Bovril Delight posted:Where are you moving to LLP? Fabulous MERRILLVILLE INDIANA! It's a long story, but basically my brother in law had a baby and my wife is itching to live closer to her parents and his new family, so we're moving there, and I'll be closer to my original home as well (Philly).
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Jan 10, 2014 03:38
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Loving Life Partner posted:Fabulous MERRILLVILLE INDIANA! Oh jesus, I grew up in Lake County. Not in Merrillville, but a town right next door. Have... fun... 
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Jan 10, 2014 04:43
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you ate my cat posted:I had no idea the interview process for wireless was that long. I did a skills test and a 5-question phone interview, and that was it, but that was also for the wireline side of things.
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Jan 17, 2014 00:39
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Too Poetic posted:I guess it depends on the center. I worked for wireless and I only had a online questionnaire and an in person interview. I had an interview process that was over four hours long. I thought it was because the call centre was just starting up and didn't have their stuff in order. My boyfriend had an interview with them today and again the process was about 3 hours long. Knowledge test, sit around and wait. Typing test, sit around and wait. Interview one, sit around and wait. Interview two, sit around and wait. Be told you're going to receive an offer. Sit around and wait. Receive offer. Go home. I mean good for them for getting everything out of the way, but still. That's a lot of time to sit around and wait.
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Jan 17, 2014 03:19
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Why would they care, it's not their time they're wasting.
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Jan 17, 2014 12:40
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Please continue to hold, your time is important to us. The next available interviewer will be with you shortly....
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Jan 17, 2014 14:03
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you ate my cat posted:Please continue to hold, your time is important to us. The next available interviewer will be with you shortly.... Please listen closely as our job options have changed.
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Jan 17, 2014 15:44
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Pretty rad how cavalier so many of my coworkers are about abusing FMLA. I get chewed out for being 10-12 minutes late 3 times over 2 months, and they get to take vast swaths of days off, leave early, take half days and just giggle about their loving FMLA. I know they're not being paid for it, but I don't give a gently caress.
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Jan 17, 2014 17:49
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Loving Life Partner posted:Pretty rad how cavalier so many of my coworkers are about abusing FMLA. Yeah, that kind of pisses me off about some people's FMLA. Leave whenever the gently caress you want because you feel 'sick'. Anyways, kind of fun, last week I did jack poo poo. Yesterday I was lead assist all day (I don't think some of them know I'm leaving yet), and the second half of my shift I sat in a conference bridge nobody answered for a meeting I was supposed to attend, then my supervisor wanted to do "coaching" said BRB and was gone for an hour and a half. Then I logged off. It was a good day, though next week I can't expect that  .
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Jan 17, 2014 18:03
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Loving Life Partner posted:Pretty rad how cavalier so many of my coworkers are about abusing FMLA. Why do you even care. Like I've been working customer service so goddamn loving long I will game the system as much as I possibly can because I just don't give a gently caress anymore.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:44
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g0lbez posted:Why do you even care. Like I've been working customer service so goddamn loving long I will game the system as much as I possibly can because I just don't give a gently caress anymore.
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Jan 18, 2014 10:38
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Too Poetic posted:Seriously loving take advantage of this poo poo. I'm still young and naive, this is my second job (I'm 21) but first in a call centre, and despite only being here since April, I'm slowly learning that trying to be a decent employee by being punctual and never taking sick days really gets people nowhere here.
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Jan 18, 2014 18:13
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Loving Life Partner posted:Pretty rad how cavalier so many of my coworkers are about abusing FMLA. Christ. Flo and Slaveco sound like they both have the same idsue. At Slaveco, people abused the hell out of FMLA because if you didn't, you would have no way of being able to survive the retarded reliability point system that was in place at the time (that got scrapped 6 months after I left). poo poo, my mental state was so bad near the end of my time there I should have taken it. Giggling and making a big deal out of it is uncool, but at poo poo jobs like that? Take it if you qualify!
