I worked for three months on the switchboard (sorry, contact center) of a popular state funeral home. I've never seen or experienced anything “out of the ordinary” (being ordinary, of course, is the cruellest of almost any job), but it seems to me that what ordinary people don't know (I don't want to do an act. Joke here), there are some considerations about the field that deserve to be taken from the pages of Salmon. . It should surprise no one that insurance is deeply involved in this business, but something that caught my attention was the strange SME/large corporate relationship, which could not agree with the way things worked, the staff or the faces. Out: Let's build it up a little bit.
The “recruitment” process (is that what they say?) was quick, with the usual stupidity of the recruiter (talk about 'emotional management') and the shameless lies of the recruiter, who was already too old to be afraid to admit them. Check anything. I worked at a physical location, a mortuary, and most of the tele operators (sorry, service agents) were in another city, except for one other operator who was with me. The ratio of good people and stupid people in Microsoft teams is not very different from the real world, but I worked remotely for myself for the first time, which was a novelty: as people can be stupid in different ways, virtual or real way. The use of the contract was very doubtful, but of course, when the command is in one city and you are in another, let us see to whom you say it, and under what circumstances you do it. Opening a chat with the first partner who doesn't give you a very bad feeling? You also had to find your life in it.
A woman calls you from Barcelona and says she thinks her mother-in-law is dead and doesn't know what to do or that she's calling the right place. You have to give him an answer, but you want to explain to him that you are a soldier in a market that is heading towards concentration, and you have empathy, a lot of empathy, and in this case you will understand half the work from dozens of corporate videos and insurance activities in which agents are more tired than you who just arrived. , and if they release the dead (which isn't really another joke) the sooner, the better. What families don't know when deciding whether to have a burial or cremation is that they don't have the body for it.The Spanish market for funerals is changing, especially since the end of the Covid crisis –An era of great creativity in its services-, in a bisexual. We only need to enter the names of Mémora and Albia, the two main players in the sector, into our search engine to verify their dependence on two insurance companies: respectively Catalana Occident (today Occident) and Santa Lucía. If anyone reading this is near, let's call them, a family-run SME mortuary, you may have noticed. Your recent purchase Ridiculous situations are created by one of the two members of the duopoly to talk to someone from a funeral procession in a town in Valencia until he informs you of the other three. Aseptic and want-to-be service Silicon Valley (to dignify the funeral among its young employees and make them think that working with the dead isn't so bad), in a field that can't exist by any means. And beware, these family SMEs have sold in exchange for real pastures… very happy.
I had to work here during that break when old people don't die (family SME continues in many places, and as a funny story, it usually fights with other family SMEs in the area. 30 years ago, this sometimes leads to the adoption of ridiculous protocols) and new ones are not born (big insurance group SME to communicate with, if necessary, as we saw above, try to internalize it), and when you speak at the funeral of a person in Coria del Rio, it ends with the use of CRM software, who must stop carrying the coffin at that time to serve you. Or call the IT experts in Barcelona who can solve the IT experts you have in three seconds because the company doesn't share, I don't know what password the IT expert here has.
The history of Memora, the current leader, has many interesting twists and turns: It was previously owned by Acciona, a pension fund for Canadian teachers.
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Returning to the two funerals, Albia seems set to join third party Funespana (linked to Mapfre) in 2021. Had they done so, they might have overtaken Memora and become the first team in the field, but A file opening by the National Markets and Competition Authority He ruined the operation. The following year, there were two funeral homes Penalties were imposed for non-reporting of several acquisitions of funerals and cremations (This is not lost on him Another good handle to get) for its part, the history of Memora, the current leader, has many interesting twists and turns: it previously belonged to Acciona, a pension fund for Canadian teachers, and had an eventful relationship on behalf of the Barcelona city council. Barcelona's Serveis Funeraris, whose mayor's office has been in the hands of the PSC since 1997 – has gradually divested in favor of Memora, a nominal 15% justified as a way to control prices. . When Barcelona En Comú City Council tried to get rid of this percentage in 2019, it tried to move forward with it. Public Funeral Home, which did not flourish. Finally, in 2021, Barcelona City Council sells that percentage to Memora's subsidiary Asistea. Close the circle. This is how the world works: buying everything back, subsidiary subsidiary subsidiary subsidiary, CNMV fines from time to time for not being able to do what they want. .
And then there's the problem Call centers and urination. Yes, I assure you that you must warn when you go to the bathroom. Once two girls went at the same time, they announced through groups and the boss told them to please not go at the same time. I watch it from a distance, and the humility we assume, I assume, continues to amaze me. (If only 12 people taking calls from all over Spain doesn't sound ideal to you) In need of improvement, the company justifies it as always. Of course, there are statistics in everything you do, and this is the first time I experienced this in a job, in SMEs, with limited resources, you can do a little bit more with what you do. want I couldn't see mine – it was still very early – but I could see my guys. Instead of taking them individually and explaining, or addressing each one, the boss emailed everyone's ideas in a ranking of red, yellow, and green. It made me sad to think that someone's job would do something like that. Not because it's cruel or too precise, but because it's tricky. I missed SME's mother-in-law the day I had to change the wallpaper with the company logo to make a real internal video call. They are more bitter, but do less bullshit.
In the end, nothing, three months later the HR person and the boss showed up to the group, they looked like AB and Blass, and told me that I was too slow to take a certain insurance action and that I didn't pass the investigation. period and on the street. It was also a joke that they made me take all my vacations at once two weeks after I started, and since all our movements were being tracked, no one warned me that I was going slow and gingerly walking. .. This trick with trial period This is the form in which temporary contracting has taken on fraud after labor reform. Anyway, as a friend of mine said, the dead don't care if you take two more seconds.
