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were admitted to the university in May
2009.
Six employees, identified by the CEO
Rising Stars programme, are attending the
IMD’s Building On Talent programme in
Switzerland.
51 female employees attended a Chat
and Learn programme which focused on
Women Leaders Under Construction –
Blazing Your Own Path. In addition,
10 female employees attended a two day
workshop on Women In Management and
Leadership.
Graduate and skills pipelines (future
talent)
Our Graduate Development Schemes
Division is dedicated to growing and
developing young talent, not only for
ourselves, but for South Africa as a whole.
Some R29.7 million was invested in
student bursaries in the fields of information
technology, electrical engineering and
marketing management during the year
and an additional R3.7 million was spent
on our Centres Of Excellence programme.
We also funded 833 full-time bursaries;
667 part-time bursaries and 1,121 study
loans for employees or their dependants in
the 2008 academic year.
Telkom Annual Report 2009 69
The voices of Telkom
Telkom has 34 call centres in South Africa, each geared to providing technical
support and service to business and domestic customers. For the men and women
who staff the centres, life can, at times, be challenging and stressful for these
people are the ‘voice’ of Telkom, the ones who take the brunt of customer
complaints.
Hilary Peacock, an agent in the Cape Town Service Activation Unit, says a key
attribute to surviving in the job is the ability to not take any of the abuse received
as personal. The other key attributes are learning what tone of voice to adopt
when handling calls, good or bad, and having a passion for customers
“I try to put myself in the customer’s place and take the good with the bad when
handling calls. Overall, the good definitely outweighs the bad and I would go as
far as to say that about 90% of the calls I receive are good,” she says.
Colleague Marlon Ernstzen agrees, particularly when it comes to adopting the
right tone of voice.
“There’s nothing better than talking to an irate customer who’s upset because
something he was promised didn’t happen, and then, at the end of the call,
hearing him, or her, calm down and apologising and then saying thank you for
the help. That experience energises you for the next day.”
Blanche Machelm is an agent in the Electronic Business Support Centre (EBSC) in
Cape Town, a unit which handles between 6,000 and 8,000 calls a day, mainly
in the areas of ADSL support (90% of the calls) and fault and connectivity issues –
e-mail, for example.
Blanche, who estimates that she handles approximately 50 calls a day, says all
EBSC agents have to have an IT background as they have to have an intimate
technical knowledge in areas such as routing, configurations, outages, modems
and cable passwords.
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