Apple cancels Colorado call center citing economy, reduced iPhone calls

[AppleInsider]

Apple has apparently canceled plans to open a new customer support call center in Colorado Springs, due to the slowing economy and the significant improvements delivered by iPhone 2.1 which reduced Apple's support demands.

Sources familiar with the plans reported that Apple had contracted with Volt Information Sciences to staff the call center, which in turn had arranged with 500 employees to begin training sessions on providing iPhone support.

Two weeks ago, Volt recruiters sent out notices to trainees saying, "we received notice from Apple that the iPhone Training Class you were hired for has been pushed back from Sep. 29 to Monday, Oct. 13."

As the call center plans failed to materialize, employees were notified by email last week that "the Volt Colorado Springs Call Center project you were hired for has been cancelled. The project was cancelled due to Economic conditions and improved quality of the product resulting in a reduced volume to the Support lines."

A source speaking to AppleInsider said the call center positions were "clearly temporary (3 to 9 months), but did hold the possibility of becoming a permanent facility with direct Apple employment."

An article in the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the facility scheduled for the training was located in an office building on Garden of the Gods Road, owned by Verizon Communications. A reader commenting on the report noted that the stretch of road was "like a corporate burial ground."

The shift in plans is also a hardship upon the people Volt lined up to staff the center. One employee cited by the paper said that Volt had told him, "We're trying to recover from this mess and we don't have 500 jobs for these people."

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[bigmc6000]

Well, good for Apple, bad for Colorado Springs and the 500 people who were going to be employed

[mdriftmeyer]

Good news. I don't need 500 people with subpar social skills weakening the image of a company because they aren't competent. Improve your products and you run leaner giving you more money to hire more talent to develop new products for other market segments.

[drow]

maybe they can all get jobs with the churches and religious organizations in colorado springs. with the economy going the way it is, i expect them to be busy. assuming that they're really interested in people's well-being, and not a tax-free profit scam.

[SpamSandwich]

"And thaaaaaaat's my life!"

[fabsgwu]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Good news. I don't need 500 people with subpar social skills weakening the image of a company because they aren't competent. Improve your products and you run leaner giving you more money to hire more talent to develop new products for other market segments.

Yes, better to have call centers in India, where everyone is named Bob and Mary, the weather is always "nice," and they don't comprehend English.

What an asinine comment

[bigmc6000]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Good news. I don't need 500 people with subpar social skills weakening the image of a company because they aren't competent. Improve your products and you run leaner giving you more money to hire more talent to develop new products for other market segments.

Are you kidding? I mean, I hope that's some kind of dark, dark satire because if it's not then you really need to get back to the point of caring more about people (which doesn't seem like that would take much) and caring less about making a couple extra bucks off your Apple stock. Of course you never actually make or lose any money until you pull out of the market.

[mstone]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Good news. I don't need 500 people with subpar social skills

Wow! Colorado Springs isn't as hip and trendy as say Boulder where I grew up, but Colorado is not as bad as you make it sound. What's up with the CO bashing?

[bigmc6000]

Originally Posted by drow

maybe they can all get jobs with the churches and religious organizations in colorado springs. with the economy going the way it is, i expect them to be busy. assuming that they're really interested in people's well-being, and not a tax-free profit scam.

Umm, wow. Is it impossible to think that there really are nice people out there who do nice things without getting paid for them? Yes, there are a few big guys out there raking in the dough but the parishioners aren't making money off the church and they're the ones putting in the elbow grease...

[Zandros]

Originally Posted by bigmc6000

Well, good for Apple, bad for Colorado Springs and the 500 people who were going to be employed

No, it's good for Apple, and good for the 500 people who now can contribute to the economy in a different way.

/Adrian

[bigmc6000]

Originally Posted by Zandros

No, it's good for Apple, and good for the 500 people who now can contribute to the economy in a different way.

/Adrian

Did you miss this part?

"The shift in plans is also a hardship upon the people Volt lined up to staff the center. One employee cited by the paper said that Volt had told him, "We're trying to recover from this mess and we don't have 500 jobs for these people.""

[TonyElTigre]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Good news. I don't need 500 people with subpar social skills weakening the image of a company because they aren't competent. Improve your products and you run leaner giving you more money to hire more talent to develop new products for other market segments.

I happen to work at one of Apple's call centers, a sister center to that of Colorado Springs. I am an avid Apple product user and have been for years. The people I work with are very competent and very smart users. Find me in Apple's Discussions pages as well. Apple's customer care has been rated number 1 for many years in a row and we are VERY proud of it. I truly feel bad for the 500 who were unable to join this great family. I would say I hope to hear from some of you, but it'd be best if your products keep working.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Good news. I don't need 500 people with subpar social skills weakening the image of a company because they aren't competent.

I'm curious what brought this on. How do you know they are incompetent and have subpar social skills? That kind of statement looks prejudiced to me.

[lonefrontranger]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

I'm curious what brought this on.

er, I may be new to the boards but that looked like an obvious troll to me.

