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Ugh. Gotta' go back in tomorrow after a week off. I really don't want to. One week off, and my skin has magically cleared up instead of being the acne cesspool it was becoming. I also feel...better about myself. Been there for over 3 years. I'm bored as hell with the job, and I'm looking elsewhere now. I gotten to the point where I flat out don't like MYSELF when I'm there...I feel mean and exhausted and impatient. My co-workers are mostly nice enough, the pay is really good for the kind of work it is, but the job itself has gotten brutal and exhausting. Part of it is just general burnout, part of it is due to new standards on the phone that make you spend most of your time arguing with everybody and practally penalize you for NOT giving completely lovely customer service, and part of it is just a slow, steady increase in corporate bullshit. My new manager also kind of drives me nuts. My QA average has dropped 5% in the past 2 months since he took over. And when I DID get a perfect score on a QA, he still included a note in the comments on how "this isn't the most complicated call we take." He's nice enough to my face, and generally honest, but there's something about him that makes me DREAD any facetime or feedback from him. I kind of get the feeling that everything I say is being stored to use against me at a later time. I'm not alone in this. So, yeah. It's greener pastures time. I'll continue to do my job competently. I'll even do some OT, but only because I have to pay for a crown for a tooth I probably broke due to gritting them so much at work. But we're done pushing.
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Jul 13, 2010 06:28
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Mr Plow posted:Would you recommend against working in a call center? Do I have a fair chance of making $14 an hour? $16? How boring does it get? How rampant is the abuse from customers? From supervisors? How stressful in genenral is the job? Do you get much down time between calls? How casual/enjoyable does the atmosphere tend to be? Do your fellow employees tend to be cool or insufferable? How exhausting is the job? It's not a bad option if you're leaving a situation that's even worse. I worked as a retail manager prior to doing this. And that was far worse. I make more than $16 an hour. I'm in the minority. Most other people I know who do call center work make in the 10-12 per hour range. Abuse from customers? Depends on the companies policies. I really only have to give you one warning and then I can just end it. Abuse from supervisors? Abuse, no. As in, my supervisor does not scream at me. But my job is kind of a parade of corporate B.S. and pettiness. Down time? Sometimes it's back to back, sometimes it's pretty quiet. 80% of the time is back to back. I do about 70-75 calls per day if it is back to back, quieter days max out ~45. Stressful? Not really. I've been at this for so long I can beat any metric the company wants to throw at me. But definitely demoralizing and repetitive. Casual/enjoyable? Well, we're now down to the point where we can wear jeans and polos. Which is fairly casual. But enjoyable? Not at all. Employees? Some are OK. Some are insufferable. You do bond with them, because they're the only ones who understand. But we're not really a holiday party, "lets all go to the bar after work!" kind of company. Exhausting? Sometimes I go home and feel way more tired than I did after a day of setting planograms at Target. At least you have something to be slightly proud of when you finish building an endcap and it looks pretty.
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Jul 20, 2010 05:52
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Merry Christmas, everyone. Unfortunately, I will be spending the day in hell answering calls from the kinds of crackheads who call their insurance company on X-mas day. Oh, and I don't even get holiday pay for it, because Christmas falls on a Saturday. What a cheap and lame company.
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Dec 25, 2010 15:17
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Loving Life Partner posted:I know the general consensus of a call center is a toxic environment, but I've really never worked at a better place, everyone is so cool and upbeat. I've interviewed with them for Claims Adjuster positions. Got rejected by Flo, though. Insurance factory wasn't bad. Until bigger insurance factory took over. Now, it's the kind of company people run screaming from. Just got a verbal warning for "negative reliability points," from my manager. As of December 29th, I had 5 reliability points left. I'd explain this system, but it makes your head hurt, much like everything else there does. Got an ear infection. Called in on December 30th. I figured this would take me to -3 reliability points, which is OK...you can go to -7 before there's a problem. However, it was decided that because December 30th was the day before a holiday, that day counted for 10 reliability points. Bringing me down to -5 reliability points. Oh, and my perfect attendance bonus for December of 2009 rolled off as of January 1st, which knocked me to -7 reliability points. The magic bad number. Meaning I had to sit there and have a 20 minute talk with a manager that I generally avoid talking to, because I truly don't like or trust the guy. He attempted to justify this POS system, I told him it was the most retarded thing I'd ever encountered in a company in my entire life and generally is something that is used at $10 an hour call centers where they don't care about turnover, not on insurance professionals. Oh, and we're getting smaller cubicles soon too. Not because there's a bunch of hiring, in which case I could understand it. It's because company we were bought-out-by has determined that our old company gave us too large of cubicles that make it too easy for us to socialize with each other. So we need to be downsized to smaller cubicles. So I can be closer to my sick co-workers who are coming in with full blown flu's so they can avoid losing reliability points. I hate this place. I just had an interview for a leasing consultant position for an apartment complex. Less money, have to work both Saturdays and Sundays...don't think I care.
