. Enshittification is the norm. And paying specialists is tough, so we definitely don't want to hire more of them.

But the Gen AI companies (just like streamers now) will keep cranking up the base price. Putting the most useful features on more expensive tiers. And possibly putting ads in because advertising is always a good revenue stream.

Companies who are using the basic versions will find the functionality and quality decreasing, even as the price goes up. They're having to have humans babysit the damn thing because it's breaking all the time. If only they could afford the New and Improved version...

And when it reaches the point that large numbers of companies can no longer pay for the AI product, and the quality is so bad that it's not doing the thing they need it to do....

¡POP!

Companies will start dropping the AI. Some of them might survive by scrambling to use human people again, but a lot of them just won't make it. They'll get consumed by bigger companies that can afford the AI.

But as companies consolidate to become more cost efficient, that means fewer subscribers to the AI.

And this is where the Gen AI companies start dropping like flies. Competition will be brutal and just like earlier tech bubbles, there will be rampant cannibalism.

Eventually there will be just a few Big AI companies, and mass carnage in their wake.

And all the industries that relied on the bots will be laying injured and bleeding and some of them won't ever recover.

starting to suspect that tech bros actually just don’t know what reading is