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Jan 18, 2014 18:57
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blackmet posted:Christ. Flo and Slaveco sound like they both have the same idsue. At Slaveco, people abused the hell out of FMLA because if you didn't, you would have no way of being able to survive the retarded reliability point system that was in place at the time (that got scrapped 6 months after I left). If we're talking about the same Slaveco, that reliability system was back in place at least until last January (when I left). Only it was now 'dependability'. Seems like everyone had FMLA paperwork filed for something!
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Jan 18, 2014 22:22
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supkirbs posted:If we're talking about the same Slaveco, that reliability system was back in place at least until last January (when I left). Only it was now 'dependability'. Seems like everyone had FMLA paperwork filed for something! A couple close friends of mine still work there. They said it was killed in January of 2012, at least in their dept. I left in July of 2011. To explain this system to everyone else: You started your employment there with 50 points. You can never go above 50. But you can lose points super easily...ranging from 1.5 points for being more than 3:59 seconds late getting in or coming back from a break, to 10 points for calling in on a Friday-Monday. After 1 rolling year, your demerit points were rolled off. You also got a whopping 2 points back for a month of perfect attendance. Meaning if you we're PERFECT for 5 months, you MIGHT be able to get all the points back you lost for calling in on a Friday. Once. Oh, and those 2 points you got back ROLLED OFF after a year too. Pretty much, it created a situation where if you were never forgiven for being 5 minutes late due to a traffic jam or calling in sick with the flu once or twice a year. At -7, you were written up. At -15, you were written up again. At -23, you were fired. I was written up twice...once AFTER I handed in my notice (admittedly, the day I got hired to my current job I went out and did karaoke to celebrate until 2AM, then called in the next day with "gently caress it who cares" itis). I also saw a 3.5 year tenured representative be fired for it...on take your daughter to work day...IN FRONT of her 11 year old daughter. And another person who had to be taken out in an ambulance due to severe stomach pain (kidney stones) be followed out by her manager so the manager could let her know she'd be written up when she got back. That's when I kicked my job search from low to high gear. My current job is "don't be late more than twice per quarter, don't call in sick more than 3x per quarter." The manager does also have some leeway on policy enforcement, and while some are super strict on it, most are reasonable. Both of the managers I've had tend to be pretty forgiving of being a few minutes late when it's snowing or when there's an accident on the highway, as long as you leave a message. There's a lot less FMLA usage there, and the people I've seen who have it are for serious reasons (dual knee surgery, recent heart attack, back surgery). blackmet fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 08:46
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blackmet posted:A couple close friends of mine still work there. They said it was killed in January of 2012, at least in their dept. I left in July of 2011. That sounds like a super complex gently caress you system. Our office has something like it but no where near as awful. Basically we get 1 occurance for a call off. But if your sick 2 days in a row, thats 1 occurrence. If your late its a .5 occurrence. 7 occurrences and your canned. They roll off 6 months + 1 day after the occurrence. So basically you can call off 6 times in 6 months which honestly is more than reasonable.
