Fodoa Fache-Adkins: ‘I was plucking chickens. And one day I was late.’ Teleperformance

‘I'm the Chairman of France Télécom and we have to stop everything ‘(...) ’The slightest idiot can now speak out on social networks’. A caustic encounter with a pure TP (Teleperformance) product: Fodoa Fache-Adkins. One of the most fascinating portraits and encounters that took place during the writing of the book on Teleperformance alumni: J'ai tant appris rue Firmin Gillot ( Malpaso-RCM éditions).

On the impact of political changes on outbound call campaigns, sales pitches and scripts, in Paris 15.
A tasty read, at a time when the future of BPO and outsourced customer experience companies seems uncertain, if the yo-yoing of their share prices is anything to go by. What can become of a company that has been able to nurture so much talent, use it and make it grow, when AI and its apostles indicate that a large proportion of the tasks entrusted to them will be automatable? What happens on the sets when there is a political changeover, which impacts a mission in the course of production? How and with what types of ratio could magazine subscribers and ex-subscribers be reached before the new numbering plan?

Fodoa can't provide simple answers to these complex questions, but she does speak to us with sincerity, from her home where she has long been teleworking and sometimes cooking for conference calls. After telling her interviewers. And she shares her tips with us: ‘Every day, to break away from the home office, I go to the café and read Le Parisien. It talks about everything and everyone. And I can have a chat with a customer sitting at the counter, someone I've never met before, who's going to share their vision of the world with me!

How and why did you join Teleperformance?
Because my career in de-feathering and selling chickens came to an abrupt end. At the age of 19, as a student, I was already working in the markets, selling chickens, in Argenteuil: I had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. I had to de-feather the chickens by placing them in a machine fitted with a drum, with rubber spikes and hot water, the combination of the two making it possible to soften the animal and remove the skin.

But one day I got up late, so I arrived... late. So I was fired. So I looked for another job. I was nineteen, studying international business at ESGCI and working at the same time, like many students. So I discovered the company by chance, when I was looking for a new job. My mother gave me a small advertisement she'd found in a newspaper: ‘Job étudiant, recherche Téléacteurs, horaires flexibles’. She said to me: that must mean you're going to be a telephone actress. I rang up, not knowing what it really meant, and I was recruited, and the training started the next day! I did some phoning, then became a supervisor.
In reality, at that age, all I had in mind as a career was to travel the world, to meet different cultures ‘in the world of business’, which was obviously very vague. It has to be said that I have Egyptian, Moroccan and Chti origins on my father's side. But in the end, TP enabled me to work in and visit twenty-seven different countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, America and Asia.

What was the atmosphere and the job like back then, on rue Firmin-Gillot?
It's hard to imagine it now, because all the departments and divisions were mixed together in that building: some of the platforms, the France division, the Corp on another floor. People didn't necessarily move from one floor to the next, but the windows were open, so you could hear the sales and customer service meetings, which were the two main business lines of the company at the time. We sold the Nouvel Obs, the Chasseur Français and the Express. And in the street below, you could pass a few agents on a break, some of them smoking their little pot cigarette (hihi) while you could hear balloons exploding upstairs, a sound that marked the conclusion of a sale. From time to time, a little incident or funny story would come up, like the day when, due to a file error I suppose, former subscribers to l'Express were approached with the idea of re-subscribing to Nouvel Obs. The differences between left and right were more pronounced at the time, so there were a few reactions while we worked out what had happened. Then we could move on to Modes et Travaux.

So the arguments changed often, there must have been a lot of training?
Not at all, not necessarily: the population of the Parisian plateaux was cosmopolitan, but with a large number of students in higher education, generally very well educated. The atmosphere was very festive and lively, even more so when there were incidents, never very serious, but of the kind that form memories.

For example?
In 1997, we were managing the sale of France Telecom shares at the time of the stock market flotation. Initially, we answered financial questions on incoming calls. Many of the students were in banking and finance, so they were able to explain and answer financial questions. I don't remember why, probably because of a political changeover, the project had to be stopped or its nature changed. The privatisation initially planned became an opening up of the capital and we were given the task of issuing calls to propose that certain bank customers buy shares. Until one day we received a call on the set from a gentleman who said: ‘I'm Michel Bon, the chairman, we have to stop everything’. The supervisor replied: ‘But who are you? ‘I'm the Chairman of France Telecom, and everything has to be stopped.

What happened? 
So she told him that it wasn't like that, that we needed an official confirmation fax, and the next day we stopped selling France Telecom shares. But there could also be minor technical hitches: the technology at the time was not at the level we have now, or we didn't necessarily have as many telephone channels as we needed. As a result, on some missions, we had to wait for someone to finish an outgoing call before we could receive another (hihi).

Staying on course, young Fodoa set her sights on perfecting her English and headed for California. Why California?
It's funny, Christophe Allard asked me the same question when I told him I was going to Los Angeles. In fact, I had rotated the globe over the US zone and my finger had pointed to California. So I went there for a year to study and perfect my English. Christophe offered to make a few phone calls if I was looking for work. And then I came back, this time to the Corp, alongside new people, to look after the international accounts. I didn't know anything about it, and I was worried, to which Christophe Allard replied: ‘Do you know the job? Yes. Do you speak English? Yes. Have you ever been in contact with clients? Yes, well, you'll get the hang of it then.
It has to be said that my office was opposite his, and that he and others always devoted time and energy to training us, to teaching us what we didn't know. One day he came into my office and said: ‘What are you doing?’ and followed up with: ‘Nothing, as usual, I'm sure, so come on, you're going to learn something. He then hands me an A5 company balance sheet and says: what are you reading? This was followed by a mini-course in accounting and finance to learn how to read an operating account. That was it, and I think it still is. (...)

How do you bring up your children, when you talk so much about education and instruction?
If I listen to my daughters, they say there's a dictatorship at home, because there are subjects I don't discuss (...)
 

Fodoa's children often have dinner at 6.30pm, with their mobile phones switched off. They probably don't need to go and see psychologist Caroline Goldman*. But in life, you can't be sure of anything.

To find out more
- Find out more in issue 132 of En-Contact.
- Read the portrait of another Teleperformance executive whose professional life was changed by a classified ad. Karine Lours. And that of Sébastien Zins, who had the privilege, with others, of launching the Wanadoo support, near the Gare Montparnasse. Sébastien went on to work for Salesforce, which he recently left to join GitLab.
*The psychologist argues for a return to an education in which parents dare to set limits, and often refers to the appropriate means at their disposal for this purpose. Her detractors cry ‘coercive education’. To make up your own mind, read File dans ta chambre.