Who's Who from MC Room

The Multicultural Team Shared the AT&T Hawaii History

MC-Zone was a online resource for the Multicultural Dept at AT&T Hawaii. The purpose was to share our call handling, scripts, telecom terminology and system knowledge in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and English during the Asian Language campaigns.

In February 2002, We started as a retention center for former AT&T customers who had recently moved their long distance service to another carrier (Out-PIC). When the customers received a check of $25-100 value, depended on the amount of international long distance spending, they called in for a check code (always 9633). It was our job to sign them up with the long distance service. The team spoke Cantonese, Mandarin and Korean. We were 23 reps strong under a successful team leader - Arlette Jones.

At the same time, International Retention campaign was introduced. That was best running show ever for AT&T Hawaii Center with an outbound telemarketing campaign in Vietnamese and Chinese languages. Customers were introduced with the latest saving plans to fit their usage. This campaign later included English to reach wider audience.

The MC Campaign was faded and Asian UNEP (unbundled Local Service from telephone network providers with AT&T Brand) rolled in 2003. Everyone was trained to do both Multicultural and Local Campaigns. With our successful Asian Language inbound campaigns, the product managers did an experiment with "outbound" telemarketing and inbound in English to see if we can get some additional sales. That was a proven success! In early 2003, we covered California in 3 Asian languages. We signed up thousands of local and long distance customers. At the end of 2003, MC Campaign was moved to an external agency in California. So, we can focus on 100% Local Service call center.

We took over local service completely in 2004. We reached hundreds of thousand Asian customers from California to New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Oregon, and Washington by the Spring of 2004. During the summer of 2004, there were many hurdles in the heat of "Do Not Call" and government's regulation. AT&T headquarter decided to completely shutdown the consumer branch, including closing of this Hawaii Center. On July 27, 2004, 78 term employees, including 95% of reps from the MC Room, were laid off. On November 19, all others were followed. The AT&T Hawaii Call Center once being call "Center of Choice" was officially closed, after 20 years of service, on November 21, 2004.

Written by Luis M Chen