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Jan 19, 2011 15:19
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Loving Life Partner posted:I was surprised when I learned we do use gender as a rating factor. I guess there's enough statistical data to override the seemingly obvious bias factors. Also, Good Student Discounts solely exist because they make parents happy. 16 year old "A" student drivers and "F" student drivers are statistically equally crappy. But if you don't offer it, parents get pissy and threaten to move to companies that are willing to still offer it, so, nobody gets rid of it. Explaining the credit scoring thing SUCKS. The only people at my company who call in to complain about it are people who have great credit, who get this thing saying their credit sucks for reasons that make no sense what so ever. Typical Conversation: INSD: WHY ARE YOU SAYING THAT MY CREDIT IS BAD, AND I'M NOT GETTING THE BEST RATE! Me: Your credit is excellent, but it's a few points away from perfect. As pretty much everyone's is. We have Lexis Nexis run the report, they pull up the number, see that it's almost perfect but not quite, then pick whatever reason they think is closest as to why it's not perfect. We're just legally required to let you know what reasons they give us. INSD: THEY SAY MY ACCOUNTS AREN'T OPEN LONG ENOUGH (insert story of how they have two credit cards, both for 30 years). Me: Pretty much all they're saying is that it's slightly lower than it would have been because someone has had two credit cards for 40 years. INSD: THAT'S STUPID. Me: Yeah, but that's how it works. You're still in one of our best markets overall, and there is a number on your document if you want to order a copy of what they pulled. We then discuss how the letter is insulting (which it sort of is, but it used to be a lot worse), then they try to figure out what the BEST RATE is (I don't know, hell, you're probably getting it), then they either storm off to find another carrier or I have them calmed down enough to shut them up (it's 50/50). Good times.
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Mar 6, 2011 04:25
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Yes, but I imagine the thread here is that kids with better grades are more responsible, therefore less likely to take risks, therefore less likely to get into an accident. I don't know this for sure, but I think what happens is that an "A" student is kind of like a 30 year old who gets their license for the first time. A 30 year old who just starts driving isn't any better than a 16 year old that does. The A-B level student and the 30 year old are probably both too timid when they first start, and they both get into a lot of accidents because of this. The D student is probably too aggressive and takes risks and gets into accidents because of that. In other news...some massive auto accident happened on the way to work this morning. It made me, and everyone who starts at the same time I do that takes I-70 in, 15 minutes late. This, along with my "relaibility bonus" for last march rolling off (yes, they actually TAKE AWAY POINTS THEY GIVE YOU FOR PERFECT ATTENDANCE A YEAR LATER, which makes zero sense whatsoever), will cause me to develop negative "reliability points" as of April 1st. Meaning, once my manager notices, I will be written up for it, even though I get a big whack of them back in Mid-April. Screw this company. It's the most persnickety place I've ever seen in my life. I don't mind insurance, but I'm so burned out on this job and this company that I'd gladly clean porta-potties if it paid enough. Also: I really love how if I happen to send a single text message while in between calls, I get a passive-aggressive E-mail about company policy while I'm doing it. So does the coworker behind me. But the girl who sits facing me can make personal phone calls on her cell phone at her desk for 15 minutes out of every hour, and nothing EVER gets said to her. Also, she spends the entire day doing her makeup and spraying this cheap-rear end-headache-inducing-fake-designer-Family-Dollar-knockoff-perfume all over herself. It's really freaking irritating. Nobody cares how you look, honey. It's a call center. And you don't want any of the guys who work here anyway, TRUST ME.
