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Hey, a call center playing potential mind games...surprise surprise. Got a notice of a meeting with HR to discuss "recent call quality". I haven't been doing much differently but have been getting lovely feedback surveys lately. So I replied to my team lead and asked what it was in regards to because my recent quality audits have been anywhere between 79% and 100% so I wasn't really aware I was doing anything wrong. The response was "it is in regards to recent calls that were monitored." Great. So the meeting was set up for 10:30 am tomorrow. I asked if we could push it earlier (like today) because I tend to stress and get anxious and would rather take the coaching/info and use it to improve. Well, the meeting got moved. To 3:30 pm tomorrow. Which since my shift ends at 5, I'm worried I'm getting fired or something. Also instead of just getting it out of the way today I have to worry about it all night and all day tomorrow. So much for enjoying my gym date with my boyfriend tonight. 
CatStacking fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jun 17, 2013 |
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Jun 17, 2013 21:07
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Not to add to your stress but when we pull a move like this in our call center it's either a last chance written warning, or termination. Either way I would be planning on finding new employment soon. A move like this makes it pretty clear you're on the way out the door one way or another. Stop stressing about it though, there's nothing you can do about it. You have zero control over the situation so stressing out about it is pointless.
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Jun 17, 2013 21:26
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cuntvalet posted:Hey, a call center playing potential mind games...surprise surprise. Either termination or last chance. Just remember you live in Canada where you will get EI no matter what especially if you are terminated based on on client. If so demand to work for another client at which point it becomes a layoff if they can't provide it.
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Jun 18, 2013 01:04
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At my call center, you don't get a heads up on the termination meeting, you just get tapped to go see your DRG supe with your supe supe and they tell you its game over, then you go to HR for an exit interview. I think they give you a chance to resign as well, for some reason? Meh.
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Jun 18, 2013 02:44
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Loving Life Partner posted:At my call center, you don't get a heads up on the termination meeting, you just get tapped to go see your DRG supe with your supe supe and they tell you its game over, then you go to HR for an exit interview. Avoid any chance of unemployment if you resign. I don't usually have a time when I term people, it is honestly when schedules line up to have a sup/mgr and the rep.
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Jun 18, 2013 03:00
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My previous call center fired a 3.5 year employee for "negative reliability points." On take your daughter to work day. In front of her 11 year old daughter. Pretty much everyone thought that was almost unforgivable...it couldn't be done the next day or even the day before? At the current job i'm training for client chat. Once I'm trained, I get 2 hours or so a day off the phone, taking chats instead. I'm kind of looking forward to it, though I'm sure it'll have it's own pitfalls.
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Jun 18, 2013 06:20
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Thanks for the replies guys, got an hour and a half till the meeting, and then we'll see, I guess... I can't even tell if I'm hoping to be fired or not. I can think of just as many pros and cons for both.
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Jun 18, 2013 19:02
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Loving Life Partner posted:At my call center, you don't get a heads up on the termination meeting, you just get tapped to go see your DRG supe with your supe supe and they tell you its game over, then you go to HR for an exit interview. This totally seems like a super-scummy way to deny unemployment. Cuntvalet, my sympathies, but at least you're in Canada and don't have to worry about your unemployment being denied. If you do get fired, don't take it personally (hard as that is), take a week to chill and enjoy not working in that hellhole, then begin the job hunt.
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Jun 18, 2013 19:22
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Yeah, my friend resigned when they gave him the chance. I guess the upshot is that if someone does employment verification it "he resigned" sounds better than "he was terminated"? He got shitcanned for stat performance though. Too much "aux" time off phones, even though he was a really dynamite customer oriented rep, being consistently 3% above the required stat was enough for them to give him the boot, wah wuh. Miss that guy =/
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Jun 18, 2013 19:29
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WampaLord posted:This totally seems like a super-scummy way to deny unemployment. Cuntvalet, my sympathies, but at least you're in Canada and don't have to worry about your unemployment being denied. That's kinda my plan for worst case scenario. As for Employment Insurance, I was doing some emergency reading (just in case) and apparently, Service Canada can refuse providing Employment Insurance benefits if the applicant has been fired/terminated. I guess I'll have to worry about it if/when this comes about. Edit/Update: so meeting happened, it was about metric outliers and crap like that. Basically like a lot of you guys said, a final warning. I'm not being terminated, according to the HR manager, however, I will be subject to some sort of disciplinary action that will be deliberated about and made aware to me tomorrow or the next day. Which is still sucky but...eh. I'm probably going to lose my potential to earn bonuses for the next 6 months or so, which is fine. I asked what other disciplinary actions I may see and was told it could not be divulged in that meeting. So I guess my only question is, what other disciplinary actions could I see? What disciplinary actions have people experienced in call centers before? Should I expect this to effect my shifts/scheduling? 
