KEY POINTS:
Telecom said a report today it may move most customer service jobs to the Philippines with more than 1500 jobs threatened is inaccurate.
The Dominion Post said it had obtained an email that stated the company's faults service was the only area not to be trialled in Manila.
Customer services manager Trish Keith said in the email the trials running from September to December reflected Telecom's desire to put customers at "the heart" of the business and improve responses to customers.
She said trials would not cause redundancies, but after December decisions would be made about "resourcing levels".
In August 2006 Telecom announced it was shifting some of its call centre work to the Philippines with 130 New Zealand staff reshuffled in the move.
Telecom spokesman Mark Watts confirmed the company announced last week it was extending its Manila trial to cover another 100 positions. That trial would last four months.
At present it has 450 call centre positions in Manila and 1500 in New Zealand.
"The paper has drawn a wholly erroneous link between the announcement of the 100 extra trial positions and the whole bulk of our existing call centre across all of New Zealand.
"They have implied we have made an announcement about that and we have done no such thing."
Telecom also denied the report's claim that there was only a small area of Telecom's call centre operations that haven't been "offshored" or trialled already.
"That's completely wrong," Mr Watts said.
He said there were eight contact centres that had not been trialled offshore, involving 2000 of the 3000 employees involved in such work.
Mr Watt said Telecom would only make moves offshore if it improved customer service. Using staff in Manila meant Telecom could service customers outside NZ working hours.
He noted Vodafone did much of its support work from Eygpt.
Mr Watt said there would be no related redundancies locally.
Because Telecom was adding significant numbers of new broadband customers, that generated high volumes of extra work.
Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin told The Dominion Post a recent survey showed 25 per cent of those dealing with Telecom's service rated it as poor or very poor.
- NZPA