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Mar 11, 2011 08:21
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greazeball posted:Is there any kind of work from home available when it's email only? gently caress having non-consecutive days off. What kind of rear end in a top hat makes a schedule like that? Very, very common. Actually pretty much every schedule I've had in my life has been kind of like that, at any job. Right now, I get Sunday/Monday off. It's kind of nice, having the two days in a row, but I wouldn't mind going back to split days off. 5 days in a row doing really repetitive work can kind of grate on you, sometimes it's nice to do 3, have a day off, then do 2 more.
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Mar 21, 2011 05:04
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Loving Life Partner posted:AUX TIME AND BUSY SEASON From one of your main competitors: We do have AHT, and failing at it can be a fireable offense. A 10 year veteran was fired for it, despite perfect attendance for 3 years and sparkling QA/customer satisfaction scores. In my department, which mostly assists agents, they've dropped by over a minute over the last 4 years (from 420 to 350). We've made some system improvements that do make the calls go faster, but not that much faster. Plus, we're constantly getting new levels of administrative scutwork added (make sure you're mentioning some kind of product or service on EVERY SINGLE CALL, and if they don't have an E-mail address on file, you have to harass them until they give it to you. Then make a policy change. Which takes 60 seconds of ACW to process). My AHT exceeds standards, but it's getting harder and harder to keep it there. I'm looking for some new things. Toying with either getting my state insurance license to sell, learning underwriting, or a complete career change. The final straw was watching a rep with 3.5 years of tenure, who was one of the better ones at their job, get fired. For "negative reliability points" (I'd explain, but explaining the system makes my head hurt. Lets just say that it requires IT'S OWN WEBSITE to calculate.). On take your daughter to work day. In front of her 11 year old daughter. That kind of made me think about what I do (which is basically, play a bureaucrat and repeat the same things over and over again 75-85 times a day, with a metaphorical knife against my neck) and who I do it for (a company that, since they've been bought out, has went from being a slightly annoying corporation to the most overbearing place I've ever worked). I don't care how busy they are (and we are extremely busy at this time of year), I will no longer do OT for them, because that's time that can be better spent with friends and on hobbies and looking for other jobs. Honestly, I'm a bit overpaid at this point, but my sanity is worth a pay cut.
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May 19, 2011 06:05
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I've got 3.5 more weeks left before I take a two week vacation, then move to a slightly lower paying, but more professional and laid back call center position doing banking instead of insurance. I can't wait. My give a drat is busted. I called in the day after I found out I got the new job because that evening I needed to celebrate by getting wasted and singing karaoke. I'm taking extra smoke breaks, my AHT has went from 300 to nearly 400 seconds, and if I feel like taking 5 minutes to go check my simulated baseball teams, I will. I also am really looking forward to that exit interview. I look forward to telling them that Liberty Mutual (gently caress it, lets reveal) is the most bureaucratic, overbearing, micromanaged and mismanged company I've ever seen. Everyone's either getting fired, about to get fired, or planning to jump ship as quickly as possible. My team is supposed to have 15 people. After I leave, they will have 6. Oh, and they're taking the Central Region Express claims team in my office (one of the busiest groups), laying them all off within the next 9 months, and hiring new people in St. Louis. But Mountain Express claims will still be there, even though they'll flat out admit they're dead as hell.