CatStacking fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jun 18, 2013 |
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Jun 18, 2013 19:32
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Did they say what you were doing wrong? What is a "metric outlier"? edit: That sucks, btw 
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Jun 18, 2013 23:48
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areyoucontagious posted:Did they say what you were doing wrong? What is a "metric outlier"? Being highlighted as having metric outliers (is...that a real word? I'm spelling it the way it was on the papers...) means that you have your metric targets and then above and below the target are your "acceptable" top and bottom percentages. So...transfer rate for example, your target may be 10%, acceptable top percentage is 17% and acceptable low percentage is 5% (poor example, I know) so if you get highlighted for transfer rate, you're probably averagely over 17%, even by 1% and you can be highlighted for that. Wow, I suck at explaining this. The little personalized charts we get make more sense visually. But statistically speaking, it's basically any result that is outside of that "sweet spot". We can and have been highlighted by the client for such things as long AHT times, though we are no longer allowed to call the customer back to break up the call time, short calls (anything under 20 seconds) even if it's just a ghost call or we lose the customer, transfer rates, even if the customer refuses to call back to the same number and select billing department or whatever it was they were supposed to select, low customer satisfaction although they're making it harder for us to go above and beyond. I'm not really sure what to expect but I have another meeting tomorrow (this one is just the targets meeting we have with our TLs every other week) so hopefully I can just smooth everything out until I find a new job. I've been applying everywhere, only had one interview, but lets hope luck stays on my side.
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Jun 19, 2013 00:12
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I'm glad my job doesn't time calls or gently caress with transfer rates. If some lady wants to chat with me for 20 minutes about poo poo that's cool or if I get 40 people in row who ended up in the wrong place that's cool too.
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Jun 19, 2013 00:41
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Modern Day Hercules posted:I'm glad my job doesn't time calls or gently caress with transfer rates. If some lady wants to chat with me for 20 minutes about poo poo that's cool or if I get 40 people in row who ended up in the wrong place that's cool too. AHT and transfer rates are literally the bane of my existance. I'll bet if they were off the table as metrics, I'd have consistently happy customers. They actually encourage us to try and wrap up a call in 9 minutes. For tech support. 
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Jun 19, 2013 01:54
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For whoever was excited to work at home, I've just switched and they used it as an excuse to double book me. So I worked almost 14 hours today while my peers worked 6, they forced me to do tasks I hadn't learned yet and then chewed me out for being bad at it, and THEN later in the day when I went back my regularly scheduled programming, it turns out I was scheduled to be trained on what I hadn't known how to do earlier. How does that make sense? Why not train me FIRST and THEN make me do it, instead of the other way around? 
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Jun 19, 2013 02:17
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RedFish posted:For whoever was excited to work at home, I've just switched and they used it as an excuse to double book me. I will say that this won't happen where I work. I know a lot of guys that W@H, one of the fuckers plays COD while working when it's slow. Overtime is optional, and I'll probably do more of it when working at home. I am glad that my department heads are pretty loving awesome (We're the sewage of our ISP basically. All the poo poo calls that someone doesn't want to/can't fix comes to us, and when we're not doing overflow for tier 1, we're doing overflow for another region). No stupid bullshit other than regular corporate poo poo. It's almost impossible to get fired for metrics unless you gently caress them up month after month, and it still takes months to get fired for them. Most of our supervisors except a few came from the floor (The others came from other places and they kind of suck right now. They're getting better!), so they don't give as much of a poo poo about metrics as they should. As long as you aren't red flagging and you can make at least some of your metrics you're golden. I seriously can't bitch about my little department in of itself. Now corporate bullshit and the customers is a whole other story.
