HR Report 2010/2011 - Deutsche Telekom AG

Abbreviations and key HR terms.

20 The Great Experience Hotline and deaf – a contradiction in terms? No way. “Hotline” means advice over the phone – and we provide it in sign language over a video telephone. That’s why we have added the word ‘deaf’ to the name, since we provide advice exclu- sively for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. How did the Deaf Hotline start? Many of my friends contacted me with questions about Telekom, its products and even with prob- lems. This made me think about setting up a hotline for the deaf. Hans-Jürgen Soller, our team leader at the time, was very supportive. About one year later, we had everything prepared and were able to launch our deaf hotline. Statistics from the pilot project soon showed that the number of inquiries is increasing. A lot of deaf people are truly grateful for our service. How many people do you help via the Deaf Hotline on an average day? We receive and process 50 to 60 inquiries each day via e-mail, video telephone, fax and standard mail. What are the problems you have to deal with during your advice sessions? Do you possibly have fewer communication problems than on a “normal” hotline? The requirements of deaf people differ from those of people with normal hearing. This is something we must be aware of in order to avoid giving the wrong advice. We therefore have special training in such topics as Telekom’s technical devices, billing, cell phone settings and so on. We can communicate with deaf customers in sign lan- guage without any barriers and are readily under- stood. It makes no difference whether the custom- ers are German, Italian or Turkish: in contrast to our hearing colleagues, use of the international sign language means that we have no difficulty understanding our callers. Is there any aspect that you would say is typical of your work and that you only find at Telekom? A lot of people have difficulty picturing our work on the hotline. They are always very interested to hear how technology enables us to stay in contact with deaf people and to support them. We work in the same way as other colleagues on our hotlines. This is something you will currently only find at Telekom. Deaf Hotline: “Something you only find at Telekom.” Deaf people and a telephone? How can that work? No problem at all for Deutsche Telekom: the hotline for deaf people was set up in 2003. Birgit Radeke and her colleague Thorsten Börger are on duty there to offer help and advice to customers. Talent everywhere! Thanks to the „My chance to get going“ program, 50 young people can now embark upon a vocational training course in the Group. “I am proud to have succeeded. And so is my family,” Emre Ergenekon from Munich reports happily. At the beginning of September, the father of three will be starting the second year of his training as an IT systems electronics technician with Deutsche Telekom Technischer Service GmbH. In 2002 the birth of his first son forced him to abandon school before gradu- ating. “But now my family and I have the chance of a better life again,” Ergenekon explains. He is well on the right track. His trainers confirm that the young man has very high social skills and above-average subject matter competency. Ergenekon is one of a total of 61 disadvan- taged young people who started the one-year entry-level training program at Telekom in August 2009. 50 of them were accepted for a regular training course in autumn 2010, 42 of them went straight to the second year of training.