|
Ulysiss posted:
These ones at least are good practice. Even tradies appreciate the common courtesy of the use of their name. It will help, not hinder, building rapport with your callers. The typing one sounds batshit though.
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2013 03:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 23:21 |
|
|
I get really irritated when people I don't know, like employees at call centres and starbucks, call me by my first name. gently caress you, I don't know you and I don't want to, I just want whateverthefuck problem I'm calling about to be resolved.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2013 03:42
|
|
|
Nippashish posted:I get really irritated when people I don't know, like employees at call centres and starbucks, call me by my first name. gently caress you, I don't know you and I don't want to, I just want whateverthefuck problem I'm calling about to be resolved. It is this reason I never call people by their first names even though I'm required to until I get them to say their last name. I've gotten some heat over it but I meet all my other metrics so I guess my coach just stopped giving a poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2013 03:50
|
|
|
It should be up to the employee to gauge the tone of conversation and use first names or more formal titles. Starbucks has started to push for getting your first name when you order and I don't really like it. When I was in a call centre they were thinking about forcing first names, but decided not to. (Or maybe they did I don't even remember. If they did it didn't last.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2013 03:53
|
|
|
TokenTrevor posted:It is this reason I never call people by their first names even though I'm required to until I get them to say their last name. I've gotten some heat over it but I meet all my other metrics so I guess my coach just stopped giving a poo poo. Good custom title.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2013 04:01
|
|
|
Ulysiss posted:- You must say the callers name 3 times during your conversation --And can I have your full name please? --Thanks for that, Mr Smith. Could you confirm your address please, Mr Smith? --Excellent. And your date of birth, Mr Smith? Name 3 times in 20 seconds, rest of the call is your own to do with as you please.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2013 09:02
|
|
|
newtestleper posted:These ones at least are good practice. Even tradies appreciate the common courtesy of the use of their name. It will help, not hinder, building rapport with your callers. I completely agree, and even if the rule wasn't in place I would use the callers first name, but putting on a quota is just silly. If you don't think someone has the common courtesy to know how to be polite on the phone, don't employ them. As for the typing one, I rarely see this enforced, but it does exist. They quite often used it when someone is already getting smoked for something and it's just an extra nugget they can throw in. The idea is that you must be giving your full attention to the customer. How we are expected to remember all the details (our work involves a lot of reference numbers) is beyond me. Most of the management staff that I interact with are mid-low level (me being a grunt) and they more or less let it go. You know how it is, some executives have a board meeting about how they can improve the customer service level and they come up with a whole bunch of applications that are never going to work in a real life situation, simply because its been years since they have actually spoken to a customer that wasn't earning as much as they are.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2013 12:32
|
|
|
newtestleper posted:These ones at least are good practice. Even tradies appreciate the common courtesy of the use of their name. It will help, not hinder, building rapport with your callers. It's not good practice at all, you have been brainwashed into thinking it is. Having to say someone's name 3 times isn't common courtesy it always sounds forced. Normal human's don't talk that way to each other which is why scripting is stupid.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2013 15:36
|
|
|
"Best practice" varies from call to call. We are talking to humans, and being able to determine how to speak is one of the more important parts of the job. I get calls from everyone in the company, C levels to factory floor workers. I can usually determine what tone I should use as soon as the other person starts speaking. There is a reason they are paying humans to answer the phones. People hate talking to machines, and turning human operators into a script nullifies the whole idea. Sadly, there is not much that we on the phones can do about it, as these decisions are made by management, usually ones far removed from the everyday work.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2013 17:18
|
|
|
RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Good custom title. I got it from this thread because someone seems to think it's perfectly sensible to call into a business while sobbing about their deceased family member, instead of waiting until they can compose themselves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2013 16:10
|
|
TokenTrevor posted:I got it from this thread because someone seems to think it's perfectly sensible to call into a business while sobbing about their deceased family member, instead of waiting until they can compose themselves. I get death calls like once a week, and they're usually pretty easy, but yeah I agree. There's no reason to call and cancel or make arrangements or whatever when your deceased family member is still being embalmed and you can't be coherent. Going to do my best and be really sympathetic and nice when you do! But you shouldn't.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2013 17:33
|
|
|