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Jun 19, 2013 03:48
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Gothmog1065 posted:I will say that this won't happen where I work. I know a lot of guys that W@H, one of the fuckers plays COD while working when it's slow. I'm salaried, so that means unlimited unpaid overtime.
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Jun 19, 2013 04:26
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cuntvalet posted:That's kinda my plan for worst case scenario. Service Canada will almost never (and I really mean never) refuse EI for being fired/terminated from a call centre. This is one of the rare times you go and apply for it in person as they will process it so you get it. A little fun fact is most people that work for Service Canada have worked in call centre's and hate them all.
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Jun 19, 2013 18:14
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RedFish posted:I'm salaried, so that means unlimited unpaid overtime. Being salaried at a call center sounds like the innermost circle of Hell.
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Jun 20, 2013 03:16
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Being salaried at a call center sounds like the innermost circle of Hell. Yeah, it sucked, at least for me. Unpaid overtime was really just the tip of the iceberg, though. When I got moved up to supervisor at TP, they made me salaried at 24.4k a year, which was roughly the same as I was making in IHD, I just wanted off the phones entirely. If I called off a day, they took 8 hours out of my vacation allotment and paid me with that. If I had no vacation days, I just didn't get paid for that day. I did get an extra week and a half of vacation, so that evened out but it still wasn't worth the hassle. I got promoted a couple of weeks before my one-year mark and would have been eligible for my annual raise but, since I had moved to salary, my one-year was moved to the day I got promoted according to the paperwork that was supposed to be filed with payroll. My ACCM didn't file the paperwork until December, I was promoted in August, moving my one-year to December. I complained to anyone who listened but they told me I should have been on top of it to know that it wasn't filed. So, yeah, I sat there without my annual raise, I didn't get any of the supervisor benefits, and I was being worked to the bone. Thankfully I was still making enough to pay the bills or else there would have been hell to pay. Come to think of it, I don't think I received any annual raises in the three years that I worked there. So glad to be out of that poo poo-hole now.
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Jun 20, 2013 07:44
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RedFish posted:I'm salaried, so that means unlimited unpaid overtime. Holy poo poo. gently caress that. Well, it looks like my 2 year mark will be soon. Does that make me a lifer yet?
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Jun 20, 2013 16:15
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Gothmog1065 posted:Holy poo poo. gently caress that. I'm next to a guy who's been here 20+ years, so no, not really. And jesus, unpaid overtime? My call center's looking better and better. 40 hours a week, overtime only if it's offered and you want to take it, not forced. I might start taking some just because I'm short on funds but I wouldn't have to. My main piss-off isn't customers but fellow employees loving things up - but now I get time off the phones to call them out on it.
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Jun 20, 2013 18:41
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I sure hope not. I'm 5 years in at two different places, and I sure as hell ain't doing this for the rest of my life if I can help it.
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Jun 20, 2013 18:42
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you ate my cat posted:I sure hope not. I'm 5 years in at two different places, and I sure as hell ain't doing this for the rest of my life if I can help it. Do you have an exit strategy? I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I've seen way to many people like you say that, but then do nothing about it. I did call center work for 3 years, but I got the gently caress out, but many of the folks I worked with are still bouncing between call centers and haven't moved forward. The main difference is having a plan and sticking to it. Call centers and the service industry in general are a loving vortex of misery and it's so hard to get out of the lifestyle associated with service industry jobs.
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Jun 20, 2013 18:51
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I'm working on it. Applying for grad school, hitting USAjobs, etc. It's just hard when it's what you have experience in and everyone goes, OH! You can work the phones! It also irritates me how many stealth sales and call center positions there are. "Work a data center with end users" indeed... Also, I'm going to scream if I apply for one job and get offered a friggin' call center/help desk job. No! I apply for the job that has me in the NOC like Gollum, not Sally McSmiles at front desk.