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Jun 24, 2011 04:07
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Loving Life Partner posted:God I hate the flippant comparison. They're the most worthless things you can possibly say to me, you may as well literally just go 'wah wuh wah wah wah wah wuh wuh wuh' like the teacher from Charlie Brown, that is as useful as saying "my neighbor has 3 Dodge Viper's with amazing coverage and only pays $50 a month!" or whatever. Uh huh. Switch to his company then. My favorites, back when i was in insurance, was dealing with the agents/clients that were mad over the replacement cost estimates for their house. The company i was with would not insure for anything under what we determined to be replacement cost, PERIOD, NO EXCEPTIONS! "The economy is so bad right now, i could get it done for 1/2 that!" That's not going to be the case the next time a hurricane or tornado rips through your area and damages a couple hundred homes. "My house wouldn't sell for that much!!!" Sales and replacement cost have NOTHING to do with each other!!!! It may cost only 300k to replace a house that would sell for 800k in San Fran. It also may take 150k to rebuild a house that might sell for 100k in Armpit, Alabama. Sucks, but it's how the world works. I loved it when i could win them over...it just rarely happened. My current call center bites so much less. No AHT to worry about (just make sure you spend, over an entire quarter, 80% of your time talking to a client or ready to do so), no retarded and petty Catholic School style point system for every loving thing imaginable, actual time off the phones to do other things, plenty of opportunities for advancement and other departments to move to that are FAR less phone based. It's still a call center, and not what i want to do forever, but it's way less toxic and stressful.
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Dec 23, 2012 19:45
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Boomer The Cannon posted:I don't want to burst your bubble, but that doesn't mean poo poo. Try again in a year or so, when the labor well has gone dry. If i'm not mistaken, LLP works in insurance, which tends to be slightly less brutal and better paying than most call center work. And since it often requires licenses and months of expensive, company provided training, you generally have to be pretty bad to be let go. My company is planning on moving us from 3 seperate buildings into one mega building in about 2 years, plus move more jobs out of other cities to lovely Denver when this happens. Hopefully more off the phone jobs, which we do have plenty of here, but the competition is fierce for them.
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Feb 8, 2013 04:31
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I haven't felt the need to do this for a long time, but after a couple of epically lovely days, I'm going to vent my spleen. 1) To the Californian douchebag coworker...as a general standard, it will take 24-48 hours to get a checking account number for them. This is due to the PATRIOT ACT verification process. I do not have the capability of speeding this up. Our department does not open these accounts, this is handled by operations. No, you cannot speak to my bosses boss about this...but as a way of placating you, I'll reach out to my support group and see what options are available. Do you mind holding? Oh, you do. Well, whatever, can I get your phone number so I can call you back. Yes, I understand I can look you up in the company directory, but, really, it's not like I'm asking you for the loving moon here. Fine, I'll call you back. Oh, look, per my support group, there is no way to speed this up through us, you can TRY reaching out to operations, but they still won't make guarantees. When I call you back to advise this, don't get huffy with me. And when I wish you to have a nice evening (because, hey, I'm doing OT today...normally I work the afternoon/evening shift), don't say "it's morning here" then hang up. And then don't send me an e-mail showing how you got it escalated and taken care of (NO THANKS TO YOU), you passive-aggressive-gray-faced-two-dollar-haircut-wearing-sleazebag-fucktard. 2) Get a call that a guy is upset because when he paid off a massive loan, the payoff amount was higher than he was quoted. Like, in the several thousands higher. I can tell this guy isn't pleasant on a good day, but I manage to get him somewhat placated, give him my direct extension, and have my manager pull calls to see if he can find out where the discreprancy is. We made took the payment electronically with a person from the another department serving as a mouthpiece for him without him on the line (bad call, but gray area), and gave them the correct number, but said person from other department gave him a payoff quote that didn't factor in the interest he'd earned this month. GREAT!!!!!! This is in no way, shape, or form, my fault, but I'm now tasked with calling this rude, impatient old man back to advise him of this. He is going to want those several thousands given back to him. I get to tell him that we're not doing it. He is going to escalate, guaranteed, but my manager doesn't seem to want to talk to him, despite the fact that this needs to go WAY above me. I really don't care at this point, as a matter of fact, I want it to escalate just to get it the hell off my desk where it shouldn't be in the first place. I've started smoking again, if only at work and when drinking. God, it feels good.
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Mar 22, 2013 05:44
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cuntvalet posted:I'm not sure how I'm still here. The job market in my city is horrendous and I only have my beginner's for driving. Is there a grocery store or a Wal-Mart nearby? Even that sounds better than the pure hell you're being put through. Keep the resume updated. Showing you've been at what-everyone-in-town-likely-knows-is-a-crap-job for a long time at least shows you can handle a ton of BS, and sometimes, that's all you need.
