A Mystery Solved - The SPH Riddle

You'll recall that when Marty Robertson's wallet was stolen, he was "helped" by "Jason SPH Team 63" at Washington Mutual.

Suffice it to say that after an hour of being shuffled through several people, we were finally told by our sarcastic supervisor for the day, Jason SPH Team 63 New York, that the fraud department was closed, and that he would not pass the message on. It was unbelievable. He gave me his supervisor’s name, Alex, but would not give me his extension.

Not being familiar with the banking industry, I didn't know what "SPH" stood for. Turns out it (probably) stands for sales per hour.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) outbound telemarketing programs...are usually paid on a pure pay-for-performance basis....

The primary metric that B2C-focused centers are oriented towards is the sales per hour (SPH) rate, since this determines revenues in pure pay-for-performance programs. This metric is a brutal master, one from which experienced and successful facilities are usually quick to distance themselves, leaving the newer or less proficient ones as the only centers that will run outbound pure pay-for-performance B2C programs. Since 2003, in response to this trend, several large U.S. clients have switched to pay a flat hourly rate with bonuses for each sale. They are doing this to be able to attract capacity at experienced, higher quality facilities that decline to work on a pure pay-for-performance basis.

You gotta wonder - why is Washington Mutual routing fraud calls to a "sales per hour" group (in this case, SPH Team 63)?

salesperhour

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