Nippashish posted:I get really irritated when people I don't know, like employees at call centres and starbucks, call me by my first name. gently caress you, I don't know you and I don't want to, I just want whateverthefuck problem I'm calling about to be resolved. I feel the same way and used it as an excuse whenever I got reprimanded for using sir, miss/ma'am, or Mr./Mrs _____ on all my calls. I didn't know the customers and I wasn't about to assume we were buddies because they pay a bill to the company I work for. I always argued that they weren't calling to make a friend, they were calling to get something fixed so they could continue with their day.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2013 01:11
|
|
|
The BBC has a new reality TV show about a call centre in Swansea. I've never seen management so supporting and interactive, also never this ZANY and CRAZY! Wow a call centre job looks like it'd be so fun and rewarding! e: literally called Call Centre
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2013 06:29
|
|
|
less than three posted:The BBC has a new reality TV show about a call centre in Swansea. I've never seen management so supporting and interactive, also never this ZANY and CRAZY! Wow a call centre job looks like it'd be so fun and rewarding! And apparently the place they're filming it is getting fined for nuisance calls: http://www.channel4.com/news/call-centre-fined-nuisance-calls-nev-tv-series-ppi
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2013 07:43
|
|
|
TokenTrevor posted:I got it from this thread because someone seems to think it's perfectly sensible to call into a business while sobbing about their deceased family member, instead of waiting until they can compose themselves. At my work we quite often get calls from people complaining that their power has gone out. When I let them know what time we expect it to come back on (say, 2 hours) they start getting upset and tell me "but I have two young children, what am I going to do?" I just think, what? does your son run off AA batteries for gently caress sake? Some parents just don't know what to do when they can't shove their children in front of the TV or computer for 5 hours a day to keep them quiet. Having said that I do feel sorry for people who call in from the country, in Western Australia a lot of rural properties have their water tied to their electricity. One poor woman rang up once to tell me she had had no power to shower for 2 days and that her cistern had backfired, coating her toilet walls in poo poo. Of course, with no water she couldn't wash it off.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2013 13:31
|
|
|
Might be headed back to working for the same company but in a non-phone capacity. If they point me in the direction of a phone, though, I might.... I dunno. Rage-poo poo on it or something. Never going back.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2013 07:58
|
|
|
2 years yesterday, and I think I'm now the agent other agents go to kill their careers. I've sat with two guys for intensive training, one of them has been let go, I think the other is on their way out. "You're such a great trainer" *fires all the people I train* They are all not really qualified for the job, but that's beside the point.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 15:25
|
|
|
Gothmog1065 posted:
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 16:24
|
|
|
Fezz posted:Look at it this way, they were so hopeless that not even you could straighten them out. You were the last best hope and they couldn't hack it. We're The "top line" technical support. One of the guys didn't even know what a network adapter is, or how to open Network and Sharing. Not a good sign when we deal with a lot of internet connections.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 19:36
|
|
|
It's a sad life when you're not qualified to work at a call center... they generally don't care about much more than a pulse.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 04:47
|
|
|
It's just another kind of retail really, you just don't get to see the person abusing you.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 11:40
|
|
|
Gothmog1065 posted:2 years yesterday, and I think I'm now the agent other agents go to kill their careers. I've sat with two guys for intensive training, one of them has been let go, I think the other is on their way out. This is actually good for you - you're part of the paperwork. So when it comes to giving that person the boot they list all the things they did to try and help them and one of them is "Gothmog, who's THE BEST, gave them 1:1 coaching but they just didn't take it in. I mean, what more could we do? It's GOTHMOG, man, for serious!" If they're making a paper trail they won't put someone bad in to do the intensive coaching, they'll find the best person they can so there's no possibility of HR related comeback.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 11:54
|
|
|
Hello call center thread. I too once worked in a call center. It turned me into a bitter, bitter person. Before I went there I was a loving and kind person too meek to even step on a daffodil without feeling remorse. Now I hate the human race. I hate them for being the 90% idiots that they are. People say I'm mean; if only they understood.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2013 04:38
|
|
|
Dryer Lint posted:Hello call center thread. I too once worked in a call center. It turned me into a bitter, bitter person. Before I went there I was a loving and kind person too meek to even step on a daffodil without feeling remorse. Now I hate the human race. I hate them for being the 90% idiots that they are. People say I'm mean; if only they understood. This is me. The call center destroyed whatever part of my humanity that retail didn't. I'm not even on the phones anymore. I work in reporting and you think you talk to idiots on the phones? Let me tell you about your bosses boss....
