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So here's a question, call centre goons. I have on occasion had to phone up and be angry with the company (most notably Vodafone UK who outright tried to defraud me) but when I do that I always try to make that distinction - i.e. "the company" this or "vodafone" that, rather than "you". Does that make your experience any less unpleasant or am I just making things worse as sentences then tend to sound rather awkward?
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Aug 10, 2011 13:45
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rolleyes posted:So here's a question, call centre goons. I have on occasion had to phone up and be angry with the company (most notably Vodafone UK who outright tried to defraud me) but when I do that I always try to make that distinction - i.e. "the company" this or "vodafone" that, rather than "you". I do this myself, and I'm fairly certain it doesn't really work. Especially when I start with "Now I know this isn't you that's done this..." and then go into a massive rant. I dunno man, I guess most people will just let it roll off them if they've been in call centre work for any length of time. As long as you don't very clearly direct something at them then they'll probably just assume you mean the business.
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Aug 10, 2011 13:49
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Hey guys, T2 positions in my account are about to become available for application next week. I'm really keen on applying for it, but I'm not exactly sure what to do to get myself noticed. I'm kinda new at my job, I've only been there for 5 months with one of those months being training and have the misfortune of being on a coaching plan for my customer satisfaction (I was unlucky enough to slip under 85% for two weeks when the centre wasn't getting any surveys back, but that has since fixed itself and I'm on 95% again after getting 1 of my dissatisfied taken off and all my surveys back) I have to be one of the few people here who adore my job and I'm super keen to try something a little more challenging in the same roll. I sent away an email to my new manager away whose happily offered to help me and has scheduled a meeting to talk to me tomorrow about it. I've been going up to listen to T2 calls for awhile to see what it is like as well. Is there anything else I can do help me along into T2? The managers I was really close to, and who really liked me have left the company and I've only really started now getting to know my new managers. One of them seems to like me enough to spend some time with me tomorrow over this, the other is very sharp with me whenever I try to talk with him.
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Aug 10, 2011 14:03
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rolleyes posted:So here's a question, call centre goons. I have on occasion had to phone up and be angry with the company (most notably Vodafone UK who outright tried to defraud me) but when I do that I always try to make that distinction - i.e. "the company" this or "vodafone" that, rather than "you". This is a huge pet peeve for most of us. 'This isn't directed at you, but the company you work for is terrible and I hate it.' isn't something anyone wants to hear. Just present your problem in a calm manner and ask for help. Most phone reps will bend over backwards to help someone who's asking for it and not prefacing it with all their reasons they're mad. We know you're upset, that's why you're calling. No one calls when they're not having problems.
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Aug 10, 2011 14:26
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rolleyes posted:So here's a question, call centre goons. I have on occasion had to phone up and be angry with the company (most notably Vodafone UK who outright tried to defraud me) but when I do that I always try to make that distinction - i.e. "the company" this or "vodafone" that, rather than "you". The only way this doesn't bug me is when it starts off something like: "Hi JR, my name is blah blah blah. I did just want to preface by saying I am very upset at ******* Bank, and while I realize it isn't your fault, but I need to talk to someone about this, and I apologize if I seem like I am taking this out on you" Stuff like that doesn't bug me. They want to rant about their misservice, over fees, or whatever happened to cause them to be so pissed off at the bank. But they realize I have nothing to do with it, but I am the only one at the bank they can rant to (or one of my coworkers, not me specifically), and they apologize that I am going to be taking the brunt of it. BlackIronHeart posted:Just present your problem in a calm manner and ask for help. Most phone reps will bend over backwards to help someone who's asking for it And this as well. You can be enraged at something that happened, and still rant about it and being calm. When you are done saying your piece, ask the phone rep "What can we do about this, what are our options?"
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Aug 10, 2011 15:39
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It's annoying because it's sort of like when someone says "Hey, I'm not racist, but.." and then proceed to say the most racist thing you've heard in a while. "Hey, I know it's not your fault, KOMI, so don't take it personally, but WHY DID YOU CHARGE ME $12 EXTRA ON THIS HERE SERVICE!? YOU YOU YOU WHY DID YOU DO IT!! GET ME YOUR SUPERVISOR!!" It doesn't work to make you look better. We still think you're an rear end.
