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If you can get a word in edgewise when someone is gearing up for a spiel at the start of a call, I've found certain phrasing to be helpful in cutting them off at the pass. Of course, if they won't let you, then that call is pretty much hosed. This is what I used at my last employer (insurance company). It wasn't a script, because our openings weren't scripted, but I used it like one because it was so helpful in setting the call flow: "I'd be glad to help you with that. We'll be going through a claim form today which normally takes about 15 minutes. At the end of the call, you will have an opportunity to provide comments and additional information. To get started, may I please have your name?" It's not telling them to shut up, but has the same effect. It sets their mind at ease, and it really loving works (most of the time). If our normal form didn't cover something that they thought was important, they knew we'd get it before hanging up. That was pretty rare though, because our form was so exhaustive.
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Nov 19, 2013 17:00
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| # ? May 8, 2024 13:25 |
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I work in a parallel field, transcription. There are two major types of open transcription that I do at my job. One is weird and I might go into it later, but it involves transcribing personal voice mails...and it feels incredibly shady. The more prevalent open transcription job is customer service survey feedback for a couple of insurance companies, Equifax, and an ISP. I get my own sort of abuse there, since I frequently get to listen to the exasperated 83 year old that just got done screaming obscenities at one of y'all come in and bitch about how that CSR was so unhelpful and seemed to rush them. Worse, I feel powerless to help the ones that have real genuine problems. The community that I get to see a bigger population of though, are old people who can't figure out the phone trees and somehow end up in the survey without ever going through a CSR. I am convinced that in five years, automated voice menu systems will be the leading cause of death for those over 70. The worst record I've had so far was a woman who was very angry about her mail order medicine company and proceeded to go into a half hour tirade about the company and eventually moral evil, greed, bootstrap mentality, her childhood, her speculations about the future of medicine, her college years, and about the rest of her life. It was the most rambling incoherent string of words I've ever tried to type. I transcribed the first 10 minutes of audio in the last hour and a half of work (near constant trailing off and false starting words). It had mysteriously vanished (presumably deleted by a bewildered manager) by my next shift.
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Nov 20, 2013 06:45
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So, this is it. I got out.  I got laid off on October 26th. And I have never been better. It's almost impossible to describe the feeling adequately. If it's anything, it's relief. That's the closest I can come to describing it. Relief. I'm not happy, I'm not sad, I'm not stressed. I'm just...relieved. Almost like I had a boil lanced, or a hemorrhoid drained. I wake up in the morning, and I actually look forward to the day ahead. I actually have a decent job now. Overnight security for a data center. Only took a dollar pay cut and it's a world of difference. I put in two years at Best Buy, and when I first started I fell for the job security line hook line and sinker. Be loyal to Best Buy and Best Buy will be loyal to you. How naive of me. I've tried going over it in my head, trying to come up with some specific memories of what happened. Names, dates, what happened etc. But it's all become a gigantic blur to me. I keep in touch with two guys from there, but everyone else is just out of my mind. I sat next to someone every day for eight months, and I can't remember their name anymore. It didn't mean poo poo. None of it did.  Screw 'em. Getting screamed at by idiots while being managed by imbeciles, all for the benefit of a bunch of schmucks. No one needs that.
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Nov 20, 2013 12:33
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I felt like I graduated high school when I left mine.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:07
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martyrdumb posted:If you can get a word in edgewise when someone is gearing up for a spiel at the start of a call, I've found certain phrasing to be helpful in cutting them off at the pass. Of course, if they won't let you, then that call is pretty much hosed. The place where I worked didn't let us insinuate that we had a form to fill out, or a particular order where we asked the questions. That would get us docked points for "respect" or "caring" depending on the grader. EDIT: I left nearly three months ago and I just constantly feel relieved. I've lost weight, I don't feel super tired all the time, and I'm just doing better.
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Nov 21, 2013 05:03
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Just 10 shifts left. To the poster who said it felt like graduating high school, the analogy is perfectly right.
