Lord Windy posted:Speaking of bad customers. US Marines have to be the most polite people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. I too love servicemen, I regularly get calls from people trying to get their poo poo situated when they're overseas, and they're so insanely polite and patient. Southern callers tend not to understand the finer trappings of a contract and locking in a quoted rate (please sign the 3 forms we requested, and provide proof of prior insurance and garaging zip, k thx), but in general, they're not too bad to deal with unless it's something to that extent. Younger insureds are great because they're not yet tainted by their ideas of what INSURANCE OUGHT TO BE, so it's easy to get a foothold in their brain and explain how the world actually works rather than what their dumb parents say. Invariably the worst callers are WASP-y northeastern suburbanites who are the most entitled, and love to use the L and A words (lawyer and attorney). I had a woman threaten to get her attorney after us because her NAME was listed on someone ELSE'S POLICY. Yes he lives in your household, you have to be listed, EOD! Argh.
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Aug 31, 2011 03:00
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legsarerequired posted:What's everyone's favorite snacks? I've been bringing fruit, carrots and those low-calorie grain bars to work, but I'm hoping to find something that I could eat more quickly (or more quietly) during calls. I don't understand how you can do this. Is there a lot of time spent not talking during the call? How do you manage to eat and talk on the phone at the same time? modeski posted:I encountered one person who professed an inability to read, so quite why he needed an internet connection is beyond me. Video games?
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Aug 31, 2011 04:32
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Lord Windy posted:Speaking of bad customers. US Marines have to be the most polite people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. You don't have to deal with servicemen about their student loans. Servicemen can be great, mostly when I'm able to tell them about all of the sweet incentives they get, but when they can't get something in time or can't get a deferment because they just don't qualify, it can be astonishing just how entitled they can be about it. Servicemen don't have to pay interest on their student loans, they can get most if not all of their loans paid for and have some of the best deferments out there, but if they can't get one of those because of one reason or another, the world is ending. You'd think they'd understand about bureaucracy, especially federal government bureaucracy, but no. Also, gently caress attorneys. I'm not allowed to anything about loan information to someone who can't verify the borrower's information and/or isn't authorized to know, and if I break that privacy I'm violating federal law. Someone's idiot lawyer decided to bitch about how he was going to sue our company blind and I would be one of the people sued. I told him I didn't care, because I wasn't going to break federal law by releasing privacy and was there anything else I can help him with today? That went on for 30 minutes and I actually enjoyed it.
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Aug 31, 2011 04:42
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Tiggum posted:I don't understand how you can do this. Is there a lot of time spent not talking during the call? How do you manage to eat and talk on the phone at the same time? There is a lot of people that do this where I work, even eat full meals. But we are in troubleshooting and cable box's can take 5+ minutes to reboot, and some agents actually stay on the phone with them during the process.
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Aug 31, 2011 05:35
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Everyone who works weekends and evening shifts got a scary email about how stuff isn't getting done. I think the main issue that my workplace isn't addressing is how the weekday morning shift contributes to the problem. The people on weekday mornings have this entitlement complex about how they 'do more work' than the evening and weekend shifts (which I don't think is true, or if it is it's because they have twice the staff we on evenings have), so they assign stuff they don't want to do onto us. Even when it's stuff that needs to be done in the morning or early afternoon. It's all very well and good to say 'you guys should work harder' but the issue isn't everyone slacking off, it's only a few people, and how everyone thinks we "don't do work" so when new connection calls and cancellation calls don't get done we get blamed for it. So basically we're all getting punished for the actions of a few, and nobody should feel compelled to cover up their coworkers failings each weekend. Of course, if we confronted the weekday morning supervisors and the team leader about this, they're going to deny there's a problem. froglet fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Aug 31, 2011 |
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Aug 31, 2011 05:41
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legsarerequired posted:What's everyone's favorite snacks? I've been bringing fruit, carrots and those low-calorie grain bars to work, but I'm hoping to find something that I could eat more quickly (or more quietly) during calls. Mini babybel cheese. Low calorie, fun to eat, quick and quiet. Extra points for making sculptures from the wax.
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Aug 31, 2011 05:49
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^^If I was in that position in management I'd make everyone do rotating shifts, or start making it so that work assigned gets tighter tracking.