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Aug 10, 2011 17:51
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KOMI posted:It's annoying because it's sort of like when someone says "Hey, I'm not racist, but.." and then proceed to say the most racist thing you've heard in a while. What I was talking about was more along the lines of "Hey, I know it's not your fault, KOMI, so don't take it personally, but I am really upset about this 12.00 charge. Everytime I turn around it seems like there more charges and fees. I am really sick of all these extra charges, and they piss me off to no end. Why did I get an extra 12.00 charge this month?" So, the ones that recognize you didn't have anything to do about it, don't infer that it was you personally that caused the charge, but are still very upset about the charge nonetheless.
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Aug 10, 2011 17:56
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JackRabbitStorm posted:"Hey, I know it's not your fault, KOMI, so don't take it personally, but I am really upset about this 12.00 charge. Everytime I turn around it seems like there more charges and fees. I am really sick of all these extra charges, and they piss me off to no end. Why did I get an extra 12.00 charge this month?" You could go that way but "Hi, there's a 12.00 charge I don't recognize on my account, can you explain why it's there?" not only frames your question/issue just fine, it's shorter and you don't have to explain how pissed off you are. Again, whoever answered the phone knows there's a problem and you're upset. That's why you called. Here's the parts they can do nothing about : "Everytime I turn around it seems like there more charges and fees. I am really sick of all these extra charges, and they piss me off to no end." They can't help you with that part besides offer a sincere-sounding but ultimately hollow apology that they gave to 50 other people that day. 
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Aug 10, 2011 18:03
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BlackIronHeart posted:You could go that way but Empty apology or not, it is still an apology and at least some of the customers will appreciate that. I prefer the short and simple "Explain this charge please" that you were talking about, but if they have to be angry and accusatory, I prefer it goes the way I posted and not the way KOMI posted. Then again, we are call center goons, and we all know those are far and few between.
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Aug 10, 2011 18:06
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I know.  Keep fighting the insanity if you can. I'm a little mad I forgot about this thread since I might actually be leaving the phone floor soon.
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Aug 10, 2011 18:11
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JackRabbitStorm posted:What I was talking about was more along the lines of You're right as well. Obviously if every customer was as clear headed and un-confrontational as your example then it would be a pleasant exchange, if not at the very least an amicable one. What I mean is how most customers really just use it as an initial pleasantry only to completely 180 on you and personally attack you anyway. Unfortunately, I work in an industry that is rarely met with friendliness. I work almost exclusively with customers who have very poor credit ratings. edit: I had one dude the other day who initially was really chill and friendly to talk with. His problem was minor but it required me to go and ask my higher-ups about something I wasn't clear on, which he understood and said "Take your time! ". Well, unfortunately we couldn't accommodate this customer for his minor problem, which ultimately wasn't a big deal but whatever, anyways I go back to the dude and inform him of this and he completely goes off his cracker and becomes all morbid. Saying things like "KOMI, you lost yourself a customer today! You could have saved me but you wouldn't bend your precious loving rules for even a moment to do it! How does it loving feel? Knowing you're a loving failure!" and completely going off the charts for a good 4 minutes. Finally I just disconnected because I realized he was at this point just hearing himself talk, and not interested in what I had to say. I just shrug it off and move on to my next customer. poo poo like this used to sit with me for a day or two as I'd stew about it, because that was just the kind of guy I was, now though I just tell my neighbor worker and we laugh. It's frightening, really. KOMI fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Aug 10, 2011 |
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Aug 10, 2011 19:36
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KOMI posted:You're right as well. Obviously if every customer was as clear headed and un-confrontational as your example then it would be a pleasant exchange, if not at the very least an amicable one. What I mean is how most customers really just use it as an initial pleasantry only to completely 180 on you and personally attack you anyway. Yeah if I'm gonna do that I do carry it through, there's not much point going to the effort otherwise. I'm also not doing it to make myself look good, I just thought it might make people's jobs a bit less miserable. And there are occasions where it's justifiably all but impossible to keep calm. In my Vodafone example from earlier, I was outright lied to by a rep having phoned up to clarify something, and then overbilled for products I did not ask for to the tune of £450 in 3 months. I called up each and every month to try to get them to stop, and each and every time they told me I couldn't because the system said I'd authorised it. Well what can we do? Well you can break your contract early and pay an early termination fee? No, gently caress you. On the final "Now I'm not angry at you, but here's why your company is loving me over" call I spent over 90 minutes arguing with a supervisor because he was blindly trusting the system until I threatened to submit a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act to get a copy of the recording of the original call proving their own rep had defrauded me. That finally got them to review the tape and oh guess what, I was right. ...so anyway, on that occasion it would have taken a taken a greater man than me to remain calm, but I tried my best to direct my anger at the company and their stupid policies rather than the individuals involved. Apart from the rep who hosed me over in the first place, that guy deserves whatever he's got coming.
