I don't know the fullest totals but about 200 of us were laid off in India. I'm sure people in the USA will not care but we did still work with you as family. I wish you the very best.
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the guys who call the stores are from our vendor partners and not SHI
A support manager at Hoffman told me his team in India was cut to the bone and it's going to be difficult to provide service to the business. Our IT department is eliminating non-IBM utility products and we hoped to have SHI support help us but now those folks are gone. It's going to be difficult to get things done in the next 6 months. This is what happens when a billion dollars in labor is taken out of the company. That's' what Eddie said, right... reduce expenses by one billion?
It is not an India problem it is all help ticket probems. Most call centers or help centers are instructed and required to go by the book--literally. They have a notebook with tabs and when you tell them what the problem they go to the appropriate tab and start with question #1 and then #2 and so on. This is an industry standard for any country and is most likely put out by the manufactuer of the software or hardware to fix common problems quickly.
Believe it or not it really does work and for the most part it is faster and more efficient than having someone try to explain a problem they they may not really be able to explain. That is why lots of times you will get asked if the machine is "on" or if it is plugged in or to restart the machine. Take a look at the instructions on most things you buy. The first thing it will tell you is to plug it in or turn it on or not to use your hair dryer in the shower or don't drink the bleach etc. You would be surprised at the total lack of common sense of most people.
Sorry to hear that some very talented people got let go.
But IT does call the stores on Saturday Afternoons to troubleshoot our kiosks. They do not understand when we explain what the problem is and most employees have a hard time understanding them. So, they start reading from a script and it is the script that fixes some other problem but not the one you have. Try to explain again. Ok ticket open , hang up , wait till next week when they call at 855 at night and the store closes at 9. Try again and explain the best time to call is between 6-9 9am before store opens but no they wait til Friday or Saturday late afternoon to call. Rinse and repeat . Always 2 hours on the phone trying to use smaller and simpler words to explain the problem.
The call center people being hired in Hoffman was to bring the total number of employees up above some threshold number in order to continue to get some tax benefits at corporate.
Also to close down other US based call centers and stop paying rent on those facilities.
@1eoi this is not a call center it's our companies IT folk
this news isn't breaking my heart. I can't stand calling a company just to be directed to someone I can't understand. Bring call centers back to the US
it was across the board in MT. lot of development and testing staff impacted.
call centre staff stays as does the support staff, which had little less impact.
lights on mode seems to be the future of tech work at Sears.
@1uvx you do know India has close to a billion people and is quite a large country? I'm not sure how that comment helps our Indian friends. It's the equivalent to Sears shutting down and saying to everyone 'GET A JOB WITH FORD' (Ford recently announced a $1.2Billion investment in Michigan, it was on the news)
Was it the call center in India? I have heard we are hiring again for a call center to be based out of corporate. Maybe some of the challenges spurred the new call center.
I dont think hra is shouting. He/she is just asking if we know whether what is being said is a fact or not.
Always sad to hear about job losses.
GET A JOB WITH AMAZON ------just in the news
Amazon, which has committed an investment of $5 billion in the Indian market, will also set up 33 delivery stations to meet the demand
Pune office got hit the most of all
@hra Why do you care & why are YOU SHOUTING? Relax, breath, there is no need to be so angry with the world
Not that it matters much but the number was much closer to 150 than 200
its sad that in india they are paid 5 us dollars per day to work and Sears cant even afford that....
I no longer work for the company, as of months ago. That said, I'm not surprised they are laying off people in India. Sears was trying to completely shift over to another IT service provider TCS/Tata Consultancy Services (also an Indian company) for even Hoffman based employees. Making the switch over in India had to be even easier. Especially since most of the SHI employees are "faceless" and hard to communicate with, and even harder to manage on a project. This isn't racism, its just a fact. You don't see them, or have small talk in the hallways. Communication is always rough, partially due to language and cultural differences, but mostly due to the games of telephone you must play thru the "handlers." Impossible to manage because again the "handlers" and the fact that they get thrown on multiple things all at the same time, and there are tons of rules that upper management wants them to hit. Tickets closed ASAP regardless of actual work, as well as not allowing anything other than the ticket system for tracking... (ticket systems are fine for issue resolution but not dev... ) So while everyone else was on JIRA, we were only allowed to use ticket system and a shared excel file when it came to SHI.
Sorry SHI guys, you really got dealt a bad hand, and I'm not sure it'll make you feel any better but its bad at SHC home office as well.
Good luck and from my understanding, typically if you have between 6 months and a year of experience, you will get snatched up!
And ya'll know the Original Poster is from India --- HOW???
@mvt nice comment
I am sorry to hear this. Hopefully there are other companies near you that are hiring. Do you get severance and unemployment? I admit to knowing nothing about Indian employment laws & regulations.
Good luck. I'm sure there are greener pastures elsewhere.
I'm assuming this was IT support. What functions/systems did these 200 support or was it across the board?
Best wishes to you too. Being in different countries doesn't matter, it still affects us all the same.
can't speak for others, but I care about the fallout of SHC's decline, whether it's here in USA, in India or wherever else. It hurts us all.
I heard that too and that actually surprises me. It's the one place I would expect to see numbers grow not get less, surprising.
Game over
If they cutting in India, they gave up