General Motors Subcontracts Customer Service Issues To SITEL CORPERATION And CONVERGYS, they mislead the public by claiming they are GENERAL MOTORS customer assistance when they are in fact an outsourcing company. Nationwide

As a person who has worked for SITEL and other outsourcing call centers, a CSR cannot disclose that they are an outsourcer and not really part of the company due to the contract with the client. The client wants to make sure that you will not be known as an outsourcer (in most contracts)

AOL, MSN, UPS, APPLE COMPUTERS, DELL, HP, ETC all outsource and none of the customer service agents state the are an outsourcer or are even allowed to state it if a customer asks.

To rebuttal the last persons comment i work for convergys and by FCC and convergys regulation i a customer asks if we are an outsourced rep we are required to answer Yes if thats the case it is illegal to deny this.

The 3.1 is notorius for manifold leaks. You can either plan on periodic replacement or trade the car, but face the fact that GM is not interested in correcting the problem, they are more interested in selling you a new car. Ask around at your neighborhood mechanics, you may find one that is familiar with the 3.1 and it's manifold problems and actually be able to fix it correctly. The wierd thing about the manifold is that it takes a lot of goop around the bolts and the torgue is barely finger-tight, measured in inch-pounds. Hopefully Robert will see this post and help you out.

I dare you to find a large corporation that does not outsource to a call center. It's unrealistic to expect GM, or whoever else, to employ customer service completely under their name. It's so much cheaper and efficient to outsource. It also protects those customer service agents; such as, when the company i was trained to work for decided they wanted to completely outsource to the Philippines - if i worked directly for that company, i would have been unemployed. However, I was employed by Sitel, who provided me a different company to train and work for. Sitel, formerly known as ClientLogic, who bought out ServiceZone - known as one of the best call centers because of their extensive training tactics.

There's an entire infrastructure you'll never comprehend about big business - But don't worry, every company will always be "against you" and not know "what they're doing".

This is for James who claims it is illegal not to disclose you work for an outsourcing company if asked. I can not speak for Convergys but I worked for ClientLogic which became Sitel.

I worked on a MAJOR campaign and it was part of their contract with Sitel that the employees are NOT to disclose they are outsourced. When we were asked if we worked for Company X (company name withheld) we were to state that we were in fact employees of said company.

Which if you boiled it all down, our checks said Sitel, but who paid Sitel to pay us? Company X. We dealt with the customers of company X and were extensively trained to do so.

I feel it is unfair to judge a company based on the fact they hire an outsourcing company to deal with the issues their customers face. If the agent is properly trained I don't see why it should be an issue who signs their pay check.

The facility I worked for employed over 1,000 people. That is a thousand jobs in a community that without an outsourcing company would not have the capability to provide jobs for those people.

I understand the frustration the original poster experienced thinking he was going to be able to speak with someone who works in the GM building. But seriously getting bent out of shape because the person you spoke to on the phone doesn't sit at a desk in the GM building?

As a former Convergys customer service repressentative (CSR)  on the AT&T program, I can tell you that we were required to sign a zero tolerance policy which states:  "the following shall not be allowed by the customer service representatives at any time and shall result in immediate discipline up to and including termination:" There are 14 items on the list of possible offenses.  Number 8 states: "Disclosing role as an outsource service provider to a customer".  So, in effect, we could be fired for telling a customer that we are not employed by AT&T, even if a customer asks the question directly.  We are required to abide by the policy or risk losing our jobs. Just one slip up -- and you could be terminated.  It does happen.  It happened to me!  They got me for number 9:  "Unauthorized release of confidential information, such as customer account".   All I did was acknowledge the name of the customer's network name without first asking for the security pin or secret question.  That was an infraction and I was escorted out, handed my bag of my belongings (minus anything related to AT&T) and shown the door...

I worked for Convergys in Utah for two years. I was on the American Express project, which meant I belonged to American Express uniquely, and solely. their managers trained US. That means, I couldn't be pulled from my American Express project to the gunthy project to the microsoft project and so forth.
It is my theory that the reason why these companies hire places such as convergys is so that they do not have to pay out the premium benefits, or pensions they have to pay their own employees. the advantage is that they can hire more people, which is a reason why I had a job. I just had lousy benefits, that's all. In the long run, they are saving consumers money from extraordinary high inflation rates. (how would you like to be paying double for your car tires? well, I sure know I wouldn't!) Sure, I'd love to work solely for American Express, but you know what? the closest one at the time was 80 miles away, and I just didn't want to travel that far everyday.
The advantage to the companies is the fact they lay off workers at convergys first, and not their own body of workers. bad for convergys, great for American express, because the employees would never know that there was a downsizing, and then jump ship creating a deeper spiral. It is ingenious. And, I figured it out, so that makes me a smart cookie as well, and I just saved you a heck of a lot of time in research, so you're welcome in advance.

 
I, as have probably everyone else, called various ‘corporations’ for tech support and other issues. One is most often shunted to an off-shore foreign call center.  The “helpful” (NOT!) member answering has at least two problems, usually negating ANY useful help or data.
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[ 1 ] Their first language is not English, it is an overseas connection, and this most often
 creates a language / understanding / intelligibility issue.
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[ 2 ] The foreign operator most often has NO product knowledge on whatever it is on which you’re calling. They’re seated at a computer, bringing up the available answers on the screen relative to the product / company for which assistance is needed. They obviously can only
 “punch in” your questions / concerns and vocalize in their broken English that which appears
 on their screen. This occurring  in a non-articulate, usually vague and unrelated non-specific manner.
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Any difficulty in understanding the (Pilipino) (Indian) (Pakistani) operator is often handled in a manner indicating exasperation at MY being UNABLE  to understand THEM. Any request of elevating the call to a higher tech. level most often results in a looooog  wait on eternal  hold,
or in some cases a mysterious disconnection of the call before or after the long wait.