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Nov 22, 2013 19:25
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Time to bump this thread because a guy on my team walked out yesterday! The guy, Liam, has been here for like, 2 years at this point, but over the last few months (pretty much since I've been there really, though I didn't cause anything) the company have been loving him over. It started fairly small, they began to take away the bits of non-phone work they give us when it's quiet (to give to newer employees (like me!)), they didn't let him go on referral, generally taking away his responsibilities. Then Liam started a relationship with another coworker. To be fair, he was at fault, his emails sent through the company email system were inappropriate, he made jokes that made her feel uncomfortable - basically he was a total moron which he fully admits. They got together a few times outside of work but it never really got that far. It all came to a head about a month ago when another coworker, friends with this girl, got involved with the emails (to this day I don't know who got him involved). This friend basically said something along the lines on "I don't want to get involved with your stupid high school bullshit but stop emailing her because it's weird". Now, unbeknownst to me, and most of my colleagues, Liam has been suffering with depression for a few months, probably not helped by the company being a bit of dick. This set him over the edge, and he walked out, said he's not coming back, yada yada yada. My team leader had a quiet word with him, arranged for him to have a few weeks off to basically recover, everything quietened down. The girl had a few meetings where she was basically forced to go into her private life and give details of conversations. When Liam came back last Monday (well, actually Tuesday, because they made him go to the doctor to get signed off after he came in on Monday) the stipulation was basically "don't go near her, don't talk to her, keep your head down", so he did. He was happy to be back at work and kept very much to himself (whereas before he was very open and chatty) and cracked on with his job. Wednesday afternoon we were chatting about our schedules and we noticed he was down to do a 11-7 shift today. Strange, we thought, as the shift patterns are either 10-6 or 12-8, anything in between is really only done in special circumstances. Liam was certain he had been put down for 12-8 shift and had scheduled a driving lesson to finish at 11, giving him enough time to get to work. He went home, came in Thursday morning, and confirmed that on his schedule at home, which he printed out when he got back, he was down to work 12-8. This really annoyed him - changing your shift without consulting you, or even telling you, is a big no-no in my book, and he agreed. The only reason we could think of was that both Liam and this girl were scheduled to the same shift, and they didn't want to leave the two of them alone together. The other problem was his driving lesson - he couldn't rearrange it, and his instructor wouldn't refund it, so now he was out of pocket by £30. He went to our team leader, and then had a meeting with the senior team leader. Now, I don't know exactly what was said in this meeting, but he came out of it, logged off, and left, without so much of a word. He's now been removed from the schedule entirely. I really like this company: the people are awesome (mostly), the work isn't that bad, and hell, reading some of your stories, it could be a lot worse, but this just seemed like a really lovely way of dealing with a situation. I feel bad for Liam, he's really not a bad guy and was good at his job, but in a way I'm glad that's he's been able to leave on his own terms because he honestly deserves a lot better. Time to start looking a bit more seriously at moving upwards I suppose.
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Nov 30, 2013 00:42
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Uh, I wouldnt take that on board as a reflection of the company that they didn't treat him well. He was a liability if the girl went for sexual harassment in the workplace and the workplace clearly treated her callously in the process so she could probably wreck them for not doing more. It's grounds for instant dismissal if the emails were that inappropriate, and that's what I'd argue if I was her and seeking damages.
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Nov 30, 2013 03:15
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Yeah, sexual harassment isn't nothing to play with. It sounded like she didn't want a lot of the attention she was getting.
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Nov 30, 2013 05:18
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Hi, I'm my company's staffing unit, I'm going to assume that the day after Thanksgiving won't be busy because everyone is enjoying a 4 day weekend, may as well go at half staff! ... Whoops! We were 500 in the red all day an had 20% call drop rate, doh, doh, doh!  Now they're projecting Monday to be a high call volume day so we're all hands on deck, we'll be overstaffed all day and finish with like 3 hours of available time sitting in the queue waiting for calls.
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Nov 30, 2013 05:47
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Loving Life Partner posted:Hi, I'm my company's staffing unit, I'm going to assume that the day after Thanksgiving won't be busy because everyone is enjoying a 4 day weekend, may as well go at half staff! Wait, doesn't thanksgiving fall on the same day of the week every year? That takes out like half the difficulty in forecasting public holiday days. Christmas is a ball ache to predict because it falls on a different day every year so you can't just look at the previous couple of years and say "it's 50% of the volume of a normal Thursday" or something like that, but if you've got something that falls on a Thursday every year then, barring something that you never had a chance of predicting anyway like crazy weather, nuclear attack, etc, you should be able to get at least in the ballpark.
