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I've been on the floor now for 2 months, long enough to just about have everything nailed down. The only serious problem I'm having is leaving early. I wont use the term we use for obvious reasons, but if call volume is low (almost everyday), you can just apply to take off for the day, and the only thing it ever hurts is your paycheck. Unfortunately I do it a lot, and a lot of people I work with do the same, it's incredibly addictive and in the end, really sucks. It's such a weird job doing tech support/billing overflow. I've had a lot of jobs, and on paper this is the best job I've ever had. It's just strange for me. In previous jobs I could say "This job aint bad" or "This job is loving cake" or "This job is horrible and I'm quitting on my break". But this job? I have no loving clue how to feel about it. I'm lazy so I know that's part of the reason I always want to leave early, but I can't tell if it's also because some part of me hates what I do. I don't like having to hop back on the phones, and I don't like waiting between calls for that beep, trying to read a book in paragraph intervals so I don't stare through the wall. The customers usually suck, but don't have a huge impact on my emotions. The only time I get bothered is when I have to confidently explain a policy that I personally find bullshit and unfair and nonsensical to a customer that feels (and rightly so) the exact same about it. The only problem is, it's my fault somehow. I don't know how the rest of you feel but I genuinely try to get the customer's problem resolved, and get a good feeling when I relieve someone else's stress about a situation they can't control. On the flipside, I don't like constantly hearing about how terrible my company is (especially when it comes after explaining a bullshit policy). Then there's the metrics, two of which are almost entirely out of our control. If the customer calls back for ANY reason in the next few days, one of my major metrics get hit. It's pretty loving bullshit when most of the calls you get are people that have already called but didn't get the answer they wanted, or people who call just about every drat day. Anyway, I guess after writing all this out I feel a little less vague about my feelings for my job. It's the best job I've ever had. The pay is above average and plenty to live on, the benefits are amazing, I've got more vacation time/sick time/do what the gently caress you want time/leave early time/voluntary overtime whenever I want. I sit in a comfy chair and get to read books or draw or do whatever the hell, and at least every other day, 2 hours of my shift are spent in meetings or trainings or just being able to stay off the phone and do absolutely nothing. This is a great company to work for I only wish I could enjoy the work a bit more. edit: If you work/have worked for the same company as me (what I've posted will most likely give it away), please don't mention the name as they have a dept just for searching the internet for opinions on the company from customers and inadvertantly, employees. Just tip your hat and join me in solidarity. fret logic fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jan 28, 2011 |
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Jan 28, 2011 04:41
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 12:50 |
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I just wish customers would stop threatening to cancel their services every time they don't get exactly what they want because they think their threat will get me to do the impossible. "Oh I'm sorry I didn't realize that your TV service was so important to you that you are going to switch to DirecTV because a tech isn't available until tomorrow. In that case let me contact local dispatch again to make double-sure that they aren't sending anymore techs out this evening due to the blizzard going on in your area." gently caress you. I guess I just get really sick of that threat because it's never legitimate or warranted when I hear it. I've pulled up accounts that have made my head spin in terms of how bad the service they have received is due to line outages and poo poo like that, and I just do what I'm supposed to do and while they let me know they are frustrated, they never threaten to cancel or move to another company. The only people that do this are people who can't get a third extension on their huge past due bill, people who say they call in all the time yet haven't called in months, etc. I'm a guy on a phone who has to follow policy to the letter. I just wish there was a way to tell people "Now that you've threatened to cancel your services because I can't pull a rabbit of a loving hat, I have to transfer you to retention who will tell you exactly what I just did. So all you've accomplished is hurting my transfer metric for my scorecard. Thanks for loving me." I really really wish that handle time wasn't an issue because there are a few customers who are quite friendly and don't mind spending a long time on the phone shooting the poo poo with a stranger. I like those customers 
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Feb 1, 2011 22:09
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dustbin posted:I've sacrificed my handle time a couple times last week talking to awesome old ladies about their pets or their awesome island vacations or whatever. Figure if I'm not talking to someone pleasant for 30 minutes, I can argue/do real work for 30 minutes with a tough customer instead, then make it all up on big paperview nights selling boxing events every 50 seconds. Wish I got commission for that, it's just entering the PPV's for no credit. I can live with the surveys, now were being rated on a question that asks about the customer's opinion of the company, NOT the question that asks the customer about whether or not they felt the agent was helpful. When it was a metric getting people to take the survey it was easy all you had to do was tell them you were transferring them to a recording then bam fire them off to that survey with a hardphone transfer.