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Aug 10, 2011 19:50
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rolleyes posted:So here's a question, call centre goons. I have on occasion had to phone up and be angry with the company (most notably Vodafone UK who outright tried to defraud me) but when I do that I always try to make that distinction - i.e. "the company" this or "vodafone" that, rather than "you". It all really depends on the person, the tone of voice, the issue, and how I'm feeling. I work with student loans, if you're mad because you didn't do what you are required to do by your promissary note and have made no effort to look into other options, I have no sympathy for you. I can't change your interest rate. I can't take your loan out of default. I understand that you're mad at the company, but you don't need to take it out on me. That being said, if you're mad because of some stupid issue our servers have or something else that's legitimately the company's fault, I will absolutely do everything I can to either fix your issue, or find another way to get you what you need. In other words, if you're mad about something legitimate, I totally get it. If you're mad about something that was your fault, I will judge you.
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Aug 10, 2011 20:27
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rolleyes posted:So here's a question, call centre goons. I have on occasion had to phone up and be angry with the company (most notably Vodafone UK who outright tried to defraud me) but when I do that I always try to make that distinction - i.e. "the company" this or "vodafone" that, rather than "you". Looking at this purely from the perspective of the angry customer, you have a specific issue and a specific goal. Phone up, calmly explain the issue and what you would like them to do about it and listen to what they can offer you. Yelling and screaming will not benefit you. It just wastes your time and makes the person you're talking to less likely to want to help you. It is in your own interest to not be a dick to people you want to help you. As to whether it matter if you act like you hate me or the company I work for, well, if you abuse me I can just disconnect the call, but if you start ranting about how you hate the company, all I can do is sit there and listen to you go on. There is absolutely nothing I can do with the information you are giving me, so it's not going to do you any good. But I get paid the same regardless, so I'm mostly happy to sit there and let you get it out of your system. Actually the one thing you can do that is absolutely guaranteed to piss me off no matter which side of the phone I'm on, is if you interrupt me to guess what you think I was about to say. If you interrupt me because there's something that needs to happen, fine. If I start asking a question and you answer it before I finish, even if you actually were right about what I was going to ask, I hate you. That is incredibly rude and the half a second you save yourself does not justify it. Especially as half the time you're wrong about what I'm about to ask and I have to listen to something irrelevant then ask the question I actually want answered again.
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Aug 12, 2011 03:58
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Yeah basically, the company is us, we are the company. When you say "You guys" or "you people", I don't take it personal, and if we actually DID mess up, I will apologize for the company as if I had personally been responsible. You're just a conduit for the company.
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Aug 12, 2011 04:48
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Some guy gave me a detractor on our feedback surveys. The call lasted three minutes, I solved his problem (he was trying to log into his email @company.com instead of @company.net), and I was perfectly polite and so was he. My NPS sucks because of people like this
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Aug 12, 2011 04:58
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Loving Life Partner posted:Yeah basically, the company is us, we are the company. It makes me feel like such a rat in the corporate cage, but yes, this is it. I had someone who sounded exactly like Milton from Office Space called (stapler) who was apparently a woman and was incredibly condescending. Aka, 'it' made fun of the fact that I double checked on something, and made offensive comments constantly, till I actually had to put them on hold and then swear like a pirate because I was so pissed. On the plus side, I forgot and called it 'sir', which was when it snootily told me that it wasn't a man. I feel bad, and yet okay with this.
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Aug 12, 2011 05:33
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Well, the company I work for has a huge IT changeover this weekend. Apparently we won't have anything to dial on Monday, but we are still expected in. Utterly pointless. Still, it will be fun watching everything fall over on Tuesday.
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Aug 12, 2011 12:14
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kells posted:Some guy gave me a detractor on our feedback surveys. The call lasted three minutes, I solved his problem (he was trying to log into his email @company.com instead of @company.net), and I was perfectly polite and so was he. Yeah, I learned today that I got a 20/100 score because some old lady didn't understand that '1 is bad, 5 is good' when doing the survey. These people are the reason I'm desperately trying to escape this job after 8 years in the trenches. My performance and livelihood are in the hands of the mentally infirm.
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Aug 13, 2011 18:55
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And I once failed a survey with the reasoning being that I was amazing, wonderful, polite and helpful, but the manager the guy talked to at the Verizon store 3 weeks ago sucked.