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Mar 27, 2013 21:21
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cuntvalet posted:Just more proof that the centre I work in is no more mature than a highschool. Is that a shared experience for most call centers? Low morale places are like that in general. High school students tend to have low morale -- they're in a place they don't want to be, doing things they're not excited about, in a place where the rules seem pointless and arbitrary. Call centers have a strong tendency to be like this, therefore a high school mentality takes hold. Save the comment as documentation, block them from your personal accounts, and give them a major cold shoulder at work. I wouldn't go to HR unless she escalates it further, but if she does, have that ready to go.
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Apr 2, 2013 19:24
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Aerofallosov posted:I feel bad for it, but at my old job where you had to 'queue' for a break on this web page and hope to grab one of the slots (and not get a call as you clicked into the spot) I grew to DESPISE smokers because they would hog all of the breaks. Yeah, I get it, you NEED your 6 ciggies but sweet Jesu Christi, I just wanted ONE measily 15 minute break. What kind of loving center can't even get it together enough to schedule breaks evenly amongst workers? And how the hell is this legal?
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Apr 5, 2013 06:32
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Loving Life Partner posted:I saw an anniversary for someone celebrating their 47th year with the company. I looked them up on the employee database and they're basically doing my job. I'm sure they're crosstrained 8 different ways from sunday, but they're still frontline phones. I have a woman on my team at work that's been there for 30 years. She's done back office operations, worked face to face with people in branches, even managed a team for a while. Now, she's on the bank line, which is considered the absolute bottom of the company. BUT it's also generally the lowest in tems of stress, doesn't require you to have a bunch of licenses to keep up to date, and I'm sure she still gets paid 50% more than i do to do the same job. At her age, i doubt i'd bother doing much more either.
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Apr 7, 2013 17:04
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My call center team won an award for having the best client service for the month of march. So my boss and my bosses boss want to spend some of the extra team outing money we get for this to make our area look more "lively." Admittedly, our group isn't one for massive personal decoration...most of us are 23-33 year old men, along with one 50 year old woman who loves football and tequila more than any of us. In any case, they forced us to watch this for inspiration on ways to liven up our areas. http://www.netpromotersystem.com/videos/trailblazer-video/zappos-trailblazer.aspx Zappo's looks like a nightmare to me. Clutter everywhere, forced zaniness, everyone ringing bells and shaking pom-poms and trying to hide their clinical depression. It's what companies do when they need to fake high morale. The 3 times my job has made me watch the video, I felt like i was gagging on frosting.
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Apr 23, 2013 16:48
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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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Starting Wednesday, I will no longer be a CONSTANT phone monkey. I will be spending 3 hours per day doing online chat. Not 100% sure this is a good thing, but I figure being yelled at over text is better than being yelled at over the phone.
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Aug 31, 2013 02:53
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WampaLord posted:For me, it was taking a mental attitude of "That call is over with, I never have to talk to that person again" after the bad calls and trying not to focus on those. I tried to focus on the "good" calls where customers were friendly and grateful for my help. As soon as I left the building for the day, I threw on my earbuds and blasted some jams that would pick me up and get me dancing/singing. I would never talk about work outside of work, except maybe to tell friends dumb customer stories for a laugh. 55k, a paid day off per month for perfect attendance, and no "smart routing" to make sure you got the same idiots repeatedly? I think I could live with that. Even as a permanent career move.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:30
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Shadowhand00 posted:This guy sounds like he's about the cry at any moment: That asshat would have been disconnected by me by second 30. Even if he were to give me a bad survey, causing my manager to listen to the call, the WORST I'd get is a minor talking to. If it were a trend, we'd escalate to a special group that can actually close the person's account and blacklist them from doing business with us again.
