The following was posted and e-mailed October 10 by WBAI Producer Ken Gale and is likely being ignored by the station's useless, dysfunctional GM, Berthold Reimers. You may remember Reimers—He is the numbskull whom Pacifica pays over $100,000 a year; an opportunist who shrinks at the mere mention of truth, and previously approved the $10,000 hiring of Yellow Magnets, a strictly self-enriching fund-raising duo that brought in squat.
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CALL CENTER DYSFUNCTIONAL
BRING BACK THE VOLUNTEERS
I thought I had a better-than-usual premium, but only got one pledge. Then I got the e-mail below from that person. The call center has screwed me up many times before. This didn't happen with volunteers. Depending on who you talk with, the call center is costing the station between $100,000 and $500,000 PER DRIVE compared to when we had volunteers. From what I'm told, WBAI pays the call center more than it paid the tally co-ordinators. That makes sense to me since we have volunteers and they pay minimum wage and they take a cut while we got 100% with volunteers.
Andrea said in an e-mail that the operator will be reprimanded. Reprimanding a single operator is denying that this problem is systemic, not limited to one operator. The operator worked with the donor for ten minutes, so she clearly is one of the better operators. That might be what they reprimand her for, if they really do. I doubt if she made up the two system operation. I doubt if she made up that there was no show from 8 to 10. There is something else going on with the call center. Bring back the volunteers.
Whomever Andrea Katz brings in as volunteers and tally co-ordinators, they'll surely treat our listeners and the station with more respect and work harder and bring in more money than the people at the call center did. Bring back the volunteers. WBAI could use the money and our hard work preparing for a membership drive show won't be wasted.
The Other Ken
WBAI Fundraising Sets New Record on Tuesday Oct 9
ReplyDeleteIn an astounding one day total of $2,840.00 . WBAI GM Berthold Reimers credited the daily total to the WBAI "Phone Room". saying "Things , they got off to a slow start, when we realized we had forgotten to recharge the WBAI pledge phone/control room/office line phone overnight, but luckily we found it in the refrigerator along with lunch. We had an astounding 21 calls that day, leaving enough on our Verizon pay as you go phone card to take a number of calls on Wednesday."
This isn't the old days when volunteers simply took names and addresses to send pledgers invoices. Now they take credit card numbers, which leads to complications if volunteers start scamming listeners. It can get very criminal very fast, especially with the kind of people that make up The Remnants.
ReplyDeleteSDL
correction to paranoid fears above:
ReplyDeleteof volunteers scamming as some PD, GM, and PNB do well:
for decades, [many many years,] volunteers not only wrote by hand on paper the phone, address, premiums requested, & ALSO took any credit card info required too - especially as these are required for any events, concerts, tickets.
And has anyone heard of a Volunteer stealing info ? Then name the station, person, actual fact.
Not malign those who have spent so much of their personal lives HELPING for no pay, no compensation, no rewards and no free premiums either, the station's getting free what would otherwise be Staff duty-work Done !
Or paid work contracted to someone else's profit. Duh....
or even admitting, appreciating : how much ea volunteer's precious time was wasted, spent sitting around a crowded room, time lost - or maybe? their just being a good person =
a generous giving personal time, effort, & loyalty to any Pacifica station.
No one acted criminally or hacked info at my radio station. ever. Never. Not. of course, not.
the only rewards ever provided for us - diligent, dedicated volunteers: were some donated food to tide volunteers over being at station 8-13 hrs at a time - while sitting in a small, dark, uncomfortable, tight room, on very hard chairs for too many hours !!!!
It is not a an enjoyable experience by any means. The Only other benefit is maybe finding 'other loyalists' also there - to have a brief chat in-between calls - if, as, they come in - and on old phone systems that also became dysfunctional occasionally too.
& then there was the surprising us with some angry, mean calls with verbal abuse & harassments aimed at Pacifica's extreme leftist rantings by some intrusive critics .
yep, been there lots of time,, spent hours and days traveling far to just do that WORK, for which there was no physical, usable rewards... just to be doing "A GOOD DEED" - a favor - to help out the "poor' radio station...no premiums were ever given away to volunteers, no tickets or special favors. The stinginess of the station was only compensated for with a genuine "thank you" .. by other volunteers, some staff and the gods that helped keep the station 'on air'.
Those who have never 'served' can malign those who have done much to help and then find their stations are still failing !
