Sitel BPO:  4 Suspended for f*** SMS
By Juan Dela Cruz

Four call center agents from Sitel Philippines have been suspended for sending text messages with the "F' word in it. They are going to get the axe for their dumb deed no doubt. I've been in the Philippines IT-ITES industry long enough to have seen, heard or learned about dumb things that can happen in a call center office.

However, this recent incident involving 4 Sitel call center agents found to have texted "F U" to a New Zealand customer is high up in my "dumb things to do at your call center" list. Just last Wednesday, this Kiwi customer got irked when she received an SMS message saying "F*** you" which she thought was completely out of the blue. Then she remembered complaining to her phone service provider Telecom about the delays in transmission of her SMS’s to their destinations.

She rang up her Wanganui town mayor Michael Laws during his radio show and the investigation started from there. It was found out that the obscene message was actually sent out to 5 of  Telecom's New Zealand customers after an apparent "revenge" plot to get back at them after their complaints about service delays caused by Telecom's admitted "serious hardware failure"  for the past few weeks. From then on, it was a simple tracing the origins of the foul SMSes and it took only 1 day to discover it came from call center Sitel's computers located here in the Philippines.

In a New Zealand Herald report  displaying the actual screenshot of the text message sent, Telecom authorities say that the 4 Sitel employees are now suspended and currently under investigation. To the best of my knowledge, Telecom and other overseas clients like them will be massively disappointed when confronted with the end results of these types of predicaments. This is because the laws of the land lack the "teeth" to severely penalize such abusive acts. The BPO industry here and the laws pertinent to it have not evolved so much to tackle these issues. The harshest penalty Telecom can expect for these call centers agents is job termination which to my opinion is as severe as a slap on the wrist because they'll just be moving on to the next call center company they can get into.

On the other hand, there is a long standing "call center myth" here in the Philippines that BPO companies specifically call centers maintain a secret "employee blacklist" where names of former employees who have committed very  dastardly acts such as this can be included and consulted as part of the Call Center Association of the Philippines members' employee hiring process. As to the truth about this "call center myth", no one has proof because apparently it is against Philippine Labor laws and basic human rights to work.

Does this happen often to other call centers in the Philippines or is it just Sitel? Apparently, Sitel has a knack for attracting and hiring employees who are dumb enough to think they can get away with things like this. Sitel is arguably one of the biggest BPO employers in this country with a total of 7 offices and over 9000 employees. Last year, it won the BPO employer of the year honors from a business authority group award-giving body. Facebook and Twitter users are currently having a fun time sharing and spreading an article about this obscene text incident in one of the major online news websites gmanews.tv.

I remember back in 2006 when a close friend in Sitel told me their office was raided by the National Bureau of Investigation along with the police to arrest a person that was traced to have used a customer's credit card to send money to himself through Western Union. It’s funny how small incidents like these are blown into international news and happen to involve Sitel as a company.

(Tips, comments and suggestions: email me at 1delacruise at gmail dot com)