[edit] and yes, I work in Boulder, live in Denver, and this was a pretty big blow to an already shaky economic outlook for the tech sector on the FR...

[SpamSandwich]

Just another side effect of the economy. Too bad for Colorado.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by lonefrontranger

er, I may be new to the boards but that looked like an obvious troll to me.

[edit] and yes, I work in Boulder, live in Denver, and this was a pretty big blow to an already shaky economic outlook for the tech sector on the FR...

Yeah, but that person has a track record that is much better than that as far as I remember. If someone had only a few posts, then that would be an easy guess as a troll.

[e1618978]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Just another side effect of the economy. Too bad for Colorado.

Don't feel too bad for Colorado, it must be a much richer state than North Carolina (I just moved from NC to CO), since the income and real estate taxes are about half (i.e. spread over a broader and wealthier tax base).

[mdriftmeyer]

I'm speaking of CALL CENTERS, in general. They are the lowest drones on the totem pole. I am not singling out Colorado Springs, Sacramento, Austin, New Mexico, India or any other f'n location that you folks seem to have gleened from my comments.

Call Centers, by definition are designed to deter customers from getting to their problems. They are the front-line of obstruction. Working as a Consultant to address their NeXT Software based Call Center Suite was a classic example of a bunch of socially dry, inept and basically barely capable people using tools they barely knew how to use. I had to write Use-Case/Test-Case documentation to target misuses of developer implemenations to documentation on what the hell each bit of the Call Center Suite does--the damn thing was already 8 years old and these people were still learning it. Someone with initiative should have addressed it long before I showed up and got bored out of my skull asking them what it is they don't grasp about the UI and it's Call Center Suite.

400 Consultants should have been the clue that too many Home-Ec students in a kitchen don't make up for a small team of Chefs.

At NeXT we had no call centers. We only had Professional Services and NeXTAnswers to address thousands of issues that people may or may not experience.

We did answer questions for Installation, 30 days after purchase and otherwise, it was $195/hr for Professional Services.

You don't design your Operating System around morbid realities that it's a clusterf*** of technologies, ductaped together that needs an albatross of Call Center support to fix everyone's problems.

Apple fixing problems with their Hardware/Software at great enough rates to not justify having that albatross benefits us all. If you feel like calling a person who most likely has very little depth of the Operating System and Hardware, then be my guest. I prefer my money go into products that aren't designed with the expectation of failure, but are designed with a factor of quality that captures all but the rare edge cases of failure.

Anyone who thinks Call Center folks are socially skilled individuals knows absolutely nothing about Social Networking and career skill building.

But then again, Call Center people think it's a foot in the door to get into Apple proper when it's the last way of getting into Apple.

[phippster]

Last time I called Apple I had to call three times in order to get someone who spoke English well enough that I could understand them. I'd love it if Apple would close their "foreign" call centers and put more in the U.S. It would be good for the U.S. as well as Apple customers that could actually then understand the call center representatives.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple has apparently canceled plans to open a new customer support call center in Colorado Springs, due to the slowing economy and the significant improvements delivered by iPhone 2.1 which reduced Apple's support demands.

Sources familiar with the plans reported that Apple had contracted with Volt Information Sciences to staff the call center, which in turn had arranged with 500 employees to begin training sessions on providing iPhone support.

Two weeks ago, Volt recruiters sent out notices to trainees saying, "we received notice from Apple that the iPhone Training Class you were hired for has been pushed back from Sep. 29 to Monday, Oct. 13."

As the call center plans failed to materialize, employees were notified by email last week that "the Volt Colorado Springs Call Center project you were hired for has been cancelled. The project was cancelled due to Economic conditions and improved quality of the product resulting in a reduced volume to the Support lines."

A source speaking to AppleInsider said the call center positions were "clearly temporary (3 to 9 months), but did hold the possibility of becoming a permanent facility with direct Apple employment."

An article in the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the facility scheduled for the training was located in an office building on Garden of the Gods Road, owned by Verizon Communications. A reader commenting on the report noted that the stretch of road was "like a corporate burial ground."

The shift in plans is also a hardship upon the people Volt lined up to staff the center. One employee cited by the paper said that Volt had told him, "We're trying to recover from this mess and we don't have 500 jobs for these people."

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[winterspan]

Originally Posted by mstone

Wow! Colorado Springs isn't as hip and trendy as say Boulder where I grew up, but Colorado is not as bad as you make it sound. What's up with the CO bashing?

Colorado Springs is the western epicenter for the sanctimonious religious fundamentalists... Trust me, If a massive earthquake took out the whole area, this country would probably be much better off. It's like America's version of North Waziristan...

[bigmc6000]

Originally Posted by winterspan

Colorado Springs is the western epicenter for the sanctimonious religious fundamentalists... Trust me, If a massive earthquake took out the whole area, this country would probably be much better off. It's like America's version of North Waziristan...

Oh good grief, get over yourself...