Over the many years of benevolent volunteers, only two scam artists, newbies, were collecting credit cards and that was stopped. Happened sometime in between 2004-2008.
DeleteOtherwise, there was a sense of community in a community radio station, sharing books, recipes, food, ideas, and actual laughs.
Going to jump in on this: While it's take a bit of skill to set up a decent call center phone system, it's not impossible for an organization the size of Pacifica.
DeleteIf Pacifica wanted to embrace open-source software for the phone system itself, there is free software to automate the dialing part, pulling records out of the CRM.
The 800 pound gorilla is Payment Card Industry (PCI) DSS compliance to process credit and debit cards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_Security_Standard. That's were the expense comes in.
Ballpark figure on PCI DSS costs for up to 1 million transactions a year (level 3) is at least $1200 a year, plus the cost of running your own network and phone system.
Side note: I do enterprise telephone (including call centers) professionally.
interesting info. who else could have known... so what would it cost a pacifica station to not use external call center [who profits from contract] and not encounter glitches and complaints ?
Deletedid the station we worked at for years pay $1200/yr to process what we wrote in paper forms? and was it not worth it, if so ?
as usual, anyone Not in a particular industry doesnt know the inside scoop or operations or costs or difficulties either. Always good to get a public glance.
PCI / DSS is a relatively (2004) new thing. If you want to accept credit cards you become compliant.
DeletePart of the deal is that you agree to accept financial responsibility for a breach, should you be found after the fact to be non-complaint or otherwise responsible.
**"interesting info. who else could have known... so what would it cost a Pacifica station to not use external call center [who profits from contract] and not encounter glitches and complaints ?"**
DeleteYou essentially need to build a real call center - there is no way to do this in a half-baked fashion. Volunteers writing the information down on paper just won't work anymore.
On that, the real question is are the volunteers willing to work in a "clean room" environment to stop a miscreant from retaining information? Examples no pens or paper, no cell phones or recording devices, and no bags, coats, or personal items in the work area.
At an affiliate Pacifica Radio station I was managing, we had one phone room volunteer who was copying all the contact information from all the pledges to pass on to her other peace groups to hit them up for money/joining. We also caught her at events photographing our email list sign up sheets for the same purpose. Then the mailings that were sent out have donor levels like " Support Peace Group X at the Amy Goodman level for $1,000 , or the Richard Wolff level of $500". ANd she screamed at me that if we weren't sharing all the information with her groups, we weren't community radio, because COMMUNITY!!! And now with all the current rules/laws with PCI DSS security, having volunteers off the street taking card information may be a liability, which would mean Pacifica is liable for any fraud committed. Here is something from a few years ago, and I'm sure it has become even more stringent since that time.... https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/protecting_telephone-based_payment_card_data.pdf
ReplyDeletepublic exposure of such con artists posing as volunteers gives the 'rest of us' a bad reputation ...and should be named ... even after the fact to insure they dont repeat same bad acts elsewhere.
Deletewhich station was that at ? who was it ? when ?
When noting bad-deceitful actions it is not helpful to help keep confidential-hidden the thieves' identity nor the lax, not-noticing staff that was to supervise the phone room either. That is "collusion" and cover up, even if a while back.
Why continue to protect those who did illegal or unethical or manipulative acts ?
in KPFK's phone room, we mostly have had many volunteers on hand [5-20+] and there was an "administrator", often an experienced volunteer... who was to Over SEE what was happening and other repeat volunteers would surely have noticed, called out that behavior unless it was done in hiding.
Yes, 1x a long term staff, Roy Tuckman, did copy all info from pledge forms that were only during his program to set up his own 'subscription' list [supplies weekly pre info about upcoming pgms on his shows - no ads or propaganda has ever been included there]
He was reprimanded when discovered and punished with 1 day suspension..duh... many yrs ago, of course, and never mentioned aloud nor admitted later. Mark Schubb was GM long ago then.
that was not a volunteer but a long term staff wanting to set up his own connections to those who pledged his show only, but still that was invasion of station's privacy practices, we assume. If there is such a policy ?
Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I tuned into WBAI so I could listen to James Irsay's show.
ReplyDeleteYou know things are bad for the station when even he has trouble getting listeners to donate.
I felt bad for him, but not for the station (at least as it's currently run).
"PACIFICA Parnoia" reigns and raises its scared voices everytime. Here again.
ReplyDeleteGo see a therapist or try hiding - if everything has a horrid result. Pleeezzzzz