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Jan 19, 2014 13:54
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At my call center, they have recently changed the way they calculate one of our stats- Efficiency. None of the Team Leaders seem to actually know what the rubric is. Every person I've asked has a different answer. So now, no one can hit the target efficiency, everyone's getting threatened with an Action Plan (your last chance to fix it before you're canned), and all the agents are loving pissed, including me. I got moved to a new campaign recently, and have only been in this new campaign for about three weeks. Before that, I was doing something else, where they don't calculate your efficiency. So for all the weeks between my hiring and my moving to this different campaign, my efficiency is 0%, because they don't calculate it for the entry-level campaign. It's not N/A, or No Data, or anything, it's zero. And I cannot make my team leader understand that I don't have sixteen straight weeks of bad efficiency stats, I have two. And everyone's sucks. It's not just me. It sounds like a flawed method to me. They randomly pull five calls per agent, per week. I'm in an appointment-setting campaign, and so they (apparently) look to see if you're asking all the questions on the script, if you pitch the appointment, and if you overcome the objection when/if the person says no. So if one of those five calls is an answering machine, or someone who is no longer interested in the product, or has bought elsewhere, well then gently caress you. You didn't have the chance to pitch, and in fact weren't supposed to even try, but gently caress you anyway. Also, we are now supposed to press on when someone is no longer in the market, gathering info on what they are looking for in the thing they no longer want. Brilliant. Oh, and if someone tells you that the person you're asking for is out of town, call back in a week, that hurts your efficiency too. You're supposed to set callbacks for later today or tomorrow, which is loving STUPID when someone's just told you that the person is not available for a few days. Yeah, let's just call them relentlessly. That'll make 'em want to do business with our clients. I'm also supposed to persistently pitch people who are putting off their purchase because of some catastrophic life event. Oh, you're in the hospital with your dying mother? WELL SURELY YOU HAVE AN HOUR TO COME LOOK AT A HAT! It's indecent. I refuse to do that. That's going waaay too far. We should do the decent thing and back off. Customers will remember that when things settle and they're ready to buy again, I guarantee it. The owners of our company are doing all this because, for the first time in 25 years, we have competition. Before, they could say that yeah, our calls piss people off sometimes, but it ultimately results in more sales for our clients, so therefore its worth it for them to keep paying us to do this. Now, there's some other company doing the same thing, so our clients can now justify jumping ship because our company is pissing people off and there's an alternative. Instead of adjusting for that, they're taking it out on the agents. The bosses are apparently also unaware that the way people buy poo poo, even really expensive poo poo, has changed. People can buy basically anything over the internet now. We need to adjust for that, and our company will be much more successful, and so will the companies we represent. It seems obvious to the agents, because we're talking to the people making these purchases all day. Every agent I've talked to is goddamn pissed at this. They're firing and laying off people who are superstars at their jobs, because of this new efficiency rubric. And since no one really knows what they're looking for, exactly, we can't fix the problem. People that pitch and overcome every single call (when the customer doesn't just get frustrated and hang up) still have 0% efficiency. We're doing what they ask for, but we aren't seeing that reflected in our stats. They're being so fuckin' picky that its getting harder and harder to make customers AND management happy, when before it was quite easy and natural to keep your stats in goal. If we're going to bill ourselves as [Industry] Customer Relations, then we need to be more customer-service oriented, instead of GET 'EM IN THE STORE, SET THE APPOINTMENT, GO GO GO. It seems kind of obvious to the agents, but the Team Leads and upper management insist that we carry on with something that isn't working terribly well. But their solution is to beat us over the head with this ridiculous new method, then punish us when it doesn't work. This is a college and military town, so there's a constant crop of new blood. They can just fire, re-hire, rinse and repeat. We're not the goddamn problem.
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Jan 19, 2014 16:27
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foobyfooby posted:We're not the goddamn problem. Frankly, I think you need to take a deep breath and just stop caring. It's obvious that your company is a sinking ship in a dying industry. I hope you've been job-searching for awhile.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:53
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They've lowered our stats expectations for this year so that more people will meet their numbers. Significantly lowered. Like, you have to be retarded to miss some of these. Am I in bizarroland?