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Aug 13, 2011 19:04
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Thats because NPS is a lovely metric to tie to an individual agent. When a customer gets an NPS call, they ask how they would rate the company as a whole on a scale of 0-10, not the individual agent. This then trickles back down the line and I hated nothing more as a supervisor than going through NPS verbatims. I would say that out of an entire month's worth of surveys for my team, about 2% would be legitimate complaints about an agent of mine and the rest were on the shoulders of another department that is located in another state that I nor anyone in the center would have any control over. Yet I would get ran through the ringer and have to go to a meeting every month with my bosses and then get put on a performance warning over poo poo that's out of my control. I loving hate NPS.
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Aug 14, 2011 00:36
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ratbert90 posted:And I once failed a survey with the reasoning being that I was amazing, wonderful, polite and helpful, but the manager the guy talked to at the Verizon store 3 weeks ago sucked. I always wonder about this. I feel really nervous when customers start off a call by saying that they've been transferred a bunch, or have had some negative experiences, because they might talk about that instead of my performance in the survey. I think the only time I failed a survey was with this old man who was just angry at EVERYTHING. The caller ID filled in an incorrect number for his house phone. When I read it back to him, he got really upset that it was the wrong number, and demanded to know why the phone had misread his house number. Me: Ah... Well, if you were transferred from elsewhere... Him: NO, I called you directly. Me: Well, sometimes the system misreads the numbers. Him: This is YOUR COMPANY'S phone system, you should understand HOW IT WORKS. He was pretty much an rear end for the rest of the call. He was my only loud, rude customer for that quarter, so I'm mostly confident that failed survey came from him.
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Aug 14, 2011 02:48
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Oi, call center work. I worked in US Bank's mortgage call center back when it was still Leader Mortgage, this was back in 2003. Worst job ever. See, Leader Mortgage, and therefore US Bank, at the time, was the largest holder of FHA mortgages, which meant that every single customer was a first time homebuyer, and therefore knew nothing about mortgages. They didn't understand that while their interest rate was fixed, their homeowners insurance and property taxes were not. Now, one of the conditions of a FHA mortgage is that the mortgage company has to hold funds in an escrow account for both homeowners' insurance and property taxes, and pay the bills for both out of said escrow account. Of course, at least one of the two would increase yearly, causing the mortgage holders payment to go up. Every month, after escrow analysis would be done, we're be deluged by calls with irate customers screaming, "Muh rate is fixed, why did muh payment go up? It's illegal for muh payment to change! Imma sue yous!" Imagine taking 100 calls like that a day for two weeks out of every month. Yeah, that was me 8 years ago. Now, I am a bank teller. Frankly, I'd rather go back to the phones. I'd make more money there, at least. Which brings me to my point. LovingLifePartner, if you're still reading this thread, email me, I have some questions about the company you work for. My email is iambobbydrake at gmail dot com. Sad, that I'd prefer call center work to what I do now, isn't it?
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Aug 14, 2011 07:06
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I would like to trade places with you and become a bank teller. Also, I am really tired of getting yelled at by people whose cards were declined. I don't work for the bank. You're wasting your energy.
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Aug 14, 2011 07:51
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On our survey, 1 is good and 5 is bad. Need to get some kind of convention going I guess. I figured out how to beat the call center blues when you're sick of taking calls: volunteer for projects!! We run metric contests and my buddy and I volunteered to run the next one, first thing we did was extend it into two months, then got a bunch of time off phones to design and implement it. We did a board game thing, prizes, etc. The boss even got her boss to cut loose some more funds for prizes, so that was cool. Either way, we basically have an extra hour a week to do contest stuff and its off phones, yee haw.
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Aug 14, 2011 16:15
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We had our new shifts for a year announced recently. Right now it takes me like 90 minutes to drive to work and I am there 11 hours. Now I am supposed to make the same trip, except it's 9-8 so I will be in rush hour every day, starting next month. There is no loving way.
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Aug 14, 2011 17:50
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:We had our new shifts for a year announced recently. Right now it takes me like 90 minutes to drive to work and I am there 11 hours. Now I am supposed to make the same trip, except it's 9-8 so I will be in rush hour every day, starting next month. There is no loving way. Maybe just speak nicely to your schedulers? It is a massive ballache for them to schedule to meet both the expected demand AND the millions of individual preferences they have to deal with (even worse if the business imposes restrictions like no more than a couple of late shifts a week on even the fully flexible members of staff). You will almost certainly have more luck with "Any chance I could start later/early because..." than you will with "There is no loving way".