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Jun 20, 2013 19:18
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Update: Beyond being ineligible for bonuses for 6 months and a scary looking letter, I didn't get any further disciplinary actions. Preference schedule is still the same, hours are still the same, I think I'm in the clear for the time being. Just gotta work on my exit strategy. 
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Jun 20, 2013 19:34
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Yah don't go for the lazy exit strategy either, which is to walk out the door... and come back to work in the morning.
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Jun 20, 2013 20:11
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I walked out three of the four call-centre jobs I had with sweet gently caress-all lined up. I didn't give a poo poo though, because I understood that while working, I would have neither the time nor motivation to look for another job, whereas being unemployed I had all the time in the world, and I tend to work better with hot coals being held under my feet anyway. I then went through a rehabilitation period of temp data entry and admin jobs that didn't involve phones. Today? Nice government office job, and I never have to touch a phone. I broke the cycle. So yeah, loving walking out as an exit strategy worked just fine for me.
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Jun 20, 2013 21:08
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Aerofallosov posted:I'm working on it. Applying for grad school, hitting USAjobs, etc. It's just hard when it's what you have experience in and everyone goes, OH! You can work the phones! Very much this. I had someone call the other day to offer me a tech support position (which I've done briefly before and enjoyed). It turned out to just be telemarketing for a telecom, then the recruiter flat out asked how little they could pay me. Screw that.
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Jun 21, 2013 00:25
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bulbous nub posted:Yeah, it sucked, at least for me. Unpaid overtime was really just the tip of the iceberg, though. When I got moved up to supervisor at TP, they made me salaried at 24.4k a year, which was roughly the same as I was making in IHD, I just wanted off the phones entirely. If I called off a day, they took 8 hours out of my vacation allotment and paid me with that. If I had no vacation days, I just didn't get paid for that day. I did get an extra week and a half of vacation, so that evened out but it still wasn't worth the hassle. This arrangement has to be illegal, man. If you're salaried they have to give you your full salary if you show up even one day. Also there are standards on the types of work that can be salaried and the minimum level of pay
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Jun 22, 2013 04:24
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If you work at a call center you almost certainly have at least one weekday off which means you can interview without taking time off. That's about the one good thing about a call center job so take advantage of it.
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Jun 22, 2013 04:29
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:This arrangement has to be illegal, man. If you're salaried they have to give you your full salary if you show up even one day. Also there are standards on the types of work that can be salaried and the minimum level of pay Call centers having illegal employment practices is so common as to be almost unremarkable, unfortunately.
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Jun 22, 2013 10:33
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skipdogg posted:Do you have an exit strategy? Mostly what I have is depression. Edit: All right that sounded bleaker than I meant. I want to be out after my 3 year mark here next May. The problem I've had, and expect to keep having, is that a music degree and 5 years in call centers seems to leave you basically unemployable for anything more interesting than working in a call center. And no matter how many chances of advancement they promise you, basically no one gets promoted out of a call center. you ate my cat fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jun 22, 2013 12:50
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Pope Guilty posted:Call centers having illegal employment practices is so common as to be almost unremarkable, unfortunately. This is truth. :/ They skirt around it by TECHNICALLY offering breaks, technically not having people work overtime, but if you don't work overtime, if you do take breaks (Or the system is rigged so you never really get one ANYWAY) and so on. People seem so shocked by my old call center's practices. No, that's most call centers.
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Jun 22, 2013 17:54
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Man the more I hear you guys talking about it, the less lovely my old call center seems. We were forced to take breaks, 2 15m paid and 1 30m unpaid lunch. We got in serious crap if we didn't take them, or take them on time, as it counted towards adherence. It was still a soul-sucking hellhole, but we got our breaks.
