Hello all,
Like I promised I told you all I'd let you know what's happening and here's the update on the meeting we were called to on short notice (afternoon 1/4) for today 1/9.
The long and short of it is: Wells Fargo will be closing all Oregon offices within 1-3 years with a target date of 2025. This includes the Wells Fargo Tower (Downtown, Portland) and 2 contact centers: Salem, and the Barnhart Center in Hillsboro/Beaverton. When asked about the possibility to transfer to other locations, leadership responded "We don't know yet"
Many people at our office are "long-termers". They've been working for WF since our call center was in Vancouver, WA over 15 years ago. One of my corworkers is right on the edge of full retirement. One of my coworkers (who is an indispensable part of our team) is so close to retirement after 20+ years on this team.
I've been thinking about what this means for our customers. It means there won't be any US-side agents to handle calls in the Pacific Time Zone. If you live on the West Coast, your call will likely be rerouted to the Philippines from now on. If any of the software applications or infrastructure that runs the call centers fails overnight, or on off hours, there will no longer be a team member in the Pacific TZ to fix that issue. It also means that someone in the Central Time Zone will be staying until Midnight every night to close the call center lines and send our reports to management (when that would only be 9PM on the West Coast).
About 6 years ago when I joined my current team, there was always a few of us on-call for after hours software/systems emergencies. At some point, many of my more experienced coworkers left for higher paying opportunities. At first WF would hire local temps to pick up the extra work. Eventually they started hiring new people in India. (No this is not one of those posts).
It also means that call center agents will be busy in the morning hours, most likely handling inbound calls from customers. The impact to our customers is going to be tremendous. Hold times for WF customers calling into the call centers are going to increase, especially in the early morning and late evening hours.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Oregon sites have had some of the strongest union-building activity. many team members are viewing this move as retaliation on WF's part for having to audacity to attempt to unionize.
No matter how you slice it, WF is going to lose a huge part of it's call center infrastructure. I'd like to see the figures on how much they will be paying collectors ("Account Resolution Specialists") and others for shift diff and overtime, who live in the Central Time Zone to stay until 11:00 Central Time. (We are legally mandated to have Overdraft collections lines open until 9:00 PM Pacific).
WF has also underestimated the fact that many team members affected by this decision aren't going to hold WF in any esteem after this? I already bank at a credit union. But think about it, if each of us affected by these decisions decides to tell 10-20 of our friends and family to NOT bank with Wells Fargo? And if each of those people tells a couple of their friends/family to NEVER bank with WF? Imagine the impact! I moved all my accounts to a credit union years ago and I have no regrets. WF Team Member accounts have no benefits basically.
In short: If you are in the Pacific Time Zone, prepare for plenty of angry and impatient customers. They are offshoring our jobs