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Aug 31, 2011 05:58
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Blue_monday posted:^^If I was in that position in management I'd make everyone do rotating shifts, or start making it so that work assigned gets tighter tracking. Ha ha ha rotating shifts ha ha ha ha ha. Maybe it's just our HR department that are awkward, but at my place if someone asks for what is termed "flexible working" (read: a fixed schedule) then a) HR tell us to approve it because we should be a big enough business to support it and b) once they've been in it for three months we have gently caress all chance of digging them out of it (HR term it as 'established custom and practice' and won't let us touch it with a ten foot pole). We're in the absurd situation now that we're bringing genuinely flexible staff back from late shifts to early ones because of a change in demand, and now the people on fixed patterns are complaining that flexible people do less lates than them. Christ, you ostensibly wanted that pattern to fit in better with your life, how is it important what someone else is doing? I just know one of them is going to go to HR and we'll end up putting them all on fewer lates permanently, leaving us shafted when the evening call volumes go back up again. Even the "flexible" staff only have to do a maximum of 8 late shifts a month and two weekend days in that same timeframe. Oh, and we can't put more than two lates in a week. Or follow a late with an early. Or have them work both a Saturday and Sunday in the same week. Tl;dr: forecasting/planning support guy whines about HR and entitled staff.
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Aug 31, 2011 07:28
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Effexxor posted:I actually find Rhode Island, of all places, to be the worst. It never fails that people from RI are the pushy, bratty ones who talk down to me. As someone who has all of their paternal relatives living in rhode island, I second this. I refuse to even drive in that state because of how horrible/entitled they all are.
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Aug 31, 2011 08:23
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Tiggum posted:I don't understand how you can do this. Is there a lot of time spent not talking during the call? How do you manage to eat and talk on the phone at the same time? I take inbound calls in customer service. I can't do it on every call, but if I want an energy boost I can usually get in a snack during these following scenarios: - The customer has to put down their phone for a minute (someone at the door, call on the other line, etc) - I'm transferring someone and on hold - Someone is just... rambling. Just going on and on and on and on, and nothing I've tried to say or explain will get them off their derail.
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Aug 31, 2011 18:50
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Do people still use certain "tricks" for an easier life in call centres? I took inbound calls for a bank (ugh) about six years ago, and what some of us would do on particularly exhausting days was rest in hold queues. For example, if we had a customer who needed to trace a payment, we would call the relevant department even though we knew they had a 20 min + queue like we did and that best practice would be to ask them to call back non-peak or arrange a callback. I learned to love the hold queues of other departments as it was the only peace I got. The reason we could do this was because there was no specific "hold" metric at the time, or at least it wasn't conspicuously monitored. They were far more interested in what went on between calls (wrap-up, aux-away-for-a-poo poo etc).
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Aug 31, 2011 21:31
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My friend and I have assembled an arsenal of tricks, because they don't use handle time or calls taken as a metric, it doesn't matter if I take 120 calls in a day, they don't care unless my time off phones and survey transfer rate are good, even if my biggest metric, first call resolution, regularly exceeds target. My supervisor has told me time and again to stop taking so many calls, so yeah, I figured out how to not do it. The godsends are "ghost calls" and "disconnects" that you can use to queue a button, take off your headset and get a minute or two or five or ten  to breathe. After that are what we dubbed "cool transfers" where you send to another department and mute/conference instead of transfer. These two drive up your handle time, but my handle time is retardedly low so if that's what I have to do to not take so many calls so be it. Also rebooting the PC takes a few minutes, so whoops, my computer is lagged up/crashing time to reboot and take a breather. The one we kinda got busted for was calling out while in the active queue, it would block incoming calls and looked like it kept you as in the queue, which we didn't realize was metered until we saw a spike in a particular stat. So yeah, don't do that anymore. But yeah, gotta take it where you can, especially when there is literally no break in the call flow right now. If you hit the button to queue up you are getting a call instantly, there is no mystery about it.