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Jan 19, 2014 19:01
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jassi007 posted:That sounds like a super complex gently caress you system. Our office has something like it but no where near as awful. Basically we get 1 occurance for a call off. But if your sick 2 days in a row, thats 1 occurrence. If your late its a .5 occurrence. 7 occurrences and your canned. They roll off 6 months + 1 day after the occurrence. So basically you can call off 6 times in 6 months which honestly is more than reasonable. Is this the one where it stops rolling after the 4th occurrence and after 6 month it ALL goes away, but if you get another occurrence, it takes another 6 months for it to all go away, so in theory you could be fired for being out 4 times in 2 years? If so, Hey, I'm on that exact same policy! ISP bros? If so, they're supposedly testing a new attendance policy that isn't as "gently caress YOU" as the other one.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:16
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Gothmog1065 posted:Is this the one where it stops rolling after the 4th occurrence and after 6 month it ALL goes away, but if you get another occurrence, it takes another 6 months for it to all go away, so in theory you could be fired for being out 4 times in 2 years? Nope, they don't all drop after 6 months or stop rolling after 4, it is just a constant rolling system, and people do abuse it. Basically there are a group of people that if you track their occurrences, you can tell within 2-4 days when they'll call off. Which honestly doesn't make a lot of sense to me, yeah these jobs are no fun but to just piss time away as soon as you possibly can always seems crazy to me. Save your time and take a loving week off now and then. You have to try super hard to get fired from my workplace because you can call off a lot. They've also made exceptions for multilingual techs. I know of one who has hit fire status at least twice but hey multilingual so they keep him. Our call center is not in a major city, so its not easy to replace people who speak 2+ languages.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:58
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martyrdumb posted:So? Whether or not you're right, you don't get to make those big decisions. I know I don't. I just really need to keep my job. I'm searching, yeah, but I can't make this kind of pay somewhere else and finances are very precarious at my house. I don't want to be let go without warning and that's what they're doing to people. It used to be a nice place to work.
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Jan 20, 2014 02:19
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jassi007 posted:Nope, they don't all drop after 6 months or stop rolling after 4, it is just a constant rolling system, and people do abuse it. Basically there are a group of people that if you track their occurrences, you can tell within 2-4 days when they'll call off. Which honestly doesn't make a lot of sense to me, yeah these jobs are no fun but to just piss time away as soon as you possibly can always seems crazy to me. Save your time and take a loving week off now and then. You have to try super hard to get fired from my workplace because you can call off a lot. They've also made exceptions for multilingual techs. I know of one who has hit fire status at least twice but hey multilingual so they keep him. Our call center is not in a major city, so its not easy to replace people who speak 2+ languages. Ours changed from that (with the added stipulations) because of the abuse. Not like it matters. T minus 4 days.
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Jan 20, 2014 05:17
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I use to abuse my medical condition caused sick days a TON at my last call center. I haven't been sick once in my new job, that I actually like. I legitimately am more healthy by not hating my job, its fantastic. And I enjoy going to work daily, OT and all... QUIT THE CALL CENTER! Tychtrip posted:I'm still young and naive, this is my second job (I'm 21) but first in a call centre, and despite only being here since April, I'm slowly learning that trying to be a decent employee by being punctual and never taking sick days really gets people nowhere here. SiGmA_X fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 05:26
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There really isn't anywhere to go. A coaching position that fosters new employees into the fold handles 20-25 new hires at a clip, so there's maybe 4 or 5 of those positions necessary and maybe some more floaters. After that you got floor supes who handle teams of 20, and that position is populated with fossils who never leave / never move up, because the positions above them primarily are hired from outside. If you're frontline phones the most you can manage is a second tier resolution position which isn't any better than being frontline and maybe pays a pittance more.
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Jan 22, 2014 05:43
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You need to go to the dark side!
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Jan 23, 2014 02:32
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English as a second language prorate billing explanation  EDIT I actually can't say anything bad about the job lately. I finally got a schedule change approved to get me off the hell Saturdays, and I got a pay bump today, fully understanding these are morsels released to keep me spinning in the wheel, but yeah. Loving Life Partner fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 18:40
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I applied to work at a call center (bad idea probably, but I just have to get out of my current job because I am pretty sure I am getting fired), and in the interview they said something that sounded weird to me. It's a service industry call center that said that how they process incoming calls, order, and tickets will change rapidly based on volume. So one time they'll says, "Do it XXX and give them an estimated time of arrival" then five minutes later they will say, "Do it YYY and don't quote a time." That seems really odd to me. Is that a red flag, outside of it being probably a terrible job anyway?