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Sep 13, 2013 15:51
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Ball Cupper posted:Man, there's a couple of changes going to be happening around my place. My department takes calls from our stores from across the UK, all internal stuff (speaking to store staff). I don't know how it compares to standard customer service call centres, but I like to think we had it pretty good. 9 hour work day, two ten minute breaks and one half an hour lunch break, pretty much trusted to take care of ourselves (then again we are a team of like 25 people). Half of our jobs doesn't even involve going on the phones (and some of us have other tasks to be doing). Update your resume and get moving. The second a place starts instituting those kind of rules (clapping for a bathroom break? Are you loving serious?), it's going to become hell to work for in a very, very short time. From what I've seen, it takes acts of GOD to roll poo poo like that back.
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Sep 15, 2013 06:02
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Bovril Delight posted:Bad faith lawsuits are serious cash. It's not a property damage claim at that point. If you owe the claim and you don't pay up, you can expect at least a DOI complaint and at worst a bad faith claim. If someone just started a policy or added coverage and you can't prove fraud, you're paying the claim. The insurance company I used to work for would go into their systems to find out the exact time of day the policy was taken out or reinstated if a claim was filed for something that happened that day. If it was just a case of crappy luck, we'll probably pay. If it was clearly a case of you taking out the policy after the accident, you're screwed. In call center related news...so far, my three hours a day on the chat line is an exercise in tedium. Because I don't take direct chats, I get transferred 1-3 chats per 3 hour shift on that line. Mostly I dick around online and occasionally answer questions for other team members. It's nice to kind of chill, but it gets kind of dull. I asked if I could start studying for some financial licenses to begin career progression (might as well do something with my time), but our next enrollment for that isn't until next year. So, for now anyway, I will luxuriate in my boredom.
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Sep 25, 2013 15:15
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Loving Life Partner posted:Oh. If you ply your dumb manager to talk about their life and plans during a stat meeting then they just gloss over the stats and say "on with you little scamp" even if they'd grill you about something dumb normally. Ugh. Dogs work on mine. Every time.
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Nov 10, 2013 19:09
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Going to vent... For the last 3 hours of each shift, I jump off the phones and take chats from clients instead. I kind of like the change, for the most part, and a lot of evenings it's pretty laid back. Volumes have been steadily increasing since I started about 3 months ago, though. When I'm on this chat shift, there's one other person in another of our centers who is on with me. Each one of us is supposed to take about 1/2 of the chats. The key word is "SUPPOSED." See, this person spends 2 or more hours out of her 3 hour chat shift sitting in unavailable. Or, she'll be in ready, have a chat sent to her, not press the "Accept" button within 45 seconds, and get pushed into "Chat Timeout." Which she'll sit in for, oh, an hour or so or more, causing that chat and ALL subsequent ones to be pushed to me during that time. I barely know this rep, but I kind of hate her. Tonight I was running two chats at a time all evening, taking complaints galore, while she (I'm assuming, not being able to see her in person) sat there fingering herself while staring at her phone or something. Not that I always stare at my screen all evening either, especially when it's slow, but when you're in chat, you turn the sound on your computer so you can hear the tone when one comes in. She's also known for being a total bitch to our second level support group, screws up stuff constantly, and pretty much forced one of the junior reps on my team to do something she is completely untrained to do and not allowed to do while she is. Management totally does not care. Listen, if you don't want to do the chat line, that's fine. Turn it over to someone who does. I have three reps on my team asking to be a part of it just because of the resume boosting opportunity and the fact it gets you off the phones for a few hours a day. Your team in Phoenix probably has the same situation. I'm sure they'd be better at it than you.