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Aug 31, 2011 21:44
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Yeah, it kinda all depends on what your manager's metrics are as to what exploits are there. Also depends on whether you've got anyone further up the chain that's ever been on the phones themselves. I know our telephony manager guy started life on the phones at another company, so he's used most of the tricks himself and knows what to look for. I suspect anyone coming up with something new would probably get a pass the first time because he'd be impressed it was something he hadn't seen before. Sadly most people are really obvious when they're just loving around. My favourite example was the two guys that were sat in the "nature break" code for 20 minutes that I found down in the break room playing pool. C'mon guys, you're not even trying.
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Aug 31, 2011 22:07
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Some irish guy used to always "forget" to take himself off aftercall work and it took him an unbelievably long time to get pulled up on it (this place wasn't so big on metrics) so I don't blame people for trying similar. Back in the bank I worked, we also used outbound calls for a breather but it was never abused and therefore never flagged up. Basically, there was a number we would call that would ring endlessley. We didn't know where it was too (it was lore, passed down from agent to agent), only that it was internal and that we could get away with taking a 10 minute break in it. I've also seen people rumbled in a few places. In the bank I mentioned before, there was this (particularly stupid) guy who would simply disconnect his headset by opening the jack plug a crack, so callers would muscle their way through the IVR only to be greeted by silence. Had he done this in moderation, he'd have probably gotten away with it, but he got greedy. The more customers that experience this "dead line", the more bitching there is at the next advisor, and it only takes one of these advisors to flag it to a manager. When they pulled the calls and pin-pointed them to this particular guy, they listened in on him and caught him red-handed.
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Aug 31, 2011 22:19
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Really, call-centre work is a lot like whack-a-mole. 1) Staff use $method0 to avoid work. 2) Management get pissed off and crack down on it, making a particular stat the focus for that month. 3) Staff follow the new rule to the letter, but realise that with the focus on one stat, the others are unguarded, and start using $method1 to avoid work. 4) Repeat cycle for a few months, at which point $method0 is no longer being monitored. You can see where this is going.
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Aug 31, 2011 22:20
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ZeroDays posted:Some irish guy used to always "forget" to take himself off aftercall work and it took him an unbelievably long time to get pulled up on it (this place wasn't so big on metrics) so I don't blame people for trying similar. We had a person complain they got cut off mid call. They kicked up a big stink about it and so the call got listened to; sure enough, they called in at 11:45, and at exactly 12:00 the call went dead. Odd. So we checked other calls from the same day, thinking maybe a technical error - nope, no one else got cut off at 12:00 and no reports of it happening at other times. So we switched cynicism mode on and listened to other calls from the same agent. Sure enough, at exactly the end of their shift every day, calls got terminated. Into an office, fact finding chat, disciplinary, etc etc etc. Had they done it once or twice then they probably could have gotten away with it scot free, but yeah, got greedy.
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Aug 31, 2011 22:27
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Fil5000 posted:So we switched cynicism mode on and listened to other calls from the same agent. Sure enough, at exactly the end of their shift every day, calls got terminated. Into an office, fact finding chat, disciplinary, etc etc etc. Had they done it once or twice then they probably could have gotten away with it scot free, but yeah, got greedy. Realising they had a fundamental lack of understanding about how the labour market works, I started ending calls right on the end of my shift (though I did tell the caller that's what I was doing). Got pulled up for it, and left before they could discipline me for it. Now working a job with flexitime, so if I get stuck on a call for ages I can use the extra time to take time off further down the line.
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Aug 31, 2011 22:34
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Semprini posted:I did this back when I worked for BT. I asked what happened if we got stuck on a call at the end of our shift. "Finish the call", said the bosses. I asked how we reported the extra time worked, and if it was paid at overtime rates. They said we wouldn't be paid for it. Yeah, I get not wanting to work past the end of your shift; there ways they could have avoided it being an issue (like tell the customer you have to hand them off, or that a colleague will call them back to finish everything off) but instead she was just cutting them off mid sentence. A bit poo poo all round really.
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Aug 31, 2011 22:43
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One of the guys I worked with at the time would constantly hang up on folks for spurious reasons, but covered himself by beginning the next call with a request for the caller's number "as my phone's been playing up and I need to be able to call you back if it disconnects" (chances of callback actually being made = zero) He also did the "Hello? Hello? Anyone there? *turns to me* I think this guy's gone, there's no response" routine, all the while the caller's bellowing "I can hear you fine, I'm still here" from the other end. I worked with some utter arseholes, but it'd certainly make the day go quicker seeing what poo poo they'd pull next.