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2013 04:40
|
|
|
Dryer Lint posted:Hello call center thread. I too once worked in a call center. It turned me into a bitter, bitter person. Before I went there I was a loving and kind person too meek to even step on a daffodil without feeling remorse. Now I hate the human race. I hate them for being the 90% idiots that they are. People say I'm mean; if only they understood. I've played MWO with you and I refuse to believe you ever felt remorse about anything ever. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2013 07:43
|
|
|
I've been free of call centre life for about four and a half years now, but I put in nearly 5 years on the front line of a major cell phone corp. One of my favorite parts was loving around with the automated vacation scheduling website. When requesting time off for a day weeks/months/etc ahead, it would only take into account vacation days used up until that point, and nothing afterwards. So if I booked June 19th off, and then later on went in and booked June 18th off, it wouldn't take into account the fact that I also had the 19th off. This lead to many extra, unpaid vacation days that I would take simply to regain my sanity. I think I was about 12 vacation days into the negative by the time I finally quit. Nobody ever caught on, or simply didn't care. Ahh outsourced call centres, the impact you've had on me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2013 05:53
|
|
|
I just resigned and it feels great. 7 and a half loving years, over 6 in the same position, more bullshit and breaches of workplace fairness than I can count. I'm not moving onto bigger and better things, it's just that their proposed new operations negatively affect me on every single bullet point and completely shits in the face of every 'career' sacrifice I've made - e.g. 4 years ago, to avoid 24/7/365 shift rotations, I volunteered to work permanent overnights which meant I gave up recognition of seniority and any promotional opportunities, and now my new manager who has been with the company 2 years (not his fault, just saying) delivered the news that we're going back to rotation. I am still angry, but I know that one day very soon I won't have to talk about how much I loving hate this job or even think about what a worthless soul sucking husk of an organisation they are. I would rather be unemployed than let them take
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2013 08:25
|
|
|
To preface this post, I've already started applying elsewhere. Apparently, our division, while having no official sales quota, came up short of the unofficial, unstated one, and has been removed from the TV/Internet/Voice bundle queue, and has been added to the DSL only queue, without telling us. Or training us. At this point, we have to the end of the month to meet our metrics and meet the new sales quota, which has been moved from one sale/agent/month to 5 sales/agent/week. If this quota and our metrics are not met, our parent company, who outsourced the work to the call center, will not be renewing their contract with my call center. We're roughly on a death march here.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2013 11:10
|
|
|
I like and enjoy my call center job, but I work in a corporate call center that only deals with employees of a very large multinational corporation, so everyone tends to act pretty professional and if they don't our managers will contact their managers and then the caller will probably get chewed out for not acting in a way becoming of a business professional. I'd like to transition into something else eventually but this job is super nice right now! I've been here since August and I have like, actual benefits and poo poo. I can't imagine having to deal with customers that poo poo sounds awful I feel for you folks.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2013 19:19
|
|
|
100 HOGS AGREE posted:I like and enjoy my call center job, but I work in a corporate call center that only deals with employees of a very large multinational corporation, so everyone tends to act pretty professional and if they don't our managers will contact their managers and then the caller will probably get chewed out for not acting in a way becoming of a business professional. Ahhh the optimistic rookies! The worst part to me WAS the 'business professional' stuff. Six-sigma (really? we're not robots!), broken windows, team posters/boards, team-building exercises, mandatory annual personal plans for career advancement, internal 'universities' etc. It's the same everywhere from reading this thread. I think they teach it at graduate school or something but I could not take the environment at all. It was all such a waste of time and in no way made me more successful professionally. It just taught me how to be a better corporate employee.
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2013 20:49
|
|
|
Oh, yeah it is, but the job itself is fine. And actually my bosses this year just told us to mark off the career advancement meeting saying they did it and just skipped it. It is an insufferable job sometimes but it's not hard and at my desk 95% of the calls I get are resolved on the first call and angry people are the exception rather than the rule. Yeah some of the corporate poo poo is annoying but it pays relatively well and I've got a goddamn BA in ENGLISH so it's not like I'm finding anything better in the short term. I use all the downtime between calls to read the forums and take online classes. Hell, I've taken 13 calls in the last 8 hours and the average talk time on my phone is under 8 minutes. And by business professional stuff I meant, like, not being a shithead on the phone. I've had people swear at me and at our desk cursing automatically flags a call for review. I guess people who have called the desk and been completely unreasonable have gotten fired because their managers didn't think their behavior was acceptable. It's easier to take bad calls in stride when you know people can and will get punished for being assholes. 100 HOGS AGREE fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jul 5, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2013 21:20
|
|
|