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Dec 17, 2013 06:05
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Fil5000 posted:This environment was oriented more towards call success rate than it was towards literally any other metric. It used to drive me insane because people were left with double the average handling time of the centre overall with nothing at all done about it because their success rate was high. This despite plenty of other people managing to get nearly as high a success rate without taking anywhere near as long. We have that kind of thing at my work. There is literally no formal Average Handle Time standard to meet. QA also doesn't rate calls on a point system...you get graded on basic behaviors, a couple sentences on what you did well at, and a couple of sentences on what you could have done better. You keep AHT under control through more subtle means: 80% of your time must be spent either on a call or ready to take a call. If you don't, no quarterly bonus for you! Also, the fastest way to piss off ANY manager is to be an employee who has 20-21-22% "Wrap/Idle" for most of the quarter, then spend the last two weeks trying to jam it below 20%. If you always average about a 18%-19%, though, most managers will never say a word to you about it. The big thing, though: there is NO ANONYMITY at all when it comes to stats. I, and any other employee, can pull up the stats of each and every person in the company simply by typing a few keystrokes into an internal website. One of my off the phone roles is actually to send my team our stats on a weekly basis. I don't do the discipline about it, I just send it. Almost everyone on my team is in a pretty narrow range, though I dread sending it out because I invariably will have to hear the one guy who's average handle time is about a minute lower than everyone else's gloating about being "AHT CHAMPION!" for the rest of the day. 
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Jan 6, 2014 04:04
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martyrdumb posted:Can you send it out at the end of the day so there's no time to gloat? Sometimes I do. He'll still just throw it out there randomly. He's moving to a new position in a few weeks. I doubt he will be AHT champion there.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:09
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When I was in insurance, if the dealership called me, I would take 4 pieces of imformation from them: make, model, VIN and lienholder. The clients fumbled around for ages to get the last two. I then requested to talk to the insured for everything else. No, I'm not changing coverages at your request. No, I will not make the change and place an outbound call to the insured. And I've hung up on more than a few of them for having attitudes...I took enough from the insureds, the car dealers could pretty much go gently caress themselves.
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Jan 7, 2014 16:47
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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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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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2 more weeks fully on the phones. Then I transfer to the new account verification dept. 3 hours a day on the phones verifying that people are who they say they are, the rest is operational. It's considered a lateral move. Lose my shift differential, but I do get a salary bump that makes up for most of it. I'm pretty happy about the move. The company decided to train a bunch of new people in my department on chat (which I really liked) relegating me to chat backup. I also got voluntold to take overflow calls for another department. To take these calls, I received ONE DAY of training (which covered nothing I actually get questions on) and no on job learning. I feel like a moron when I can't answer the clients basic questions, when I know that they're expecting me to be able to. It's also reduced my interest in ever going to that department from "not very interested, but I might as means to an end," to "no way in hell." Add in a new and ridiculous adherence standard, and I decided to jump when the possibilty presented itself. Hope I made the right decision, but I'm ready.
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Feb 16, 2014 00:39
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3 days of training my new position. So far, it seems like it will be a pretty good spot, despite requiring a crazy amount of attention of detail. The good news...I won't be on the phone for 3-4 months. At all. It's pure processing until then. After that, it's 3-4 hours per day on the phone, the rest processing and risk analyzing. I think I'm going to like this.
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Mar 6, 2014 04:00
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New position requires only 4 hours a day on the phone. So far, I like it, and even the phone portion isn't too bad. Except for on thing... Each day, we get an email stating who met productivity standards and who did not, written in a dickish tone, by a senior manager who's not even in our center. I had the day off yesterday (got a new dog, wanted to get him acclimated to his new home). Came in today to this email: Hello, you were on the phones for 0% of the time you were scheduled. Please provide your manager an explanation as to why. I shot back an email to him and copied in my manager stating: Hello, Please refer to the vacation calendar screenshot listed below. I was approved for this day off. I will be on the phones at my scheduled time today. If you have any further questions, contact my manager. Thank you! This apparently pissed him off...but it got results! Email was later sent to the entire team from my manager stating "we will be handling this differently starting tomorrow. However, if you have to email him or anyone else, please be positive and professional." Provided I don't get a write up (99% chance of not) I won!