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Nov 30, 2013 10:02
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Loving Life Partner posted:Hi, I'm my company's staffing unit, I'm going to assume that the day after Thanksgiving won't be busy because everyone is enjoying a 4 day weekend, may as well go at half staff! Wait can't you just VTO people when you are sitting there with that much avail? Our call center gets paid for each minute agents are actively on calls. meaning if we have a ton of avail time we start sending people home, having people just sit there is a massive waste of money
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Dec 1, 2013 20:44
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They'll dump in same day absence and give out green alerts, those are optional though. Also they're really bad at doing that as well, because they'll let too many people go and then we'll get hammered again when activity picks back up.
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Dec 1, 2013 20:58
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Loving Life Partner posted:They'll dump in same day absence and give out green alerts, those are optional though. I was waiting 4 minutes between calls today. They've sent people home while we were short staffed before. gently caress time management, those idiots.
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Dec 2, 2013 02:31
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Chicken Doodle posted:I was waiting 4 minutes between calls today. They've sent people home while we were short staffed before. No time management can predict unforseen issues, so it is in some sense all garbage to justify why you have to be in queue all day. "The program told us this was enough people!!!" I'm curious if any time management software is smart enough to at least correlate call volume with past issues, like last year this tueday our fiber line to city X was down for 6 hours and that is why we had crazy call volume. I doubt they do, because that sounds like a lot of work for someone who is really just looking for justification to run the minimal amount of staff. I'm sure it does some things well with enough data like "weather changes effect line condition so we have more service calls in May and October."
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Dec 3, 2013 05:52
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Chicken Doodle posted:I was waiting 4 minutes between calls today. They've sent people home while we were short staffed before. On Thanksgiving I had maybe 7 connections for the entire 8 hours I worked. It was rad.
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Dec 3, 2013 16:04
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You guys are lucky. Yesterday it's been solid back to back action from 8 am to midnight. Only 4 days left...
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Dec 3, 2013 17:23
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Colonel J posted:You guys are lucky. Yesterday it's been solid back to back action from 8 am to midnight. Only 4 days left... That's been my centre. Back to back since some changes were made to policies for cell phone carriers. I personally am rather amused because I remember a bunch of customers being like "Now that the CRTC has made this ruling, you'll be sorry! You'll HAVE to treat us fairly!" And now they're all being screwed over by the very same ruling. However, my schadenfreude is brought to a crashing low when there's no wait time between calls and the wait time to get ahold of cancellations and/or our level 2 help desk is upwards of 30 minutes. I've had to take a few washroom breaks today simply because my patience was wearing too thin. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I know that feel. Back to back calls are the devil.
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Dec 3, 2013 20:14
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TokenTrevor posted:Wait can't you just VTO people when you are sitting there with that much avail? Our call center gets paid for each minute agents are actively on calls. meaning if we have a ton of avail time we start sending people home, having people just sit there is a massive waste of money I don't know what VTO stands for, but I'm choosing to interpret it as Vertical Take-Off. I assume ejector seats are somehow involved.
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Dec 3, 2013 20:45
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Alien Arcana posted:I don't know what VTO stands for, but I'm choosing to interpret it as Vertical Take-Off. I assume ejector seats are somehow involved. For us it's Voluntary Time Off. So basically we get asked if we want to leave early and if we voluntarily choose to, we don't get paid for that time.
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Dec 3, 2013 21:12
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We call it surplus or e-time. It jeopardizes our call handling agreement and can gently caress us over at the next contract negotiation, but everyone takes it anyway.
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Dec 3, 2013 22:24
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Fun things that happen on the phone: You have a ghost call when it starts or just a responding "buzz" from the customer, as you go through your disconnection spiel near the end it'll suddenly clear up and the customer will be cursing you out.
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Dec 4, 2013 01:05
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you ate my cat posted:We call it surplus or e-time. It jeopardizes our call handling agreement and can gently caress us over at the next contract negotiation, but everyone takes it anyway. Yeah if you take it too much you can get yelled at for it but once in a while is okay. It's when we're all sitting around doing jack that it pisses us off. And man I am just having the worst loving week. This job is so sales based now I'm having trouble faking happiness if I don't get enough mid way through the day. I need to jump into another position before I get more depressed. 
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Dec 4, 2013 02:20
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That's weird. At my place you never get bad points for taking the opportunities for time off because it's actually good for the company.
