Welder Dave
Senior Member
I work for the largest industrial supplier in Canada but it's going downhill fast. They closed most of their stores and are trying to compete with Amazon. The American owner is trying to turn it into the same model as the US but doesn't comprehend that Canada is a completely different market. They have done more to turn customers off than attract new ones. I work with 9 other guys in Tech. support helping to get the right part numbers and crossing items from other suppliers. We get over 200 e-mails a day and about 25 phone calls a day. The American side has about 160 people in tech. support and only does phone calls. One of the big advantages of e-mails is we can research things and call vendors to get the customer the best solution. On the phone we have a 6 minute time limit!
They have asked us in the past a couple times what we thought about doing all phone calls and there was NOTHING positive in response. We'd prefer all e-mails so we can give the best answer instead of just trying to give an answer in a short time. They informed us a couple weeks ago we'd be going all phone calls June 1. It would be a nightmare with only 10 people at the most. Several of our group have 20 to 40 years with the company so lots of holidays. We were acknowledged as the experts when it came to product knowledge since they let all the knowledgeable product managers go about 2 years ago. Today they informed us our group was being eliminated completely and all calls will go the US team. We will work until the end of May. We've seen it coming for 2 1/2 years but were so busy didn't think it would be so soon. My area is metalworking but phone calls have been transferred to the US for about a year as part of what they called a pilot project at the time. People needing assistance with welding or metal working will deliberately press the wrong prompt on the phone and ask to speak with me because they are so frustrated with the US team. The US team will look in the catalogue and if they can't find it, say it's not available. I've been with the company a little under 5 years and will get about 5 month's severance pay which is decent. I was getting frustrated with the way they were doing things and I think the company is in a downward spiral they're going to have trouble getting out of. Nobody was that surprised but why not listen to the people Canada telling you it's a bad idea?
They have asked us in the past a couple times what we thought about doing all phone calls and there was NOTHING positive in response. We'd prefer all e-mails so we can give the best answer instead of just trying to give an answer in a short time. They informed us a couple weeks ago we'd be going all phone calls June 1. It would be a nightmare with only 10 people at the most. Several of our group have 20 to 40 years with the company so lots of holidays. We were acknowledged as the experts when it came to product knowledge since they let all the knowledgeable product managers go about 2 years ago. Today they informed us our group was being eliminated completely and all calls will go the US team. We will work until the end of May. We've seen it coming for 2 1/2 years but were so busy didn't think it would be so soon. My area is metalworking but phone calls have been transferred to the US for about a year as part of what they called a pilot project at the time. People needing assistance with welding or metal working will deliberately press the wrong prompt on the phone and ask to speak with me because they are so frustrated with the US team. The US team will look in the catalogue and if they can't find it, say it's not available. I've been with the company a little under 5 years and will get about 5 month's severance pay which is decent. I was getting frustrated with the way they were doing things and I think the company is in a downward spiral they're going to have trouble getting out of. Nobody was that surprised but why not listen to the people Canada telling you it's a bad idea?