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Aug 31, 2011 22:53
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That conference/mute trick is genius, can't believe I never thought of it when I was stuck in phone hell.
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Sep 2, 2011 14:25
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I may be out of call centre work for good. I ended up getting dismissed from my job due to my absence levels {which I'm not going into right now}. While I am appealing the decision, I might just have a much better job lined up doing customer service for a small company just outside town. OK so it's back shift through the week, but I'm sure it's better than getting my soul destroyed having to deal with customers going through hell because of government cuts.
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Sep 2, 2011 16:48
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Sorry to hear about your dismissal. I was fired from a busy call center once and I remember feeling somewhat liberated when they slid the "YER FIRED" letter across the table to me. I think it's the only kind of job that I would whistle out of even after getting canned. I think that speaks volumes.
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Sep 2, 2011 17:36
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gomababe posted:I may be out of call centre work for good. I ended up getting dismissed from my job due to my absence levels {which I'm not going into right now}. While I am appealing the decision, I might just have a much better job lined up doing customer service for a small company just outside town. OK so it's back shift through the week, but I'm sure it's better than getting my soul destroyed having to deal with customers going through hell because of government cuts. That does indeed suck. Good luck with the appeal though, because regardless of whether or not you get another job, if you're successful they should give you backpay for the period between when you were dismissed and when your appeal succeeds. All depends on whether or not they've jumped through the right HR hoops or not. I saw an appeal go through once and the guy was utterly deflated because he was going to take us to court if it didn't and thought he'd have a huge payday coming. As it was he just got four months backpay and then promptly handed in his notice.
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Sep 2, 2011 17:51
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Thanks for the support, it's very much appreciated. The Union were up in arms about it and the Head person is taking charge of it from here on in. I am already due 5 weeks' pay instead of notice and 100% compensation, but I think they're waiting on the appeal decision before paying it. It's a pain since I have two large bills I wanted to pay off asap before starting the jobsearch, but that's life I guess.
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Sep 2, 2011 18:59
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:That conference/mute trick is genius, can't believe I never thought of it when I was stuck in phone hell. This poo poo will absolutely get you fired for call avoidance and is easy as gently caress to track, fyi.
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Sep 3, 2011 00:50
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Bovril Delight posted:This poo poo will absolutely get you fired for call avoidance and is easy as gently caress to track, fyi. Our software even lights you up in bright flashy colors when you're in a status that's frequently abused. i am literally the enemy sorry guys
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Sep 3, 2011 01:16
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Null Set posted:Our software even lights you up in bright flashy colors when you're in a status that's frequently abused. In the case of Loving Life Partner, his company uses Avaya CMS and doing these things is so ridiculously easy to track it's unreal. Also posting where you work and then posting how you abuse call modes is a spectacularly bad idea
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Sep 3, 2011 01:24
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To my surprise clients never seemed to have an issue with me going "okay, mind if I go grab a coffee while we wait for your device to restart?" Only takes me about 90 seconds and they always say yes.
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Sep 3, 2011 01:45
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Well just for shits and giggles,I decided not to abuse any call dodging techniques and today I took 124 calls and had perfect stats. I wanted to blow my brains out, but I had the stats they wanted. I really dunno what to do about my short call handle time and volume of calls. When I do like I did today, I take twice as many calls as the average rep. And I do it as effectively as anyone else, because I don't get feedback for mishandling situations, and my callback rate is rock bottom. Dunno what to do. Ask for twice as much money? Maybe 50% more since I'm that much more effective and then some? gently caress.
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Sep 3, 2011 02:28
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Bovril Delight posted:This poo poo will absolutely get you fired for call avoidance and is easy as gently caress to track, fyi. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I have done this before when I'm really just burned out, but I try to only do it sparingly.
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Sep 3, 2011 03:01
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Bovril Delight posted:This poo poo will absolutely get you fired for call avoidance and is easy as gently caress to track, fyi. I'm miles away from call centre work these days (Thank god). I do admire the creativity that goes into these things though.
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Sep 3, 2011 11:06
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Loving Life Partner posted:Well just for shits and giggles,I decided not to abuse any call dodging techniques and today I took 124 calls and had perfect stats. I wanted to blow my brains out, but I had the stats they wanted. Why is everyone so much slower? Usually statistical outliers means there's a problem, either with you, or everyone else.