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Dec 4, 2013 04:42
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Colonel J posted:That's weird. At my place you never get bad points for taking the opportunities for time off because it's actually good for the company. Depending on just how slow it was, I loved sitting around not taking calls. Then again, we were allowed to surf the net, text, chat with friends, etc... Some nights I would take it RIGHT AWAY because I had better things to do, but not always.
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Dec 4, 2013 08:06
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My place doesn't do that leaving early voluntarily thing if it's not busy. Occasionally they'll let a couple of us leave 30 minutes or so early if it's really quiet and still pay us for the rest of the shift though, which is pretty nice on a Saturday. I'm happy because starting this week we now shut off at 4 instead of 5 due to low call volumes between 4-5. Maybe it's a bad sign in terms of job stability but I couldn't care less. Leaving at 4 instead of 5 is way better.
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Dec 4, 2013 10:52
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We don't have that option, and thats fine. Although our staffing level is pretty tightly tuned, and when we're not busy there is usually assignments to do. I do followup on advanced phone issue tickets every day in the afternoon, making sure the tech that took the initial call got all necessary information, doing some further testing that may have been missed, contacting the customer if we need more info etc. and if necessary escalate to engineers. I also call customers based on engineers response to tickets, have them test things etc. and close tickets once the issue is resolved. I like doing it this way, one responsible person gets tasked with followup instead of every agent (some of whom are terrible) following up on his or her own when they can between calls etc.
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Dec 4, 2013 16:30
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I played a lot of connect four with my coworkers when calls were slow. Best memories I had of that job.
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Dec 4, 2013 17:29
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At my last call center, we could take PTO and leave early if it was slow... at first. They did it all the time when I was hired. After a couple years, though, they started bringing in other lines of business (insurance) to increase our occupancy time, and also outsourced our inquiry calls to the Philippines. I never once got sent home in the last 2 years of the nearly 5 I worked there. Man, did that place turn into a total shitshow. Where I work now, we never go home early. But our department is only 5 people, so it's a big difference.
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Dec 4, 2013 18:36
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martyrdumb posted:At my last call center, we could take PTO and leave early if it was slow... at first. They did it all the time when I was hired. After a couple years, though, they started bringing in other lines of business (insurance) to increase our occupancy time, and also outsourced our inquiry calls to the Philippines. I never once got sent home in the last 2 years of the nearly 5 I worked there. Man, did that place turn into a total shitshow.
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Dec 4, 2013 23:16
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SiGmA_X posted:5 years at a cell center! You're insane! I'm even more insane,I did 10 years at a call center. My last day was 5 years ago today.
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Dec 4, 2013 23:58
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I just crossed 3 years in October. Whole thing is chronicled in this thread, lol.
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Dec 5, 2013 01:11
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SiGmA_X posted:5 years at a cell center! You're insane! Plus, I'm doing website support now. So it's more in-line with my own interests, and I hate myself less because at least I'm learning reusable skills. I'm hoping to parlay this experience into internal tech support at my next job. 
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Dec 5, 2013 15:02
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You mean you don't like six sigma and broken windows? Corporate/MBA jargon is worthless and the people who push/use it are bad people. ESPECIALLY in call centers! Find me a six-sigma call center (3.4 defects per million in a process) and I'll poo poo out a million dollar gold turd right in front of your eyes. \/\/ bad calvin, bad!! Sancho fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Dec 6, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 20:20
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We're currently doing a ton of six sigma stuff company-wide. A lot of it is aimed more at the overall processes, so we've been feeling more positive results from the initiatives than negatives so far. I'm sure the parts of the organization on the receiving end of those changes are much less happy about it though. On the bright side, we're shutting down/combining systems. Last I heard, we had turned down 300 systems, with another 700 on the chopping block. How many programs do you think you should need to do tech support? When I was at Comcast, we had 5 that I used every day plus a couple extra - 1 for billing, 1 ticketing, 1 testing, 1 provisioning, and one more I can't remember. I use probably 30-40 systems a day here, and have logins for probably another 30 or so. No wonder new hires take forever to learn how stuff fits together, it doesn't! We just awkwardly tack all these spiderwebs of systems together and call it a day.
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Dec 6, 2013 00:25
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Six Sigma is just the flavor of the decade for mapping process and reducing failure rates. I use the core concepts every day, but don't drink from the Kool-Aid.