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Jun 23, 2013 00:48
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Aerofallosov posted:This is truth. :/ They skirt around it by TECHNICALLY offering breaks, technically not having people work overtime, but if you don't work overtime, if you do take breaks (Or the system is rigged so you never really get one ANYWAY) and so on. People seem so shocked by my old call center's practices. No, that's most call centers. This is so true. In some ways, 1st level managers have it even worse than the agents, because they don't have schedules with breaks and lunches built in, so there is nothing stopping the company from conveniently loading them up with too much work to take any sort of breaks at all. To give you an idea, I worked 11.5 hours yesterday and took one fifteen minute break, begrudgingly given, which allowed me to eat a sandwich. When I got back to my desk, I had a ton of emails and chats demanding a whole bunch of stuff immediately, despite the fact that I openly announced I would be gone for a whoooole 15 minutes. What makes me seriously pissed is when they audit our time and if we haven't detailed *exactly* what we did for that time, we get in poo poo. WHY DID IT TAKE YOU 12 HOURS AND NOT 8 TO DO THIS?! Because you gave me 15 hours worth of work and and I was already multitasking like eight-armed deity to get it done in "just" 11.5?? It takes me 20 minutes just to enter the documentation of what I did all day, why not just look at the mountain of work I got done and just measure that? Oh right, because you think it can be done in 8 hours .... 
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Jun 23, 2013 01:43
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Pope Guilty posted:Call centers having illegal employment practices is so common as to be almost unremarkable, unfortunately. At the place I worked at they locked the emergency exits.  you ate my cat posted:Mostly what I have is depression. My advice is shoot for small employers and maybe somewhere where they want you to work phones but they don't have enough calls for that to be the only thing you do all day
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Jun 23, 2013 03:17
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They shoot themselves in the foot sometimes at these workplaces, all their rules and regulations just end up making it harder to work. Where I work is not exactly a call center but we do spend a few hours a day receiving incoming calls from electricians (and in Australia tradies are not the most polite spoken demographic in the world) and sometimes customers. However over the other side of the office is a "General Inquiries" team who are defiantly a call center. Recently they told us that we would be adopting the General Inquiries method of taking calls and we would be marked the same way as they are, some of the new things we must now adhere by; - You must say the callers name 3 times during your conversation - you must finish the call, not with goodbye but with "Is there anything else I can help you with today ____" - there must be no sounds audible on the replay tape that indicate typing (you must be listening to the caller and process afterwards) talking (other people around you)or you fidgeting in your chair. Now I know for a fact that most electricians that we talk to do not give a rats rear end about this sort of thing as the usual answer we get after we say hello is something like "G'day mate, I'm stuck with this loving paperwork you lot throw at us, can ya gimmi some help?" if I spent the whole conversation following the guidelines they would just get aggravated as they would feel like we were just some rules ridden corporation, and they were banging there head against a wall.. Isn't it better to build rapport with a caller? as long as you are not being rude/coarse it doesn't matter what you call them as long as they put down the phone with the information they needed and a sense that you were there trying to help them. One of my companies mission statements is "Act like it's your own business" which is my excuse when I get in trouble for something like this, If I have to act like its my own business then I'm not going to adhere to a set of rules that are so obviously detrimental to the service we are supposed to provide. I could go on forever and ever with examples of this sort of thing (I'm sure everyone else could as well)
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Jun 23, 2013 06:29
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Thank god someone in our company pulled their head out of their rear end when it came to scripting and stupid poo poo rules like that. We used to have to do a minute long script to open and close the call, then we would have our trouble call scripts. Somewhere someone figured out the customer hated that and dropped most all scripting and rules. We still have our handle time, trouble call rates, and other metrics to adhere to, plus some minor scripting during the call (If they get certain products or get a trouble call). Other than that our only requirement is to "Have a conversation with the customer." This is all a means to drive sales, but it makes things easier on the customer.
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Jun 23, 2013 14:18
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Ulysiss posted:They shoot themselves in the foot sometimes at these workplaces, all their rules and regulations just end up making it harder to work. Where I work is not exactly a call center but we do spend a few hours a day receiving incoming calls from electricians (and in Australia tradies are not the most polite spoken demographic in the world) and sometimes customers. However over the other side of the office is a "General Inquiries" team who are defiantly a call center. That typing rule is crazy as poo poo. I have never in my life been on the phone with a company, heard typing, and thought "This motherfucker isn't paying attention to me". If they're typing I assume they're working on whatever the hell I'm talking about and getting it done.
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Jun 23, 2013 18:30
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