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Aug 14, 2011 18:45
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Fil5000 posted:Maybe just speak nicely to your schedulers? It is a massive ballache for them to schedule to meet both the expected demand AND the millions of individual preferences they have to deal with (even worse if the business imposes restrictions like no more than a couple of late shifts a week on even the fully flexible members of staff). You will almost certainly have more luck with "Any chance I could start later/early because..." than you will with "There is no loving way". Well, I know that. He wasn't here this weekend. At any rate, I imagine it's more straightforward since it's all grouped by language and there are only 3 people who can take Japanese-language calls.
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Aug 14, 2011 19:06
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drat we get to make our own schedules where I work. Don't think I'd work there otherwise.
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Aug 14, 2011 19:08
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Harminoff posted:drat we get to make our own schedules where I work. Don't think I'd work there otherwise. Really? I thought the normal call center deal was they tell you when you can come, when you can leave, when you can take a 30-second piss break, etc.
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Aug 14, 2011 19:10
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Mine gave me options for what I wanted... flexible, or fixed, so I took a Sun-Thurs 4-midnight option. Since I'm west coast I'm sure this'll be alright. Still in the training portion of it though. Everyone's been very nice at the centre so far.  \/\/\/ Don't think they give you an option where I'm working; and yeah, I know that much from working retail, ugh. Chicken Doodle fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Aug 14, 2011 |
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Aug 14, 2011 19:12
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Working all consecutive days is a quick way to feel like you want to die.
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Aug 14, 2011 19:22
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Well, I know that. He wasn't here this weekend. That sounds way better than the place I forecast for. The head of the scheduling team once told me that the fixed working patterns we have are like the episode of the Simpsons where Mr Burns finds out he has every illness in the world. Each pattern on it's own looks terrible, but stick them all together and it JUST ABOUT works, but it's in a really precarious balance. Excellently, the people on flexible shifts at the moment actualy end up having to do fewer lates than the fixed people because of how the calls are arriving at the moment. Naturally this means that the people who have fixed patterns (which they refuse to make even the smallest of occasional changes to when the centre really, really needs it) are pissing and moaning that they're doing more than "their share" of the late shifts. I must remember this is how things work next time I fix my mortgage rate and the base rate drops a point.
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Aug 14, 2011 19:28
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Working all consecutive days is a quick way to feel like you want to die. Not when it's four 10 hour days. Three day weekends are awesome. You can actually take little mini vacations whenever you want.
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Aug 14, 2011 20:10
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Harminoff posted:Not when it's four 10 hour days. Three day weekends are awesome. You can actually take little mini vacations whenever you want.
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Aug 14, 2011 20:14
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I can attest to that. I did a stretch working 8am-7pm with Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays off. I was pretty wound up by Thursday afternoon and being able to take it easy before Saturday was very helpful.
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Aug 14, 2011 20:27
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You know what else is really rich, is the guys who stonewall and rant and waste tons of time, then complain that you're wasting their minutes. If they're so precious, how do you have so much time to bitch about them being wasted?
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Aug 14, 2011 20:44
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:You know what else is really rich, is the guys who stonewall and rant and waste tons of time, then complain that you're wasting their minutes. If they're so precious, how do you have so much time to bitch about them being wasted? "This is my fourth call, and I've been on the phone for three hours today" Then they continue into a 20 minute story without allowing you to interrupt. It's usually a one minute story but they stretch it out and repeated it a few times. Gee, I wonder?
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Aug 14, 2011 20:50
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Or the other rich one is when they have a technical problem and you start giving them the steps to follow and they just repeat the problem. LIke I'm too loving stupid to understand what they said. I can't take all the condescension you get on this job from people who are just are not very smart themselves.
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Aug 14, 2011 21:18
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:You know what else is really rich, is the guys who stonewall and rant and waste tons of time, then complain that you're wasting their minutes. If they're so precious, how do you have so much time to bitch about them being wasted? "YOU CHARGE ME FOR EVERYTHING! WHERE DO I SEND THE BILL FOR MY TIME THAT I'M WASTING ON THESE CALLS?" Well, Mr Dipshit, if you didn't repeatedly phone up like clockwork every single time you got charged for something, we probably wouldn't need as many people on the phones, which would probably mean that we wouldn't have to keep raising the charges as often as we do. Yeah, how 'bout that! This culture of complaining that the world appears to have all adopted results in more refunds/freebies being handed out, more customer service staff on the phone, which means increased operating costs and then we pass that on to all our lovely customers! Please keep phoning us up, Mr Fucknuckle, you're keeping me in a job!
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Aug 14, 2011 21:30
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