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Dec 6, 2013 16:33
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I forget if I expressed my joy in getting rid of the OM from hell. He went to another department in the centre. And I guess somebody stood up to him. They're having people in that department do team/desk switches and they're telling them by sticking post it notes in the middle of their screens even if the rep is mid-call, which is obnoxious. I guess one guy stood up to OM from Hell and asked him what gave him the right to run mobility into the ground (that's us) and then go over to their division and run them into the ground too. That person got suspended from the work place. I would frankly have done the same and am so glad that I don't have to deal with him anymore. Any time I see the officious little prick, I try to avoid him as best as possible. He's the one who got right up in my face for a non-issue. Literally inches away from my face. Business as usual I guess but I'm really glad somebody stood up to him.
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Dec 6, 2013 16:57
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I'm out. What a ride. I still catch myself thinking about the phone and get really relieved when I think it doesn't matter anymore at all. Tomorrow I'm not gonna have to face an endless barrage of hostility and bitterness from people who are getting the shaft from phone companies. What a weight off my shoulders. Hang in there people who can stand it, I've been there 4 months and I really didn't like the experience. I was very good at the job for the little time I've been there, but the existential dread it induced in me drove me out very quickly. Perhaps it is less terrible in other types of call centers; I've seen lots of people talk about insurance companies CCs, it doesn't seem too bad, even though the potential for upset customers and soul sucking business decisions is probably greater. Colonel J fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Dec 7, 2013 |
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Dec 7, 2013 07:49
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Nocheez posted:Six Sigma is just the flavor of the decade for mapping process and reducing failure rates. I use the core concepts every day, but don't drink from the Kool-Aid. I get that, but six-sigma is literally a 99.9999966 percent success rate. That's impossible when introducing humans to the equation. It's a stupid name for what it is. For other stupid names see: broken window, quiet leadership Sancho fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Dec 7, 2013 |
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Dec 7, 2013 18:39
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| # ? May 8, 2024 13:25 |
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I gotta work Sundays more often. I always hear the weirdest poo poo on Sundays. The kinda poo poo that's so aggressively stupid that it takes your brain a few minutes to register it. On Sunday, a woman informed me that she would never, ever, EVER do business with AssHats Emporium, a company she has been buying Hats from for twenty goddamn years, ever again because she was really offended by the Christmas commercial she saw on TV. First she insulted me for not already being aware of her complaint, because she had apparently already called and left a message, and emailed. Lady was offended because the Christmas commercial had said something about the true meaning of Christmas being about love, caring, and giving, when EVERYONE KNOWS that the true meaning of Christmas  is the birth of Jesus-Christ-our-Lord-and-Savior. Obviously. I completely dropped the premise of the call, promised to pass along the message, and, after disconnecting, sat and laughed for a full three minutes. It took me a while to figure out how to word my comments, because we are supposed to remain neutral. I mean, poo poo. If you're religious, good for you, it's none of my business. I just get so tickled when Christians say poo poo like that. Loving, caring, and giving was kiiiiinda Jesus's whole schtick. She was so fuckin' smug about it too.  Also on Sunday, a gentleman told me about his Hat-buying experience. The store lied to him about his financing options, and after he and his wife had already taken the Hat home, called and demanded that they bring it back. When they did, they were charged a usage fee, and then, when they protested, the Sales Manager told them to get the gently caress out of his office and never fuckin' come back and gently caress YOU. In other news, I'm in training for an appointment-setting campaign. I get five shifts to reach an Appointments Per Hour figure of 1.2 or more. If I don't, I go back to the entry-level campaign for thirty days before I can try again. I hear that's just a farce, though. Many people who have passed transition and are officially Appointments agents can't even swing that. Frankly, though, I'm not worried about that. One of our managers told us today in training class that the big boss, who's over the whole company, has threatened the jobs of literally every person in the call center if we don't improve our numbers. They've overhauled a bunch of the scripts and are shuffling people around like there's no tomorrow. Apparently it hasn't occurred to anyone in top management that its the holidays and people are more concerned with their family plans, shopping, etc, than they are concerned about buying a Hat. Of course we aren't going to be as productive. That, and agents getting sick. It seems only natural that our numbers might dip a bit, because customers have NO loving patience right now. Of course, if they hadn't hired a hundred people in the past month, they might not be so loving worried about it.
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Dec 13, 2013 06:29
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