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Jan 29, 2014 02:55
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Magnetic North posted:I applied to work at a call center (bad idea probably, but I just have to get out of my current job because I am pretty sure I am getting fired), and in the interview they said something that sounded weird to me. gently caress call centers BTW 
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Jan 29, 2014 03:55
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Every now and then I check with my old co-workers to see if they're continuing to report things to the anonymous ethics hotline. They always complain about how things are worse, and if I ask about the hotline, they say they never reported to it.
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Jan 29, 2014 03:56
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Magnetic North posted:I applied to work at a call center (bad idea probably, but I just have to get out of my current job because I am pretty sure I am getting fired), and in the interview they said something that sounded weird to me. Back when I was working tech support we had variable times for different tickets. Doesn't seem that strange to me.
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Jan 29, 2014 18:31
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Generally in my helpdesk we either have a specific time frame to quote for an issue, which we only did if it was part of the knowledgebase article for that specific issue. Otherwise we NEVER gave a time frame because whatever estimate we give a user in most cases, it's going to be wrong. Like if I escalate a ticket to another group I will tell the caller something like I have escalated your ticket into the queue for this assignment group, tickets are handled in the order they are received. If they press for a time I'll just say that we do not have access to that information, which is the truth. I don't know how busy any other teams are.
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Jan 29, 2014 20:07
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I accepted a position at Verizon. I hope it works out and is good. People at my current job keep telling me its bad (mainly my superiors). But the ones working at the Verizon call center is great. The wildcards are: 1 former employee I know said it was a good place. Another said it was bad...but...they would go back there in a heartbeat if they didn't make her work a later shift? I almost didn't take it. My last interview the person asking the questions was basically browsing the web on their phone and texting. I almost wanted to take the packet and just write down my answers and slide it back because they had no idea what I was saying. It was pretty bad, if I didn't hate my current work environment I would have walked out. Anyone work at a verizon call center or have experience there?
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Feb 3, 2014 14:42
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So I worked at a call center in Bogart, Georgia for about a day a couple years back, and I think the only thing I learned is that I probably have Social Anxiety Disorder. I don't understand how people do it. I know this sounds lame as hell but I literally had a panic attack complete with tremors and sweating once I started getting on the phones. I cannot cope with cold-calling 150 people a day who all hate you and not knowing precisely what to say for every situation.
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Feb 4, 2014 19:26
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HOTLANTA MAN posted:cold-calling Here's your problem. Find an inbound call center, and preferable one that's more customer service focused and not focused on selling or upselling. You will be a million times happier. Cold calling is the god drat devil. At one point at a previous job they asked me if I wanted to switch from my inbound role to an outbound cold calling role, and even though it would have been more money I declined because gently caress that poo poo. E: VVV The power balance shifts significantly when the customer is dependent on you and not the other way around. WampaLord fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 19:35
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WampaLord posted:Here's your problem. Find an inbound call center, and preferable one that's more customer service focused and not focused on selling or upselling. You will be a million times happier. This is not true. You'll be about 5% happier. Most of your callers will still hate you.
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Feb 4, 2014 19:36
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So how do I do that FMLA thing people were posting about?
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Feb 4, 2014 23:25
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Sub Rosa posted:So how do I do that FMLA thing people were posting about? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry. Basically a doctor has to sign off on something that says you need sudden time off for said thing.
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Feb 5, 2014 02:25
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I worked at a cold call sales business for a few months doing admin. The people that loved it and were good at it were insane and hard to socialize with, haha. The rest were just college kids trying to make extra money who'd break down and quit 3 weeks in.
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Feb 5, 2014 03:28
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Go away winter storms, I don't want forced overtime At about 2pm yesterday they came around telling about 75% of the 8-5 agents that they had to stay till 7pm. Now we got an email saying they're not forcing for Monday yet, but they haven't met their overtime requirement. I'm trying to decide if I want to volunteer or not.
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Feb 8, 2014 00:19
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