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Apr 10, 2014 17:06
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Nocheez posted:I think you handled it perfectly. You can always claim that you thought you were being polite and accurate. Nocheez posted:I think you handled it perfectly. You can always claim that you thought you were being polite and accurate. I think I was being polite. A bit firm, as at the VERY least he should be checking that kind of thing before making the schedule and sending the email accusing me of being a slacker.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:23
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My old department had public metrics, but you really wouldn't be talked to about them by anyone but your manager. I was actually in charge of sending out a weekly email that had everyone on my team listed on it, along with metrics used to determine if you bonus. I usually sent it with no comment, though near the end of each quarter I might say "two weeks left to go. If you see something you don't like, nows your chance to change it!" This department is much smaller. With no public stats. And actually no formal metrics for the phones as of yet. What the manager was doing was saying "Thank you to (list of people who met my arbitrary standard). There were x # of people who didn't meet my arbitrary standard. Please send your manager an email stating why." Then you'd get a private email like the one I got before. Me and another guy did get pulled into a conference room by our direct managers to be told our emails were a bit "icy," but they understood why we were upset. The manager sending this out has never managed people on the phones before. Mine was a phone rep for 16 years before moving on to management. That sort of stuff used to irritate him too. The manager monitoring this now just going to send the info to them, they'll talk to us if they have questions. We even had a chance to discuss possible things that could be done to make things a bit easier and more efficient in general, on both the processing and phone side. It actually wasn't bad. And I met the arbitrary standards in my phone shift yesterday.
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Apr 11, 2014 14:44
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I'm so glad I'm not a core customer service rep right now... Shift bids are coming for them. Rumor is everyone is getting pushed to a 4 day week. Which is nice, sometimes, but can be a bear if you have kids in daycare and stuff. Also, the number of hours each shift is won't be consistent. You'll get 40 hours, but it might be 3 12 hour days and a 4 hour one. Or 11 one day, 9 the next, 12 the next, and then an 8. People hate that. And are updating their resumes. Mine has decided to do a shift bid EVERY quarter. You get 4 options: 7-3:30, 7:30-4, 8-4:30, or 8:30-5. All Monday-Friday. 90% of people wanted the 7-3:30, so the manager is going to try to rotate who gets that each quarter. I get wanting to keep everyone happy, but it's not like anyone has particularily awful hours in this department. I got the 8:30-5, which wasn't my first choice, but still works OK for public transport and such. I just don't see the need to do a mega shuffle every three months because Johnny is whining about having to do a 7:30-4 rather than a 7-3:30 because his 5 mile drive might take an extra 10 minutes. It's not like we're making you work until midnight. Suck it up! Most people here have crazy hours. It's the nature of the beast. Be happy you're not in the core customer service lines and getting some nutso 11AM to 9:30 PM shift that includes weekends.
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Apr 25, 2014 14:54
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The thing is, none of the hours are that bad at all. I prefer the later start times myself. My first choice was 8-4:30 because that lets me take a light rail that gets me downtown when buses run to my area every 5 minutes. 8:30-5 means I'll be getting downtown when they're running more like every 10-15, which is still acceptable, so no biggie.
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Apr 25, 2014 17:50
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I had a 4x10 Mon, Tue, Fri, Sat when i first started at my current firm. I kind of liked it. Have a bad day? At most, you're working one more before a day off. On Saturdays we didn't have to be in until 10, so you could still go out Friday night and be OK enough to handle Saturday.
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Apr 25, 2014 19:50
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Loving Life Partner posted:Guess who moved to Illinois and landed another job in a call center 140? Doing licensed agent stuff? That's insane. The licensed agents at Safeco averaged 50 in an 8 hour day, maybe 65 in a 10 hour day. My department, which helped independent agents rather than doing policy changes themselves, averaged 70 per person per day, 90-ish for a 10 hour day. How can you actually take that many calls?
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Jun 7, 2014 13:39
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 10:21 |
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News: As of 11/1, I am reduced (along with the rest of my department, to 4 hours a day on the phone instead of 5. Normally, I'd be overjoyed. But, sadly, the phones are my favorite part of the job. The rest of it is mind-numbing processing, arguments over minute procedures that can get you smacked by a QA department that isn't even on the same page with each other, generalized office politics, and being talked down to by management and reps from the other site who handles what we do that think they're better than we are. We've lost 4 people in the last month. I've had a couple interviews elsewhere, but no luck. Think I'll keep trucking and applying. I will say being able to stick the words "risk analyst" on my resume has helped, even though my job consists of looking for flag on new accounts and manning a hot line to fix them.
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Oct 24, 2014 19:33
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