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Feb 8, 2011 05:10
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Loving Life Partner posted:I will never be able to understand the mindset of these people, their thought patterns are completely alien to me. I think they just have an exact idea of what they want before they call and freak the gently caress out if it doesn't go that way. "I'm going to call, he's going to fix my services over the phone or have somebody out here TODAY, and I'm going to get a $x credit for this!" So then they call in and oh looks like you're in an outage, nobody in your area is receiving service, we're doing our best to fix it. This is the point they break down and starting asking repetitive and sometimes stupid questions. I had a lady call me today trying to get her install appointment moved up from friday to today. Not an unreasonable request, let me check, ah nope no appointments until Saturday, better keep the appt you have customer. She didn't flip out or get angry, she just continued to restate she wanted her appointment moved up. I was dumbfounded, she didn't threaten anything, she just kept asking. After telling her no with an explanation for literally the 6th time, I firmed up and finally got her off the phone by asking her if she'd like to postpone the appointment she had set up already, that did the trick. I love that trick too, gently threatening the customer with some vague bs that scares the hell out of them is great for getting them to listen to what you're trying to say. This was after a 10 minute round and round: "No, I can't give you back the channels you've had for a year that you haven't been paying for and have not been on your account. I wont charge you retroactively for the service you werent supposed to receive, but I can go ahead and add it to your account if you'd like that service back."
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Feb 9, 2011 22:01
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Does anybody here actually like their job? The place I work has metrics that come and go, intense months of metric hounding that seem to come and go. Now it's all about sales and offering, and "it's ok if you're not meeting in sales, we're a good company that cares about our employees and understands when their performance is lacking, but here's a roleplay of what happens when you don't sell". So yeah I'm getting a little tired of sitting in team meetings where supervisors try their best to threaten to fire you but in the most subtle ways possible. At the same time, I found that this doesn't really affect people that actually try. A lot of people hate their job and whine about it when sometimes it's really them being a lovely employee rather than them having a lovely employer. I take poo poo calls from poo poo people and based on the interaction I really wonder how they are able to function from day to day, but at the end of the day I have a job that pays me well enough to sit behind a desk, browse the internet, constantly gives me time off the phones, good benefits, pays for my schooling, etc. And all I really have to do is work the way they ask me to work. It's really not so bad, and this isn't some small company either, a few of you in this thread probably work there. Anyway, I know it's the rant thread, but goddamn it would be nice to see a positive statement about working in a call center.
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Sep 7, 2011 14:12
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Chicken Doodle posted:I'm really hoping this is going to be me. I'm nearly done the classroom part of my training, and I have two hours actually taking calls on the phones on Friday. Then next week we start our transition, being monitored in training as we get to take calls full-time. Haha this sounds exactly like where I work. Enjoy the training while it lasts and don't get too used to the atmosphere and the transition to the floor wont be so bad. It was hard for me to get adjusted to the floor after the extremely cushy training but it's all good now. Glad to hear some of you enjoy your jobs somewhat, I didn't want to feel like a weirdo for enjoying mine some. I'm gonna have to be here for a few more years anyway to finish up school so, it can't start being soulcrushing. I honestly get tired of some of my coworkers too. As professional an atmosphere as this company tries its hardest to keep, it's like an adult daycare. The bathrooms are always a mess despite rigorous cleaning schedules (think bus stop), the desks always have food all over them. They don't want us muting the phones to make nasty comments anymore which was retarded anyway, I don't really want to hear you mute your phone to yell out "just give the address fuckface". I get irritated with customers too but it really helps for me NOT to act on that irritation or to hear it from other people. I have an opportunity to get a few months off the phones but for some reason I can't bring myself to do it. I'm somehow addicted? How is this possible?