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Sep 4, 2011 02:08
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ZeroDays posted:Why is everyone so much slower? Usually statistical outliers means there's a problem, either with you, or everyone else. I doubt anyone at my center wants to get fired, but there's just no incentive to excel. Promotions seem to be very political and rare. Raises can be hard to come by, and the culture of the management doesn't really allow for much discussion about that kind of thing. The work just burns you out. My call center does give out cash incentives every three months to people who stay on track, though.
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Sep 4, 2011 02:20
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It's kinda like a Chinese fingertrap. There's no maximum calls to take, there's no minimum of time spent on an average call, but there are the inverse, and you can get talked to about those, but nobody is going to go out of there way to help me take less calls or make my calls longer. All they want me to do is get my measured stats in line, the main 3 are first call resolution (I'm golden), post call survey (I suck poo poo on this because it's a worthless tool with no use), and time off phones, which sucks because if I don't give myself a brain break and use extra time off phones, I get really burned out by the end of the day. I'm swimming against a mountain of corporate bullshit. It's kinda igniting my masochistic side, I need this job, but would they really let me go because of their precious stats? The facts: My attendance is perfect My customer rapport is great I take twice as many calls as their average rep and service them as well if not better I take too much times "off phones" I don't offer their survey So, if I continue as I'm going, I'll get final written warning on either time off phones or survey and presumably be terminated for that. What a loving joke.
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Sep 4, 2011 02:38
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Loving Life Partner posted:I don't offer their survey So have you considered maybe just offering the survey like you're supposed to? It doesn't matter whether you think it's worthwhile or not, because that's not your call. The people who are paying you want you to do it.
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Sep 4, 2011 05:25
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We used to have one of those surveys. Every month I'd forget about it and and up putting my entire quota through in the last week. I agree they stink, but if they've only got your off phone to beat you with then I'm pretty sure life will get easier.
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Sep 4, 2011 07:41
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See this is what I mean. It's not about offering the dumb worthless survey, it's about not bothering someone that is twice as effective as your other reps for the same money. All I want is some freaking slack and not feeling like I have the sword of Damocles over me because I'm taking 3 minutes to reset my brain. I'm working the survey back into my call flow but the "off phones" time thing will be a bigger issue and I'm sure it'll either lead me to burning out if I correct it or getting let go, and that just bugs the poo poo out of me because you can't reason out of it.
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Sep 4, 2011 18:47
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I would be really, really surprised if you were hitting all those other metrics and getting satisfied customers if they'd pursue any sort of disciplinary process. Any decent team leader will go to bat for you if everything apart from off phone time is nice and green.
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Sep 4, 2011 18:52
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Fil5000 posted:I would be really, really surprised if you were hitting all those other metrics and getting satisfied customers if they'd pursue any sort of disciplinary process. Any decent team leader will go to bat for you if everything apart from off phone time is nice and green. That's not how it works at all in my experience. Cases generally aren't judged on their own merit; there are metrics, and they must be met. That means everyone. It's the only way management judge their employees, who are statistics, and nothing else. Attendance and punctuality? Check. Metrics? Check. Beyond that? No-one gives a poo poo. If you are an otherwise good employee, you'll still get put on action plans for not meeting the only things call centres care about. If your supervisor is cool and human enough, they'll sympathise with you that yeah, you do a good job, and yeah, it can be frustrating jumping through all these hoops, but you still have to play the game. Afterall, it's them that get poo poo on if you don't. I should note that not all call centres are like that, but the one's I've experienced are. It's why I got the gently caress out.
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Sep 4, 2011 20:01
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ZeroDays posted:I should note that not all call centres are like that, but the one's I've experienced are. It's why I got the gently caress out. I had one guy freaking out because the report he was running didn't match up (he wouldn't say with what). I eventually dragged out of him that he was running the report BY HAND because he didn't trust the computer, and was convinced the system was giving him the wrong information because it didn't match up with his report. Regardless of the fact that he got three different answers each time he did it by hand, he refused to believe that he could be doing it wrong. Null Set fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Oct 28, 2012 |
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Sep 5, 2011 15:11
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