So I'm actually willingly rejoining the call center world in a few weeks! Last summer I got a job at a company I'd worked at previously (in a part-time admin assistant role, which was basically filing post). It's an insurance broker in the UK that underwrites for a number of different companies, and this specific role was customer service for elderly (50+ generally) people's motor insurance. Honestly, whilst it could be tedious, I really enjoyed it. The annoying/awkward/angry customers were fortunately few and far between, and were vastly outnumbered by the number of awesome old people I got to talk to, a few of whom were just happy to speak to someone  All the supervisors were cool and there was a minimum of annoying metrics in place, though I did struggle with one or two of the ones they did have (how the gently caress are you supposed to ask someone that's giving up driving if they want to hear about a quote in the future  ?) The hardest part was the deaths. Due to the nature of the company, we would regularly have sons/daughters/husbands/wives/whatever ring up to tell us that the policyholder had passed away. I never really got the hang of it; I would answer the phone with a really friendly/happy tone and try to maintain it throughout the call, and it's hard to keep that up when you're speaking to someone who's just lost their loved one. The worst example of this is a son who rang up. At the time we were pushing for "Third Party Nominees", basically putting a note on the file to say someone can ring on the policy holder's behalf. We were measured on this, and the easiest way I found to do this was to ask during the initial security checks. Anyway, the call went something like this: Me: Policy Holder's son:  : Good morning, you're through to EvilHawk, how can I help?: Yeah I need to cancel a policy...: That's fine, can I take your policy number please [ gives policy number]. Okay and I just need you to confirm the name, address, and postcode for me.: Sure it's [gives details]: Wonderful. At this point I'd like to advise you that you can nominate someone as a third party nominee. What this means is that you give the details of someone you know, and they can ring on your behalf if you are on holiday, or in the hospital, or something...: Well [Policy Holder] has just died this morning...: Oh  He didn't make any indication that he wasn't the PH, which happens more times than I care to think about (our guidance was that if they knew the Data Protection stuff (name/address/car make/reg) and didn't sound too suspicious it wasn't our problem), but it still makes things drat awkward for the rest of the conversation. Anyway, now that I'm done with uni, I got in contact with them and they want me back! This company is really good for promoting from within - I started with my friend last summer and he's moved into a much better non-phone job on better pay already. I'm sure I'll have some new stories for you all soon enough!
|
|
#
?
Jul 5, 2013 23:33
|
|
|
Wow I am really glad the call center I work at has none of this nonsense going on in it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2013 00:47
|
|
|
100 HOGS AGREE posted:
Wow that does sound pretty cruisy. At my work we have a little green, orange or red phone that appears on our screen when there are a certain amount of people waiting in line. it appears at least 4-5 times a day so its not even worth putting the phone down. Having said that it is rather funny when you see all the bosses come round shouting "green jellybean! Everyone on the phone, we've got a green jellybean!" (the icon does look a lot like a jellybean)
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2013 11:42
|
|
In a ten hour shift I'll max out at 145 calls with an average handle time of 2:45  To be fair, nobody ever told me to take that many calls or have such low handle time, but they sure as poo poo don't care if it ever stretches out to a less blistering pace. Also since our scheduling department are complete mongoloids, I get to have a pretty brutal full red pillar to post Saturday with average holding customers at 70 with peak at 100+.
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2013 14:11
|
|
|
My job is with a university. It's basically completely disabused me of any ideas about the value of higher education I might have had to spend my work shifts talking to students and faculty. Oh, you've called us 20 times in the last month, including three times in a two-day period, to ask how to change column widths in Excel? Clearly you're in the right place.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2013 15:33
|
|
|
Post poste posted:To preface this post, I've already started applying elsewhere. They did that to us about two years ago when I started, and they're pushing sales hard on us now. They're going to continue to push harder for that revenue. I still don't sell poo poo. I'll do it if it falls in my lap, which is enough to make my supervisor happy, but holy poo poo to do some of the guys in my department complain about it. Well, they complain about EVERYTHING, you wouldn't think they had a surprisingly cushy call center job.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2013 16:59
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:My job is with a university. It's basically completely disabused me of any ideas about the value of higher education I might have had to spend my work shifts talking to students and faculty. Oh, you've called us 20 times in the last month, including three times in a two-day period, to ask how to change column widths in Excel? Clearly you're in the right place. Yup. I worry and wonder how some of these folks got/are here. Having to read to a Literary MA is a very strange experience.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2013 21:18
|
|
|
Aerofallosov posted:Yup. I worry and wonder how some of these folks got/are here. Having to read to a Literary MA is a very strange experience. I once had to explain the concept of email forwarding to somebody that our accounts system assured me was a Computer Science professor. Surreal. Also one guy used to call in ALL THE TIME and was not literate- like, he could get by, but would only answer vaguely about what an error message, for example, said, and if you asked him for the exact text, you could hear him sounding it out. "You cuh-could not be ah-auth- then-tic-cat. Puh-ple-please try agin. Again." I mean, don't get me wrong, I am totally sympathetic to the fact that illiteracy happens, and I really want that guy to get help, but law school is not where you get that help.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2013 21:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 23:21 |
|
|
I swear that no one can pronounce the word 'authentication'. I think I've posted about this before, but it's still true - "It says Outgoing server requires au...authation. authentic. au..." and so on.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2013 03:23
|
|