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Sep 8, 2011 13:12
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Working from home doing this would be interesting, but I don't know if I'd be up for it. I'd kind of feel like my home was being invaded by my work, and that would suck. Where would you escape to? I guess the only thing I'm considering is the pyschological aspect of it: people cussing at me while I'm sitting in my own home. I'll leave those rude assholes where they belong, in the office with lovely bathrooms, dirty workstations, and a set of glass doors I can walk out of at the end of my shift. One of the things I wish I could get away with is being realistic. Sometimes I get really tired of pretending to be in fantasy land. It really wears me out how much time it wastes and how little it seems to accomplish. But overall that's what every customer everywhere with any business seems to want, and that's what every business will always have to deliver with customer service: utter bullshit and thoroughly polished turds. I could get so much further with helping customers understand things if I could just be realistic. Why is there an outage? It doesn't matter why there is an outage, there just is. Do you want me to tell you that a part on the power supply for the alarm system of the unit in your area that went bad, causing the alarms to go off and temporarily shut off the service? You don't want me to tell you that, because you wont understand it, I don't understand it, and you'll just get pissier. You don't ask your mechanic exactly how disc brakes operate so why are you asking me why a box just stopped working? It just did alright? Allow me to fix the issue and stop living in the loving problem. Or you're only angry with us and accusing us of losing your payment because psychologically, you know you don't pay your bills, and you definitely didn't pay this one. Emotionally it's a lot easier for you to deal with self-loathing by lashing out at the nearest person and blaming them, than accepting that ultimately it's your fault. It's ok, I WANT to do it too, but I know when it's not ok. It's never ok. It's quite insane when I step back and notice that by being realistic and rational in the nicest way possible (not even referring to my last examples which are a bit harsh) you would actually lose a ton of customers. fret logic fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Sep 9, 2011 |
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Sep 9, 2011 12:46
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Notes are just awesome, I like going back through notes and seeing that the customer is just as much a dick to everyone else as they are to me. Also I sometimes get a kick out of my own notes when I'm not really paying attention to what I put in and look at the finished product: "Scheduled appointment. Customer not happy with appointment process" "Doesn't want appointment. Scheduled appointment" "Cannot understand customer. Customer belligerent. Customer hung up." It's really satisfying how simply the notes on an account will illustrate what a goddamn jackass that person is, and it's too bad we can't just print them out and mail them to them so they can feel stupid for calling in 20 times in the course of 3 months to be verbally abusive. Usually people will want me to notate certain things on their account, which in all reality does nothing, so it's fun to do it anyway knowing it does jack poo poo. "I want it notated that I'm not happy at all with the way you guys do X", and that's exactly how it goes in the notes, that no one reads. Sorry customer.
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Sep 12, 2011 14:52
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less than three posted:Yeah, this is great. Hahah yes, I had one of the strangest calls and the notes were perfect. "tech: customer smashed box to pieces in front of me" is the really short version of this. I guess the thing about notes is, their brief and often heavily acronymed and to-the-point style makes them seem very professional and no nonsense, and when you see things described in them it gets quite hilarious. I can't help but giggle at some of the descriptions people use in notes. fret logic fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Sep 12, 2011 |
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Sep 12, 2011 15:18
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One thing I never can get over is just how mean some people are. You're really going to start yelling and cussing at me after I politely greet you when I answer the call? What if your mother was working for my company and someone spoke to her like that for no reason? People just don't think, or care, or give a poo poo about anyone but themselves. It is getting increasingly difficult not to tell these self-important entitled customers not to go gently caress themselves on a daily basis. I'm a drone that works for a living just like you, and my job is to be polite and helpful and to fix whatever your problem is, answer whatever question you have, and generally do everything I can to make you happy. And what do I get in return? I get poo poo on. And in the end, I know people treat us this way for one simple reason: they can. The moment I become realistic and respond to someone, they freak out as if to say "Oh! You're not supposed to talk to me that way! Get me your supervisor now!" It's obvious we are just punching bags and not supposed to punch back.
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Nov 10, 2011 13:23
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 12:50 |
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Fil5000 posted:I can understand your frustration, but Jesus Christ are those "new customer only!" offers loving irritating. I don't expect any of the services I get to be free, but why should I be paying MORE than some fucker who jumps from company to company every 12 months? Surely a company's established customer base is as important as getting new ones through the door. No what's irritating is that everyone that mentions this right here, when offered a contract that doesn't change in price, freaks the gently caress out about that too. "But I'm a loyal customer I'm not one of the new customers that is just going to drop you, why do they get a better deal???" "Well we have some great contract pricing that unlike these promotions, doesn't expire in 6 months" "Hell no I'm not getting any contracts!" Customers are generally irrational petulant children who always want more and always want it for absolutely nothing. It's a shame we're not allowed to tell people exactly how it is, because it's absolutely poo poo.
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Nov 12, 2011 12:59
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